Opportunities Part 34

"Why don't you speak!" said Maria, impatiently. "Why do you sit like that?"

"It's no use, Maria," said the little one, without raising her head.

"What is no use? I said I wouldn't go; and I will not, unless I choose.

She can't make me."

"She will!" said Matilda, in a burst of despairing tears.

And she did. Before the week was over, Maria was relieved at her post in the kitchen and established with a dressmaker, to learn her trade.

But not in Shadywalk. Mrs. Candy thought, she said, that Maria would have a better chance in a larger town, where there was more work and a larger connection; so she arranged that she should go to Poughkeepsie.

And thither Maria went, to live and learn, as her aunt remarked.

The change in Matilda's life was almost as great. She had no more now to do in the work of the house; Mrs. Candy had provided herself with a servant; and instead of cooking, and was.h.i.+ng dishes, and dusting, and sweeping, Matilda had studies. But she was kept as close as ever. She had now to write, and cipher, and study French verbs, and read pages of history. Clarissa was her mistress in all these, and recitations went on under the eye of Mrs. Candy. Matilda's life was even a more busy one than it had been before. Her lessons were severe, and were required in perfection; she was forced to give many hours a day to the preparing of them; and these hours were always in the afternoon and evening. The mornings were spent still in Mrs. Candy's room. When the art of darning lace was mastered, her aunt decided that it was good for her to learn all kinds of sewing. Clarissa and her mother were engaged in making up a quant.i.ty of dresses out of the materials they had purchased in New York; and Matilda was set to run up breadths of skirts, till she could do that thoroughly; then she was made to cover cord, by the scores of yards, and to hem ruffles, and to gather them, and to sew on bindings, and then to sew on hooks and eyes; and then to make b.u.t.ton-holes. The child's whole morning now was spent in the needle part of mantua-making. After dinner came arithmetic, and French exercises, and reading history; and the evening was the time for reciting. Matilda was too tired when she went up to bed to do more than look at a verse or two in her Bible, and make a very short prayer; she almost dropped asleep while she was doing that. However, in the morning she had a little time now, not having to go down to get breakfast; but the long lessons before her were a sore temptation to cut short her Bible reading. Nevertheless Matilda would not cut it short. It was the child's one happy time in all the day. The rest was very heavy, except only as the sweetness of Bible words and thoughts abode with her and came up to her, bringing comfort and giving energy. She was trying with all her might to buy up her opportunities. She studied her lessons as if that were the only thing in the world to do; and in the hours of sewing, Mrs. Candy found her a most excellent help; quick, and neat, and skilful, and very apt to learn. Matilda was learning fast many things; but the most precious of all were, to be silent, to be patient, to be kind, and to do everything with an endeavour to please G.o.d in it.

Her little face grew pale with confinement and steady work; it grew fine also with love and truth. It grew gentle with the habit of gentleness, and sweet with the habit of forgiving. But all the while it grew pale. She was very lonely and unspeakably sad, for such a child.

Her aunt kept her too close; gave her no liberty at all; even on Sundays she had put a stop to the little Bible readings in the Sunday-school, by not letting Matilda go till the regular school time.

She never went to Lilac Lane; never to Mrs. Laval's. She did go sometimes to the parsonage; for Mr. Richmond had managed it--Matilda did not know how; and once she had met Norton in the street and told him how things were with her, at which he was intensely and very gratifyingly displeased. But his displeasure could not help. The weeks went steadily on with a slow grinding power, as it felt to Matilda.

There seemed to be less and less of her every week, to judge by her own sensations. Less spirit and spring; less hope and desire; less strength and pleasure. Work was grinding her down, she thought--work and discipline. She was getting to be a little machine that her aunt managed at pleasure; and it did not seem to herself that it was really Matilda Englefield any longer. She was a different somebody. And that was in a measure true. Yet the work doing was more and better than she knew. It was not all lace-mending, and mantua-making, and learning rules of arithmetic and French verbs. The child was growing pale, it is true; she was also growing strong-hearted in a new way. Not in the way of pa.s.sion, which is not strong; but in the way of patience.

Self-command was making her worth twice as much as she ever had been in her life before. Matilda constantly did what she would rather not, and did it well. She sewed when she would have liked to do something else; she studied when she was tired; she obeyed commands that were hateful to her; she endured from her aunt what her child's heart regarded as unspeakable indignities and disagreeablenesses; and she bore them, she was forced to bear them, without a murmur, without a sign of what she felt. More than that. Since her last recorded talk with Mr. Richmond, Matilda had been striving to bear and to do without anger or impatience; she had prayed a great deal about it; and now it was getting to be a matter of course to oppose gentleness and a meek heart to all the trials that came upon her. In proportion as this was true, they grew easier to bear; far less hard and heavy; the sting seemed to be going out of them. Nevertheless the struggle and the sorrow and the confinement made the child's face grow thin and pale. Mrs. Candy said it was the hot weather.

July and August pa.s.sed in this manner; and then September. This last month was the hardest of all; for Mr. Richmond was away from Shadywalk, on some business which kept him nearly all the month.

Towards the end of it, Matilda coming back one afternoon from doing an errand, was met suddenly near the corner by Norton Laval.

"Matilda!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands. "Now I have got you.

Where have you been?"

"Nowhere."

"What have you been doing?"

"A great many things, Norton."

"I should think you had! Why haven't you been to see mamma? She has wanted to see you. Come now."

"Oh no, I can't, Norton! I can't. I must go right home."

"Come after you have gone home."

"I cannot, Norton."

"Why not?"

"I can't get leave," Matilda whispered.

"Leave?" said Norton. "Whose leave can't you get? That----"

"Oh, never mind, Norton; I can't. I would come if I could." And Matilda's eyes bore witness.

"Who hinders?" said Norton.

"Aunt Candy. Hus.h.!.+ don't tell I said so."

"Don't tell!" said Norton, in a very incensed tone. "Why, are you afraid of her?"

"I mustn't stop, Norton. I must go home."

"Are you _afraid_ of anybody, Pink?" he said, holding her fast. "Is that why you can't get out?"

Matilda's face changed, and her lip quivered, and she did not answer.

"And what has made you grow so thin? What ails you?" pursued the boy, impetuously. "You are thin and blue."

"I don't know," said Matilda. "Aunt Candy says it is the hot weather. O Norton, dear, don't keep me!"

"What have you got there?"

"Something Aunt Candy sent me to buy."

"Why didn't she send a cart to fetch it?" said the boy, taking the bundle out of Matilda's hand. "Where have you been after this?"

"To Mr. Chester's."

"Why didn't you tell Chester to send it home? He sends mamma's things.

He'd have sent it."

"I couldn't, Norton. Aunt Candy told me to bring it myself."

"What sort of a person is she? your aunt, who keeps you so close? She ain't much count, is she?"

"Oh hush, Norton!" said Matilda. "Don't, somebody will hear you."

"Do you like her?"

"I do not like to talk about her, Norton."

"Is she good to you?"

"Don't ask me, Norton, please. Now we are almost there; please let me have the bundle. I don't want you to come to the house."

Matilda looked so earnest, Norton gave her bundle up without another word, and stood looking after her till she had got into the house. Then he turned and went straight to his mother and told her the whole story; all he knew, and all he didn't know.

The end of which was, that the next day Mrs. Laval called to see Mrs.

Candy.

Now this was particularly what Mrs. Candy had wished to bring about, and did not know how. She went to the parlour with secret exultation, and an anxious care to make the visit worth all it could be. No doubt Mrs. Laval had become convinced by what she had seen and heard, that Mrs. Candy and her daughter were not just like everybody else, and concluded them to be fit persons for her acquaintance. But yet the two confronted each other on unequal ground. Mrs. Candy was handsomely dressed, no doubt; from her cap to her shoe, everything had cost money enough; "why can't I throw it on like that?" was her uneasy mental reflection the minute after she was seated. She felt as if it clung about her like armour; while her visitor's silks and laces fell about her as carelessly as a b.u.t.terfly's wings; as if they were part of herself indeed. And her speech, when she spoke, it had the same easy grace--or the carelessness of power; was it that? thought Mrs. Candy.

She had come to ask a favour, Mrs. Laval said. Mrs. Candy had a little niece, whom her boy Norton had become very fond of. Mrs. Laval had come to beg for the possession of this little niece as long at least as a good long visit might be made to extend.

"Three or four days, for instance?" said Mrs. Candy.