A Letter of Credit Part 8

"Take care, my child. 'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich;' and one is not better than the other."

"One is better off than the other," said Rotha. "Mother, how comes aunt Serena to be rich and you to be poor?"

Mrs. Carpenter hesitated and seemed to choose her words.

"It was because of the way she married," she answered at last. "I married a poor man, and her marriage brought her into riches. I would not exchange with her for all the world, Rotha. I have had much the best of it. You see your judgment is not worth much."

Rotha was not satisfied by this statement, and as time wore on she thought she had less and less reason. Mrs. Marble did succeed in finding some different work with better pay for her lodger; that is, she got her the private sewing of a family that paid her at the rate of seventy five cents for a gentleman's s.h.i.+rt, with st.i.tched linen bosom and cuffs. It was better than the b.u.t.tonhole making; yet even so, Mrs. Carpenter found that very close and diligent application was necessary, if she would pay her rent and pay her way. She could hardly do without Rotha's a.s.sistance.

If she tried, with natural motherly feeling, to spare her child, she made her fingers rough and unfit for delicate work. It would not do. Rotha's hands must go into the hot water, and handle the saucepan, and the broom, and the box-iron. Ironing made Mrs. Carpenter's hands tremble; and she must not be hindered in her work or made to do it slowly, if she and her child were to live. And by degrees Rotha came thus to be very busy and her days well filled up. All errands were done by her; purchases at the market and the grocery shop and the thread and needle store. The care of the two little rooms was hers; the preparation of meals, the clearing of tables. It was better than to be idle, but Rotha sighed over it and Mrs.

Carpenter sometimes did the same. If she had known just what a public school is, at all hazards she would not have kept her child at home; Rotha should have had so much education as she could get there. But Mrs.

Carpenter had a vague horror of evil contact for her daughter, who had lived until now in so pure an atmosphere bodily and mentally. Better anything than such contact, she thought; and she had no time to examine or make inquiries.

So days slipped by, as days do where people are overwhelmingly busy; the hope and intention of making a change kept in the background and virtually nullified by the daily and instant pressure. Rotha became accustomed to the new part she was playing in life; and to her turn of mind, there was a certain satisfaction in the activity of it. Mrs.

Carpenter sat by the window and sewed, from morning to night. Both of them began to grow pale over their confined life; but they were caught in the machinery of this great, restless, evil world, and must needs go on with it; no extrication was possible. One needleful of thread after another, one seam after another, one garment finished and another begun; that was the routine of Mrs. Carpenter's life, as of so many others; and Rotha found an incessant recurrence of meal-times, and of the necessary arrangements before and after. The only break and change was on Sunday.

Mrs. Carpenter suddenly awoke to the conviction, that Rotha's going to any sort of school was not a thing at present within the range of vision.

What was to be done? She thought a great deal about it.

On their way to and from church she had noticed a small bookstall, closed then of course, which from its general appearance and its situation promised a tariff of prices fitted for very shallow pockets. One afternoon she resolutely laid down her work and took time to go and inspect it. The stock was small enough, and poor; in the whole she found nothing that could serve her purpose, save two volumes of a broken set of Rollin's Ancient History. Being a broken set, the volumes were prized at a mere trifle, and Mrs. Carpenter bought them. Rotha had been with her, and as soon as they reached home subjected the purchase to a narrow and thorough inspection.

"Mother, these are only Vol. I. and Vol. V."

"Yes, I know it."

"And they are not very clean."

"I know that too. I will cover them."

"And then, what are you going to do with them? Read them? You have no time."

"I am going to make you read them."

"Well, I would like to read anything new," said Rotha; "but what shall we do for all that goes between No. I. and No. V.?"

"We will see. Perhaps we can pick them up too, some time."

The reading, Rotha found, she was to do aloud, while her mother sewed. It became a regular thing every afternoon, all the time there was to give to it; and Rotha was not aware what schooling her mother managed to get out of the reading. Mrs. Carpenter herself had been well educated; and so was able to do for Rotha what was possible in the circ.u.mstances. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how much may be accomplished with small means, if there is sufficient power of will at work. Not a fact and not a name in their reading, but it was made the nucleus of a discussion, of which Rotha only knew that it was very interesting; Mrs. Carpenter knew that she was teaching her daughter history and chronology. Not the history merely of the people immediately in question, but the history of the world and of humanity. For without being a scholar or having dead languages at her command, Mrs. Carpenter had another knowledge, which gives the very best key to the solution of many human questions, leads to the most clear and comprehensive view of the whole human drama of life and gives the only one clue to guide one amidst the confusions of history and to its ultimate goal and termination. Namely, the knowledge of the Bible. It is marvellous, how that knowledge supplies and supplements other sorts. So Rotha and her mother, at every step they made in their reading, stopped to study the ground; looked back and forward, traced connections of things, and without any parade of learning got deep into the philosophy of them.

History was only one branch of the studies for which Rollin was made a text-book. Mrs. Carpenter had an atlas in her possession; and she and Rotha studied geography. Studied it thoroughly, too; traced and fixed the relations of ancient and modern; learned by heart and not by head, which is always the best way. And Mrs. Carpenter taxed her memory to enable her as far as practicable to indoctrinate Rotha in the mysteries and delights of physical geography, which the girl took as she would the details of a story. Culture and the arts and industries came in for a share of attention; but here Mrs. Carpenter's knowledge reached not far. Far enough to excite Rotha's curiosity very much, which of itself was one good thing. That indeed may be said to have been one general result and fruit of this peculiar method of instruction.

A grammar was not among Mrs. Carpenter's few possessions, nor found on the shelves of the book-stall above-mentioned. Here too she sought to make memory supply the place of printed words. Rollin served as a text- book again. Rotha learned the parts of speech, and their distinctions and inflexions; also, as far as her mother could recollect them, the rules of syntax. Against all this branch of study she revolted, as unintelligible.

Writing compositions went better; but for the mechanical part of this exercise Mrs. Carpenter had no leisure. She did set Rotha a copy now and then; but writing and arithmetic for the most part got the go-by. What Mrs. Carpenter did she must do with her fingers plying the needle and her eyes on her work.

It helped them both, all this learning and teaching; reading and talking.

It saved their life from being a dead monotony, and their minds from vegetating; and diverted them from sorrowful regrets and recollections.

Life was quite active and stirring in the little rooms where they lived.

Nevertheless, their physical nature did not thrive so well as the mental.

Rotha was growing fast, and shooting up slender and pale, living too housed a life; and her mother began to lose freshness and to grow thin with too constant application. As the winter pa.s.sed away, and warm weather opened the buds of the trees which in some places graced the city, these human plants seemed to wither more and more.

"O mother," said Rotha, standing at the window one day in the late spring, "I think the city is just horrid!"

"Never mind, my child. We have a comfortable home, and a great deal to be thankful for."

"If I could only see the b.u.t.terflies in the fields again!" sighed Rotha.

Her mother echoed the sigh, but this time said nothing.

"And I would like a good big tumbler of real milk, and some strawberries, and some of your bread and b.u.t.ter, mother."

"Yes, my child."

"Mother, how comes it that aunt Serena is rich, and you and I are so poor?"

"You have asked me that before."

"But you didn't tell me."

"I told you, it was in consequence of the different marriages we made."

"Yes, I know. But you were not poor before you married father, were you?"

"No."

"Then that is what I mean. What is become of it? Where is your part?"

"Nowhere, dear."

"What became of it then, mother?"

"I never had it, Rotha. You had better get your book and read. That would be wiser than asking useless questions."

"But why didn't you have it, mother? Did aunt Serena--did your sister-- get it all?"

"Get your book, Rotha."

"Mother, please tell me. I shall know the answer if you do not tell me."

"Your aunt had it all," Mrs. Carpenter said very quietly.

"Why?"

"Your grandfather thought there were good reasons."

"_Were_ there, mother?"

"I do not think so. But let it be, Rotha, and never mention this subject to me again. Different people have different ways of looking at the same thing; and people are often very honestly mistaken. You must not judge others by yourself."

"Mother, I think that was very unjust," said Rotha, in immediate disregard of this precept.

"You must not think it was meant so."