Re-Creations E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When lovely Cornelia Copley’s mother becomes ill, Cornelia must leave her beloved college and return home to care for her family. But things at home have changed a great deal. Her family is living in near poverty, in a shabby and dismal little house. And her younger brother has become rebellious and distant. Cornelia is filled with dismay and self-pity. Then she overhears her youngest brother and her sister calling her self-centered and ungrateful. Suddenly Cornelia realizes that what they are saying is true—she has only been making matters worse! So she devises a strategy to repair the damage she has caused. But is it too late? Can Cornelia find the right way to bring her precious family together again, and bring them a renewed sense of faith and hope?

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

RE-CREATIONS

Copyright

First published in 1924

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

1920s Eastern United States, near Philadelphia

Cornelia Copley pressed her face against the windowpane of the car and smiled with a brave showing of courage as the train moved away from the platform where her college friends huddled eagerly for the last glimpse of her.

“Don’t forget to write, Cornie!” shouted a girl with black eyes and a frantic green sweater over a green-and-yellow striped sport-skirt.

“Remember you’re to decorate my house when I’m married!” screamed a pink-cheeked girl with blue eyes and bewitching dimples.

“Be sure to come back for commencement!” chorused three others as the train got fairly underway.

Cornelia watched the staid old gray buildings penciled over with the fine lines of vines that would burst into green tenderness as soon as the spring should appear and thought how many good times she had had within those walls, and how terrible, how simply unthinkable it was that they were over forever, and she would never be able to graduate! With tears gathering in her eyes and blurring her vision, she watched till the last flutter of the flag on the top of Dwight Hall vanished, the big old cherry tree, gnarled and black against the November sky, faded into the end of the library, and even the college hedge was too far back to discern; then she settled slowly back into her seat, much as a bit of wax candle might melt and droop before the outpouring of sudden heat. She dropped into her seat so sadly and so crushingly that the sweet-faced lady in the long sealskin coat across the aisle turned and looked commiseratingly at her. Poor child! Now what was she having to endure? she wondered, as she watched the sweet lips drop at the corners, the dimples around the eyes disappear, and the long lashes sweep down too late to catch the great tear that suddenly rolled out and down the round, fair cheek.

Cornelia sat with her face turned toward the window and watched the familiar way for a long time through unseeing eyes. She was really looking into a hard and cruel future that had suddenly swooped down upon her and torn her from her friends, her career in life—all that she thought she held dear—and was sending her to an undesirable home among a family who did not understand her and her aspirations nor appreciate her ability. Her mouth took on hard little strange lines, and her deep, dreamy eyes looked almost steely in their distress. It all seemed so unnecessary. Why couldn’t Father understand that her career meant so much, and another year or two in college would put her where she could be her own mistress and not be dependent upon him? Of course she couldn’t argue with him about it just now after that rather touching letter he had written; but if he had only understood how important it was that she should go on and finish her course, if only any of them had ever understood, she was sure he would have managed some way to get along without recalling her. She took out the letter and read it over again. After all, she had scarcely had time to read it carefully in all its details, for a telegram had followed close upon it bidding her come at once, as she was badly needed, and of course she had packed up and started. This was the letter, written in a cramped, clerkly hand:

“Dear Daughter,

“I am very sorry to have to tell you that your mother, who has been keeping up for the last six months by sheer force of will, has given out and seems to be in quite a serious condition. The doctor has told us that nothing but absolute rest and an entire change will save her to us, and of course you will understand that we are so rejoiced over the hope he holds out that we are trying to forget the sorrow and anxiety of the present and to get along as best we can without her. I have just returned from taking her, with the assistance of a trained nurse, to the Rest Cure Hospital at Quiet Valley over at the other end of the state, where the doctor tells me she will have just the conditions and treatment that her case requires. You will be glad to know that she was quite satisfied to go, feeling that it was the only possible thing left to do, and her main distress was that you would have to leave college and come home to take her place. My dear Nellie, it grieves me to the heart to have to write this and ask you to leave your beloved work and come home to help us live, but I see no other way out. Your Aunt Pennell has broken her leg and will not be able to be about all winter; and even if she were well enough, she never seems to understand how to get along with Harry and Louise.

“And then, even if there were anyone else, I must tell you that there is another reason why coming home is necessary. It is that I cannot afford to let you stay at college. I cannot tell you how hard it looks to me written out on paper and how my spirit sinks beneath the thought that I have come to this, that I cannot afford to let my daughter finish her education as she had planned because I have not been able to make money enough to do all the other things that have to be done also. I have tried to keep the knowledge of my heavy losses from you until you should be through with your work at college. Mother and I thought we could get along and not let you know about it, because we knew you would insist on coming right home and helping; but now since Mother has broken down you will have to be told the truth. Indeed, I strongly suspect that your mother in her great love for you and the others has brought on this weak state of health by overdoing, although we tried all we could to keep her from working too hard. You will, I know, want to help in every way you can, so that we shall be able to surround your dear mother with every necessity and even luxury that she should have and so make her recovery more sure and speedy. It costs a good deal at Quiet Valley. It is an expensive place, but nothing is too good for your dear, patient mother, who has quietly been giving her very life for us all without letting us know how ill she was.

There is another painful thing I must tell you, and that is that we have had to move from our old home, also on account of the expense, and you will not find it nearly so pleasant or convenient here as at the old house, but I know my brave daughter will bear it like a soldier and be as helpful and resourceful as her mother has always been. It gives me great comfort to think of your immediate coming, for Louise is working too hard for so young a girl. Harry helps her as much as he can. Moreover, I feel troubled about Carey. He is getting into the habit of staying out late with the boys, and—but you will know how to help him when you get here. You and he were always good friends. I cannot tell you what a tower of strength you seem to me to be just now in this culmination of trials. Be sure to telegraph me on what train you will arrive, and we will meet you.

“With deep regret at the necessity of this recall, which I know will be a great trial to you,

“Your loving father”

Cornelia looked like anything but a tower of strength as she folded the letter and slipped it back into her handbag with a deep-drawn sigh. It had given her the same feeling of finality that had come when she first read it. She had hoped there might be a glimmer, a ray, somewhere in this second reading that would help her to hope she might go back to college pretty soon when she had put the family on its feet again and found the right person to look after them. But this money affair that Father laid so much emphasis upon was something that she could not quite understand. If Father only understood how much money she could make once she was an interior decorator in some large, established firm, he would see that a little money spent now would bring large returns. Why, even if he had to borrow some to keep her in college till her course was finished, he would lose nothing in the end.

Cornelia put her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes wearily. She hadn’t slept much the night before, and her nerves were taut and strained. This was the first minute in which she had done anything like relax since the letter came—right into the midst of a junior show in which she had had charge of all the stage settings! It really had been dreadful to leave when she was the only one who knew where everything should be. She had spent half the night before making drawings and coloring them and explaining to two half-comprehending classmates. But she was sure they would make some terrible mistake somewhere, and she would be blamed with the inharmony of the thing. It was too bad when she had acquired the reputation of being the only girl in college who could make such effects on the stage. Well, it couldn’t be helped!

Of course, she was sorry her mother was sick, but Father spoke hopefully, confidently about her, and the rest would probably do her good. It wasn’t as if Mother were hopelessly ill. She was thankful as any of them that that had not come. But Mother had always understood her aspirations, and if she were only at home she would show Father how unreasonable it was for her to have to give up now when only a year and a half more and the goal would be reached and she could become a contributing member of the family, rather than just a housekeeper!

Over and over the sorrowful round Cornelia’s thoughts went as mile after mile rushed away under the wheels and home drew nearer. Now and then she thought a little of how it would be when she got home, but when one had to visualize an entirely new home about which one had not heard a thing, not even in what part of the city it was located, how could one anticipate a homecoming? They must have just moved, she supposed, and probably Mother had worked too hard settling. Mother always did that. Indeed, Cornelia had been so entirely away from home during her college life that she was almost out of harmony with it, and her sole connection had been cheerful little letters mostly filled with what she was going to do when she finished her course and became an interior decorator.

It was almost two years since she had been at home, for last summer and the summer before she had spent in taking special courses in a summer school not far from her college, and the intervening Christmas she had been invited to a wonderful house party in New York at the home of one of her classmates who had unlimited money and knew just how to give her friends a good time. Mother had thought these opportunities too good to be wasted, and to her surprise Father also had been quite willing for her to spend the extra time and money, and so she had grown quite away from the home and its habits. She began to feel, as she drew nearer and nearer to the home city, almost as if she were going among strangers.

It was growing quite dusky, and lights were glinting out in stray farmhouses along the way. The train was due in the city at seven o’clock. It was almost six, and the box of fudge that the girls had supplied her with had palled upon her. Somehow she did not feel hungry, only sick at heart and woefully homesick for the college and the ripple of laughter and chatter down the corridors; the jokes about college fish and rice pudding; the dear, funny exchange of secrets; even the papers that had to be written! How gladly would she go back now and never grumble about anything if she only knew she could finish without an interruption and then move to the city to live with Mable and Alice as they had planned and get into big work! Oh the dreams, the bubbles that were being broken with all their pretty glitter of rainbow hues gone into nothingness! Oh the drab monotony of simple home life!

So her thoughts beat restlessly through her brain and drove the tears into her smarting eyes.

Presently the train halted at a station, and a small multitude rushed in, breezy, rough, and dirty, with loud voices and garments covered with grease and soil; toilers of the road, they were going back to the city, tossing their clamor across the car, settling their implements out of the way under their big, muddy shoes. One paused before Cornelia’s empty half seat, and suddenly before he could sit down a lady slipped into it, with a smile and a motion toward a whole empty seat across the aisle. The man accepted the offer good-naturedly, summoning a fellow laborer to share it with him, and Cornelia looked up relieved to meet the smile of her seal-clad former neighbor across the aisle.

“I thought it would be more pleasant for us both, dear, if I came over here,” she murmured with a smile. “They were pretty strong of garlic.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Cornelia and then grew shy as she noticed the jewels on the delicate hand that rested on the soft fur. What part had she in life with a woman like this, she who had to leave college because there wasn’t money enough to let her stay till she had finished? Perhaps she was the least bit ungracious to the kindly woman who had made the move obviously for her protection, but the kindly stranger would not be rebuffed.

“I’ve been watching you all the afternoon,” she said. “And I’m glad of this opportunity of getting acquainted with you if you don’t mind. I love young people.”

Cornelia wished her seatmate would keep quiet or go away, but she tried to smile gratefully.

“I was so interested in all those young people who came down to see you off. It reminded me of younger days. Was that a college up on the hill above the station?”

Now indeed was Cornelia’s tongue loosened. Her beloved college! Ah, she could talk about that even to ladies clad in furs and jewels, and she was presently launched in a detailed description of the junior play, her face glowing vividly under the opened admiration of the white-haired, beautiful woman, who knew just how to ask the right questions to bring out the girl’s eager tale and who responded so readily to every point she brought out.

“And how is it that you are going away?” she asked at last. “I should think you could not be spared. You seem to have been the moving spirit in it all. But I suppose you are returning in time to do your part.”

Cornelia’s face clouded over suddenly, and she drew a deep sigh. For the moment she had forgotten. It was almost as if the pretty lady had struck her in the face with her soft, jeweled hand. She seemed to shrink into herself.

“No,” she said at last sadly, “I’m not going—back ever, I’m afraid.” The words came out with a sound almost like a sob and were wholly unintentional with Cornelia. She was not one to air her sorrows before strangers, or even friends, but somehow the whole tragedy had come over her like a great wave that threatened to engulf her. She was immediately sorry that she had spoken, however, and tried to explain in a tone less tragic. “You see, my mother is not well and had to go away, and—they needed me at home.”

She lifted her clouded eyes to meet a wealth of admiration in the older woman’s gaze.

“How beautiful! To be needed, I mean,” the lady said with a smile. “I can think just what a tower of strength you will be to your father. Your father is living?”

“Yes,” gasped Cornelia with a sudden thought of how terrible it would be if he were gone. “Oh, yes; and it’s strange—he used those very words when he wrote me to come home.” Then she grew rosy with the realization of how she was thinking out loud to this elegant stranger.

“Of course he would,” asserted the lady. “I can see that you are! I was thinking that as I watched you all the afternoon. You seem so capable and so—sweet!”

“Oh, but I’m not!” burst out the girl honestly. “I’ve been real cross about it ever since the letter came. You see,” and she drew her brows, earnestly trying to justify herself, “you see, I can’t help thinking it’s all a mistake. I’m glad to go home and help, but someone else could have done that, and I think I could have helped to better purpose if I had been allowed to stay and finish my course and then been able to help out financially. Father has lost some money lately, which has made things hard, and I was planning to be an interior decorator. I should soon have been able to do a good deal for them.”

“Oh, but my dear! No one can take a daughter’s place in a home when there is trouble, not such a daughter’s place as you occupy, I’m sure. And as for the other thing, if you have it in you it will come out, you may be sure. You’ll begin by decorating the home interior, and you won’t lose anything in the end. Such things are never lost nor time wasted. God sees to that, if you are doing your best right where He put you. I can just see what an exquisite spot you’ll make of that home, and how it will rest your mother to know you are taking her place.”

Cornelia sadly shook her head.

“There won’t be any chance for decorating,” she said slowly. “They’ve had to move away from the home we owned, and father said it wasn’t very pleasant there.”

“All the more chance for your talents!” said the lady with determined cheerfulness. “I know you have a sense of the beautiful, for I’ve been studying that lovely little hat you wear and how well it suits your face and tones with your coat and dress and gloves. However unpleasant and gloomy that new house may be, it will begin to glow and blossom and give out welcome within a short time after you get there. I should like to look in and prove the truth of my words. Perhaps I shall sometime, who knows? You just can’t help making things fit and beautiful. There’s a look in your face that makes me sure. Count the little house your opportunity, as every trial and test in this world really is, you know, and you’ll see what will come. I know, for I’ve seen it tried again and again.”

“But one can’t do much without money,” sighed Cornelia, “and money is what I had hoped to earn.”

“You’ll earn it yet, very likely, but even if you don’t, you’ll do the things. Why, the prettiest studio I ever saw was furnished with old boxes covered with bark and lichens and cushioned with burlap. The woodwork was cheap pine stained dark, the walls were rough, and there was a fireplace built from common cobblestones. When the teakettle began to sing on the hearth and my friend got out her little cheap teacups from the ten-cent store, I thought it was the prettiest place I ever saw, and all because she had put herself into it, and not money, and made everything harmonize. You’ll do it yet. I can see it in your eyes. But here we are at last in the city, and aren’t you going to give me your address? Here’s mine on this card, and I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you. I want you to come and see me sometime if possible. And if I get back to this city again sometime—I’m only passing through now and meeting my son to go on to Washington with him in the morning—but if I get back this way sometime soon I want to look you up, if I may, and see if I didn’t prophesy truly, my dear little Interior Decorator.”

This was the kind of admiration Cornelia was used to, and she glowed with pleasure under it, her cheeks looking very pretty against the edge of brown fur on her coat collar. She hastily scribbled the new address on one of her cards and handed it out with a dubious look, almost as if she would like to recall it.

“I haven’t an idea what kind of a place it will be,” she said apologetically. “Father seemed to think I wouldn’t like it at all. Perhaps it won’t be a place I would be proud to have you see me in.”

“I’m sure you’ll grace the place, however humble it is,” said the lady with a soft touch of her jeweled hand on Cornelia’s. And just then the train slid into the station and came to a halt. Almost immediately a tall young man strode down the aisle and stood beside the seat. It seemed a miracle how he would have arrived so soon, before the passengers had gathered their bundles ready to get out.

“Mother!” he said eagerly, lifting his hat with the grace and ease of a young man well versed in the usages of the best society. And then he stooped and kissed her. Cornelia forgot herself in her admiration of the little scene. It was so beautiful to see a mother and son like this. She sighed wistfully. If only Carey could be like that with Mother! What an unusual young man this one seemed to be! He treated his mother like a beloved friend. Cornelia sat still, watching, and then the mother turned and introduced her.

“Arthur, I want you to meet Miss Copely. She has made part of the way quite pleasant and interesting for me.”

Then Cornelia was favored with a quick, searching glance accompanied by a smile, which was first cordial for his mother’s sake and then grew more so with his own approval as he studied her. The girls his mother picked were apt to be satisfactory. She could see he was accepting her at the place where his mother left off. A moment more, and he was carrying her suitcase in one hand and his mother’s in the other, while she, walking with the lady, wondered at herself and wished that fate were not just about to whirl her away from these most interesting people.

Then she caught a glimpse of her father at the train gate, with his old derby pulled down far over his forehead as if it were getting too big and his shabby coat collar turned up about his sunken cheeks. How worn and tired he looked! Yes, and old and thin. She hadn’t remembered that his shoulders stooped so, or that his hair was so gray. Had all that happened in two years? And that must be Louise waving her handkerchief so violently just in front of him. Was that Harry in that old red baseball sweater with a smudged white letter on its chest, and ragged wrists? He was chewing gum, too! Oh, if these new acquaintances would only get out of the way! It would be so dreadful to have to meet and explain and introduce! She forgot that she had a most expressive face and that her feelings were quite open to the eyes of her new friends, until she suddenly looked up and found the young man’s eyes upon her interestedly, and then the pink color flew over her whole face in confusion.

“Please excuse me,” she said, reaching out for her suitcase. “I see my father,” and without further formalities she fairly flew down the remainder of the platform and smothered herself in the bosom of her family, anxious only to get them off to one side and away from observation.

“She’s a lovely girl,” said the lady wistfully. “She wants to be an interior decorator and make a name and fame for herself, but instead she’s got to go home from college and keep the house for that rabble. Still, I think she’ll make good. She has a good face and sweet, true eyes. Sometime we’ll go and see her and find out.”

“M’m!” said the son, watching Cornelia escape from a choking embrace from her younger brother and sister. “I should think that might be interesting,” and he walked quite around a group of chattering people greeting some friends in order that he might watch her the longer. But when Cornelia at last straightened her hat and looked furtively about her, the mother and son had passed out of sight, and she drew a deep sigh of thanksgiving and followed her father and the children downstairs to the trolley. They seemed delightful people, and under other circumstances she might have heartily enjoyed their company, but if she had hard things to face she didn’t want an audience while she faced them. Her father might be shabby and old, but he was her father, and she wasn’t going to have him laughed at by anybody, even if he didn’t always see things as she thought he ought to see them.

Chapter 2

It was a long ride, and the trolley was chilly. Cornelia tried to keep from shivering and smiled at everything Louise and Harry told her, but somehow things had gotten on her nerves. She had broken out into a perspiration with all the excitement at the station and now felt cold and miserable. Her eyeballs ached with the frequent tears that had slipped their salty way that afternoon, and her head was heavy, and heavier her heart.

Across the way sat her father, looking grayer and more worn in the garish light of the trolley. His hair straggled and needed cutting, and his cheeks were quite hollow. He gave a hollow cough now and then, and his eyes looked like haunted spirits, but he smiled contentedly across to her whenever he caught her glance. She knew he meant that she should feel how glad he was to get her back. She began to feel very mean in her heart that she could not echo his gladness. She knew she ought to, but somehow visions of what she had left behind, probably forever, got between her and her duty, and pulled down the corners of her mouth in a disheartening droop that made her smiles a formal thing, though she tried, she really did try, to be what this worn old father evidently expected her to be—a model daughter, glad to get home and sacrifice everything in life for them all.

These thoughts made her responses to the children only halfhearted. Harry was trying to tell her how the old dog had died and they had only the little pup left, but it was so game it could beat any cat on the street in a fight already, and almost any dog.

Louise chimed in with a tale about a play in school that she had to be in if Nellie would only help her get up a costume out of old things. But gradually the talk died down, and Louise sat looking thoughtfully across at her father’s tired face, while Harry frowned and puckered his lips in a contemplative attitude, shifting his gum only now and then, enough to keep it going, and fixing his eyes very wide and blue in deep melancholy upon the toe of his father’s worn shoe. Something was fast going wrong with the spirits of the children, and Cornelia was so engrossed in herself and her own bitter disappointment that she hadn’t even noticed it.

In the midst of the blueness the car stopped, and Mr. Copley rose stiffly with an apologetic smile toward his elder daughter.

“Well, this is about where we get off, Nellie,” he said half wistfully, as if he had done his brave best, and it was now up to her.

Something in his tone brought Cornelia sharply to her senses. She stumbled off the car and looked around her breathlessly, while the car rumbled on up a strange street with scattered houses, wide-open spaces reminding one of community baseball diamonds, and furtive heaps of tin cans and ashes. The sky was wide and open, with brilliant stars gleaming gaudily against the night and a brazen moon that didn’t seem to understand how glaringly every defect in the location stood out, but that only made the place seem more strange and barren to the girl. She had not known what she expected, but certainly not this. The houses about her were low and small, some of them of red brick made all alike, with faded greenish-blue shutters and a front door at one side opening on a front yard of a few feet in dimensions, with a picket fence about it, or sometimes none at all. The house her father was leading her to was a bit taller than the rest, covered with clapboards, weather-beaten and stained; guiltless of paint, as could be seen even at night; high and narrow, with gingerbread-work in the gable and not a porch to grace its poor bare face, only two steps and a plain wooden door.

Cornelia gasped and hurried in to shut herself and her misery away from the world. Was this what they had come to? No wonder her mother had given out! No wonder her father—But then her father—how could he have let them come to a place like this? It was terrible!

Inside, at the end of the long, narrow hall, the light from the dining room shone cheerfully from a clean kerosene lamp guiltless of shade, flaring across a red and white tablecloth.

“We haven’t done a thing to the parlor yet,” said the father sadly, throwing open a door at his right as Cornelia followed him. “Your mother hadn’t the strength!” He sighed deeply. “But then,” he added more cheerfully, “what are parlors when we all are alive and getting well?”

Cornelia cast a wondering look at him. She had not known her father thought so much of her mother. There was a half-glorified look on his face that made her think of a boy in love. It was strange to think it, but of course her mother and father had been young lovers once. Cornelia, her thoughts temporarily turned from her own brooding, followed into the desolate dining room, and her heart sank. This was home! This was what she had come back to after all her dreams of a career and all her pride over an artistic nature!

There was a place set for her at one end of the red-clothed table and a plaintive little supper drying up on the stove in the kitchen, but Cornelia was not hungry. She made pretense of nibbling at the single little burned lamb chop and a heavy soda biscuit. If she had known how the children had gone without meat to buy that lamb chop, and how hard Louise had worked to make these biscuits and the applesauce that accompanied them, she might have been more appreciative; but as it was she was feeling very miserable indeed and had no time from her own self-pitying thoughts to notice them at all.

The dining room was a dreary place. An old sofa that had done noble duty in the family when Cornelia was a baby lounged comfortably at one side, a catchall for overcoats, caps, newspapers, bundles, mending, anything that happened along. Three of the dining room chairs were more or less gone or emaciated in their seats. The cat was curled up comfortably in the old wooden rocker that had always gone by the name of “Father’s rocker” and wore an ancient patchwork cushion. The floor was partly covered by a soiled and worn Axminister rug whose roses blushed redly still behind wood-colored scrolls on an indiscriminate background that no one would ever suspect of having been pearl-gray once upon a time. The wallpaper was an ugly, dirty dark red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This was her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator!

Her silence and lack of enthusiasm dampened the spirits of the children, who had looked to her coming to brighten the dreary aspect of things. They began to sit around silently and watch her, their sharp young eyes presently searching out her thoughts, following her gaze from wallpaper to curtainless window, from broken chair to sagging couch.

“We haven’t been able to get very much in order,” sighed Louise in a suddenly grown-up, responsible tone, wrinkling her pink young brow into lines of care. “I wanted to put up some curtains before you got here, but I couldn’t find them. Father wouldn’t let me open the boxes till Carey came home to help. He said there was enough around for me to tend to, all alone, now.”

“Of course,” assented the elder sister briefly and not at all sympathetically. In her heart she was thinking that curtains wouldn’t make any difference. What was the use of trying to do anything, anyway? Suppose the beautiful stranger who had been so sure she would make her home lovely could see her now. What would she think? She drew a deep sigh.

“I guess maybe I better go to bed,” said Louise suddenly, blinking to hide a tendency to tears. It was somehow all so different from what she had expected. She had thought it would be almost like having mother back, and it wasn’t at all. Cornelia seemed strange and difficult.

“Yes,” said the father, coming up from the cellar, where he had been putting the erratic furnace to bed for the night. “You and Harry better get right up to bed. You have to get up so early in the morning.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come, too,” said Louise, turning to Cornelia with one more attempt at hospitality. “You know you have to sleep with me; that is, I sleep with you.” She smiled apologetically. “There isn’t any other room, you know,” she explained as she saw the look of dismay on Cornelia’s face. “I wanted to fix up the linen closet for me, but father couldn’t find another cot yet. Harry sleeps on one cot up in a little skylight place in the third story that was only meant for a ladder to go up to the roof. Carey has the only real room on the third floor, and there aren’t but two on the second besides the little speck of a bathroom and the linen closet.”

A sudden realization of the trouble in the little sister’s eyes and voice brought Cornelia somewhat to her senses.

“That’s all right, chicken,” she said, pinching the little girl’s cheek playfully. “We won’t fight, I guess. I’m quite used to a roommate, you know.”

Louise’s face bloomed into smiles of hopefulness.

“Oh, that will be nice,” she sighed. “Are you coming to bed now?”

“You run along, Louise,” put in her father. “I guess Nellie and I will have a bit of a talk before she comes up. She’ll want to know all about Mother, you know.”

The two children withdrew, and Cornelia tried to forget herself once more and bring her reluctant thoughts to her immediate future and the task that was before her.

“What is the matter with Mother?” she asked suddenly, her thoughts still half impatient over the interruption to her career. It was time she understood more definitely just what had come in to stop her at this important time of her life. She wished that Mother herself had written; Mother never made so much of things, although of course she didn’t want to hurt her father by saying so.

“Why, she was all run down,” said Mr. Copley, a shade of deep sadness coming over his gray face. “You see she had been scrimping herself for a long time, saving, that the rest of us might have more. We didn’t know it, of course, or we would have stopped it.” His voice was shamed and sorrowful. “We found she hadn’t been eating any meat,” his voice shook like an old man’s, “just to—save—more for the rest of us.”

Cornelia looked up with a curl on her lip and a flash in her eyes, but there was something in her father’s broken look that held back the words of blame that had almost sprung to her lips, and he went on with his tale in a tone like a confession, as if the burden of it were all on him and were a cloak of shame that he must wear. It was as if he wanted to tell it all at its worst.

“She didn’t tell us, either, when she began to feel bad. She must have been running down for the last three years—in fact, ever since you went away. Though she never let on. When Molly had to go home to her folks, your mother decided not to try to keep a servant. She said she could get along better with sending out the washing, and servants were a scarce article and cost a lot. I didn’t want her to, but you know how your mother always is, and I had kind of got used to letting her have her own way, especially as about that time I had all I could do night and day at the office to try to prevent what I saw was coming for the business. She worked too hard. I shall never forgive myself!” He suddenly buried his face in his hands and groaned.

It was awful to Cornelia. She wanted to run and fling her arms about his neck and comfort him; yet she couldn’t help blaming him. Was he so weak? Why hadn’t he been more careful of the business and not let things get into such a mess? A man oughtn’t to be weak. But the sight of his trouble touched her strangely. How thin and gray his hair looked! It struck her again that he looked aged since she had seen him last. It gave her the effect of a cold splash of water in her face.

“Don’t Father!” she said, her voice full of suppressed pain and a glint of tenderness.

“Well, I know I oughtn’t to trouble you this way, daughter,” he said, looking up with a deprecatory smile, “but somehow it comes over me how much she suffered in silence before we found it out, and then I can’t stand it, especially when I think what she was when I married her, so fresh-faced and pretty with brown hair and eyes just like yours. You make me think a lot of her, daughter. Well, it’s all over, thank the Lord,” he went on with a sigh, “and she’s on the mend again. You don’t know what it was to me the day of the operation.”

“Operation!” The word caught in Cornelia’s throat, and a chill of horror crept over her. “Why, you never told me there was an operation!”

“I know,” her father said apologetically. “That was Mother, too! She wouldn’t have you troubled. She said it was just your examination time, and it would mean a great deal to you to get your marks; and it would only be a time of anxiety to you, and she was so sure she would come out all right. She is wonderfully brave, your mother. And she hoped so much she’d be able to get up and around and not have to bring you home till your course was over. We meant to manage it somehow, but you see we didn’t know how serious it was and how she would have to go away and stay a long time till she was strong.”

Cornelia’s eyes were filled with tears now. She had forgotten her own disappointments and the way she had been blaming her father and was filled with remorse for the little mother who had suffered and thought of her to the last. She got up quickly and went over to gather the bowed head of her father into her unaccustomed arms and try somehow to be daughterly. It was strange because she had been away so long and had gotten out of the way of little endearments, but she managed it so that the big man was comforted and smiled at her and told her again and again how good it was to have her back, almost as good as having her mother. Then he stroked her hair, looked into her wise young eyes, and called her his little Nellie-girl, the way she could remember his doing before she went away to school.

When Cornelia went upstairs at last with the kerosene lamp held high above her head so that she would not stumble up the steep, winding staircase, she had almost forgotten herself and her ambitions and was filled with a desire to comfort her father.

She dropped into her place beside the sleeping sister with a martyr-like quiet and failed to notice the discouraged droop of the little huddled figure and the tear-stained cheek that was turned toward the dingy wall. The dreariness of the room and the close quarters had brought depression upon her spirits once more, and she lay a long time filled with self-pity and wondering how in the world she was ever to endure it all.

Chapter 3

In the dimness of the early morning Louise Copley awoke with a sigh to consciousness and softly slid her hand down to the floor under the bed, where she had hidden the old alarm clock. With a sense that her elder sister was still company she had not turned on the alarm as usual, and now with the clocklike regularity and a sense of responsibility far beyond her years she had wakened at a quarter to six as promptly as if the whir of the alarm had sounded underneath her pillow.

She rubbed her eyes open and through the half-lifted fringes took a glance. Yes it was time to get up. With one more lingering rub at her sleepy young eyes she put the clock back under the bed out of the way and stole quietly over the footboard, watching furtively her sleeping sister. How pretty Nellie was even in the early gray light of morning, with all that wavy mane of hair sweeping over the pillow, and her long lashes lying on the pink curve of her cheek! Louise wondered incredulously whether she would be half as pretty as that when she was as old as her sister.

It was nice to have a big sister at home, but now that she was here, Louise wondered in a mature little housewifely way what in the world they were going to do with her. She didn’t look at all fit for cooking and things like that, and Louise sighed wearily as she struggled with the buttons and thought of the day before her and the endless weeks that must go by before they could hope for the return of the dear mother who had made even poverty sweet and cheerful. And there was that matter of a spring hat and a costume to wear at the school play. She stole another glance at the lovely sleeping sister and decided it would not do to bother her with little trifles like that. She would have to manage them somehow herself. Then, with the last button conquered and a hasty tying-back of her yellow curls with a much-worn ribbon, she tiptoed responsibly from the room, taking care to shut the latch securely and silently behind her.

She sped downstairs and went capably at the kitchen stove, coaxing it into brightness and glancing fearfully at the kitchen clock. It was six o’clock, and she could hear her father stirring about in his room. He would be down soon to look after the furnace, and then she must have breakfast on the table at once, for he must catch the six fifty-five car. The usual morning frenzy of rush seized her, and she flew from dining room to pantry cutting bread, and back to the stove to turn the bacon and be sure it did not burn. It was a mad race, and sometimes she felt like crying by the time she sat down to the table to pour her father’s coffee, which somehow, try as she would, just would not look or taste like Mother’s. She was almost relieved that her sister had given no sign of wakening yet, for she had not had time to make the breakfast table look nice, and it was kind of exciting to try to eat in a hurry and have “sort of company” to think about at the same time.

The father came downstairs peering into the dining room anxiously, with an apology on his lips for his eldest child.

“That’s right, Louise, I’m glad you let her sleep. She looked all wearied out last night with her long journey, and then I guess it’s been a kind of a shock to her, too.”

“I guess it has,” said the little girl comfortably and passed him his cup of coffee and the bread plate. They both had a sense of relief that Cornelia was not there and that there was a legitimate reason for not blaming her for her absence. Neither had yet been willing to admit to their loyal selves that Cornelia’s attitude of apathy to the family hardship had been disappointing. They kept hoping against hope.

Mr. Copley finished his coffee hurriedly and looked at his watch.

“Better let her sleep as long as she will,” he said. “She’ll likely be awake before you need to go to school, and if she isn’t, you can leave a note telling her where to find things. Where’s Harry? Isn’t he up?”

“Oh, yes, he went to the grocery for the soup bone he forgot to get last night. I was going to put it on cooking before I left. I thought maybe she wouldn’t know to—”

“That’s right! That’s right! You’re a good little girl, Louise. Your sister will appreciate that. Make Harry eat a good breakfast when he gets back. It isn’t good to go out on an empty stomach, and we must all keep well and not worry Mother, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” sighed the little girl with a responsible look. “I made him take a piece with him, and I’m saving something hot for him when he comes back. He’ll help me with the dishes, he said. We’ll make out all right. Don’t you worry, Father, dear.”

The father, with a tender father-and-mother-both smile, came around and kissed her white forehead where the soft baby-gold hair parted and then hurried away to his car, thankful for the mother’s look in his youngest girl’s face, wondering whether they had chased it forever away from the eldest girl’s face by sending her too young to college.

It was to the soft clatter of pots and pans somewhere in the near distance that Cornelia finally awakened with a sense of terrible depression and a belated idea that she ought to be doing something for the family comfort. She arose hastily and dressed with a growing distaste for the new day and what was before her. Even the view from the grimy little bedroom window was discouraging. It was a gray day, and one could see there were intentions of rain in the messy clouds that hurled themselves across the distant rooftops. The window looked out into the backyard, a small enclosure with a fence needing paint and dishearteningly full of rusty tin cans and old weather-stained newspapers and trash. Beyond the narrow, dirty alley were rows of other similar backyards, with now and then a fluttering dishcloth hanging on a string on a back porch and plenty of heaped-up ash cans everywhere you looked. They were the back doors of houses of the poorer class, most of them two-story and old. Farther on there was an excellent view of a large dump in a wide, cavernous lot that looked as if it had suffered from an earthquake sometime in the dim past and lost its bottom, so enormous it seemed as its steep sides sloped down, liberally coated with “dump.” Cornelia gave a slight shiver of horror and turned from the window. To think of having to look at a view like that all summer. A vision of the cool, leafy camp where she had spent two weeks the summer before floated tantalizingly before her sad eyes as she slowly went downstairs.

It was a plaintive little voice that arrested her attention and her progress halfway down, a sweet, tired young voice that went to her heart, coming from the open kitchen door and carrying straight through the open dining room and through the hall up to her.

“I guess she doesn’t realize how much we needed her,” it said sadly. “And I guess she’s pretty disappointed at the house and everything. It’s pretty much of a change from college, of course.”

Then a young, indignant high-tenor growl:

“Hm! What does she think she is, anyway? Some queen? I guess the house has been good enough for us. How does she think we’ve stood being poor all these years just to keep her in college? I’d like to know. This house isn’t so much worse’n the last one we were in. It’s a peach beside some we might have had to take if these folks hadn’t been just moving out now. What does she want to do anyhow? Isn’t her family good enough for her, or what? If I ever have any children, I shan’t send ’em to college, I know that. It spoils ’em. And I don’t guess I’ll ever go myself. What’s her little old idea, anyway? Who crowned her?”

“Why, she wants to be an interior decorator,” said the little sister, slowly hanging up the dishcloth. “I guess it’s all right, and she’d make money and all, only we just couldn’t help her out till she got through her course.”

“Interior decorator!” scornfully said the boy. “I’d be satisfied if she’d decorate my interior a little. I’d like some of Mother’s waffles, wouldn’t you? And some hash and Johnnycake. Gee! Well, I guess we better get a hustle on, or we’ll be called down for tardiness. You gotta wake her up before you go?”

“Father said not to; I’m just going to leave a note. It’s all written there on the dining room table. You put some coal on the range, and I’ll get my hat and coat,” and the little sister moved quickly toward the hall.

Cornelia in sudden panic turned silently and sped back to her room, closing the door and listening with wildly beating heart till her young brother and sister went out the door and closed it behind them. Then, obeying an impulse that she did not understand, she suddenly flung her door open and flew to her father’s front bedroom window for a sight of them as they trudged off with piles of books under their arms, two valiant young comrades, just as she and Carey used to be in years so long ago and far away that she had almost forgotten them. And how they had stabbed her, her own brother and sister, talking about her as if she were a selfish stranger who had been living on their sacrifices for a long time! What could it possibly mean? Surely they were mistaken. Children always exaggerated things, and of course the few days or perhaps weeks since their father had lost his money had seemed a long time to them, poor little souls. Of course it had been hard for them to get along even a few days without Mother, and in this awful house. But—how could they have talked that way? How terrible of them! There were tears in her eyes and a pain in her heart from the words, for after all, in spite of her self-centered abstraction she did love them all; they were hers, and of course dearer than anything else on earth. Yes, even than interior decorating, and of course it was right that she should come home and make them comfortable, only—if only!

But presently the tears had spent themselves, and she began to wipe her eyes and look around. Her father’s room was as desolate as any other. There was no evidence of an attempt to put comfort into it. The upper part of the heavy walnut bureau, with its massive mirror that Cornelia remembered as a part of the furniture of her mother’s room since she was a baby, had not been screwed to the bureau but was standing on the floor as if it had just moved in. The bureau top was covered with dust; worn, jumbled neckties; soiled collars; and a few old letters. Her father’s few garments were strewn around the room, and the open closet door revealed some of her mother’s garments, old ones that Cornelia remembered she had had before she herself went to college.

On the unmade bed, close beside the pillow as if it had been cherished for comfort, was one of Mother’s old calico shawls. It was lying where a cheek might conveniently rest against it. Somehow Cornelia didn’t think of that explanation of its presence there at first, but later it grew into her consciousness, and the pathetic side of it filled her with dismay. Was life like this always, or was this a special preparation for her benefit?

Somehow, as she sat there, her position as a selfish, unloving daughter became intolerable. Could it be possible that the children had spoken truly and that the family had been in troubled circumstances for a longer time than just a few weeks, on account of keeping her in college? The color burned in her cheeks, and her eyes grew heavy with shame. How shabby everything looked! She didn’t remember it that way. Her home had always seemed a comfortable one as she looked back upon it. Somehow she could not understand. But the one thought that burned into her soul was that they had somehow felt her lacking, ungrateful.

Suddenly she was stung into action. They should see that she was no selfish, idle member of the family group. At least, she could be as brave as they were. She would go to work and make a difference in things before they came home. She would show them!