CHAPTER VII

PEACE MAYTHORNE'S ROOM

"Tis, too."

"It isn't, either."

"I know just as well as you."

"No you don't any such a thing. You've lived up here in this old country place all your life, and you don't know any more about the fashions than Mrs. Surly."

"But I know it's perfectly ridiculous to rig up in white chenille and silver pins, when anybody's in such deep mourning as you. I wouldn't do it for anything."

"I'll take care of myself, if you please, miss."

"And I know another thing, too."

"You do? A whole thing?"

"Yes, I do. I know you're just as proud as you can be, and I've heard more'n one person say so. All the girls think you're dreadfully stuck up about your dresses and things—so there!"

"I don't care what the girls think, or you either. I guess I'll be glad when father comes home and I get out of this house!"

Joy fastened the gaudy silver pins with a jerk into the heavy white chenille that she was tying about her throat and hair, turned herself about before the glass with a last complacent look, and walked, in her deliberate, cool, provoking way, from the room. Gypsy got up, and—slammed the door on her.

Very dignified proceedings, certainly, for girls twelve and thirteen years old. An unspeakably important matter to quarrel about—a piece of white chenille! Angry people, be it remembered, are not given to over-much dignity, and how many quarrels are of the slightest importance?

Yet the things these two girls found to dispute, and get angry, and get miserable, and make the whole family miserable over, were so ridiculously petty that I hardly expect to be believed in telling of them. The front side of the bed, the upper drawer in the bureau, a hair-ribbon, who should be helped first at the table, who was the best scholar, which was the more stylish color, drab or green, and whether Vermont wasn't a better State than Massachusetts—such matters might very appropriately be the subjects of the dissensions of young ladies in pinafores and pantalettes.

Yet I think you will bear me witness, girls, some of you—ah, I know you by the sudden pink in your cheeks—who have gone to live with a cousin, or had a cousin live with you, or whose mother has adopted an orphan, or taken charge of a missionary's daughter, or in some way or other have been brought for the first time in your life into daily and hourly collision with another young will just as strong and unbending as yours—can't you bear me witness that, in these little contests between Joy and Gypsy, I am telling no "made-up stories," but sad, simple fact?

If you can't, I am very glad of it.

No, as I said before, matters were not going on at all comfortably; and every week seemed to make them worse. Wherein lay the trouble, and how to prevent it, neither of the girls had as yet exerted themselves to think.

A week or two after the adventures that befell that unfortunate kitten, something happened which threatened to make the breach between Gypsy and Joy of a very serious nature. It began, as a great many other serious things begin, in a very small and rather funny affair.

Mrs. Surly, who has been spoken of as Gypsy's particular aversion, was a queer old lady with green glasses, who lived opposite Mr. Breynton's, who felt herself particularly responsible for Gypsy's training, and gave her good advice, double measure, pressed down and running over. One morning it chanced that Gypsy was playing "stick-knife" with Tom out in the front yard, and that Mrs. Surly beheld her from her parlor window, and that Mrs. Surly was shocked. She threw up her window and called in an awful voice —

"Jemima Breynton!"

Now you might about as well challenge Gypsy to a duel as call her Jemima; so—

"What do you want?" she said, none too respectfully.

"I have something to say to you, Jemima Breynton."

"Say ahead," said Gypsy, under her breath, and did not stir an inch. Distance certainly lent enchantment to the view when Mrs. Surly was in the case.

" Does your ma allow you to be so bold as to play boys' games with boys, right out in sight of folks?" vociferated Mrs. Surly.

"Certainly," nodded Gypsy. "It's your turn, Tom."

"Well, it's my opinion, Gypsy Breynton, you're a romp. You're nothing but a romp, and if I was your ma——"

Tom dropped his knife just then, stood up and looked at Mrs. Surly. For reasons best known to herself, Mrs. Surly shut the window and contented herself with glaring through the glass.

Now, Joy had stood in the doorway and been witness to the scene, and moreover, having been reproved by her aunt for something or other that morning, she felt ill-humored, and very ready to find fault in her turn.

"I think it's just so, anyway," she said. " I wouldn't be seen playing stick-knife for a good deal."

"And I wouldn't be seen telling lies!" retorted Gypsy, sorry for it the minute she had said it. Then there followed a highly interesting dialogue of about five minutes' length, and of such a character that Tom speedily took his departure.

Now it came about that Gypsy, as usual, was the first ready to "make up," and she turned over plan after plan in her mind, to find something pleasant she could do for Joy. At last, as the greatest treat she could think of to offer her, she said:

"I'll tell you what! Let's go down to Peace Maythorne's. I do believe I haven't taken you there since you've been in Yorkbury."

"Who's Peace Maythorne?" asked Joy, sulkily.

"Well, she's the person I love just about best of anybody."

"Best of anybody!"

"Oh, mother, of course, and Tom, and Winnie, and father, and all those. Relations don't count. But I do love her as well as anybody but mother—and Tom, and—well, anyway, I love her dreadfully."

"What is she, a woman, or a girl, or what?"

"She's an angel," said Gypsy.

"What a goose you are!"

"Very likely; but whether I'm a goose or not, she's an angel. I look for the wings every time I see her. She has the sweetest little way of keeping 'em folded up, and you're always on the jump, thinking you see 'em."

"How you talk! I've a good mind to go and see her."

"All right."

So away they went, as pleasant as a summer's day, merrily chatting.

"But I don't think angels are very nice, generally," said Joy, doubtingly. "They preach. Does Peace Maythorne preach? I shan't like her if she does."

"Peace preach! Not like her! You'd better know what you're talking about, if you're going to talk," said Gypsy, with heightened color.

"Dear me, you take a body's head off. Well, if she should preach, I shall come right home."

They had come now to the village, where were the stores and the post-office, the bank, and some handsome dwelling-houses. Also the one paved sidewalk of Yorkbury, whereon the young people did their promenading after school in the afternoon. Joy always fancied coming here, gay in her white chenille and white ribbons, and dainty parasol lined with white silk. There is nothing so showy as showy mourning, and Joy made the most of it.

"Why, where are you going?" she exclaimed at last. Gypsy had turned away from the fashionable street, and the handsome houses, and the paved sidewalk.

"To Peace Maythorne's."

" This way?"

"This way."

The street into which Gypsy had turned was narrow and not over clean; the houses unpainted and low. As they walked on it grew narrower and dirtier, and the houses became tenement houses only.

"Do, for pity's sake, hurry and get out of here," said Joy, daintily holding up her dress. Gypsy walked on and said nothing. Red-faced women in ragged dresses began to cluster on the steps; muddy-faced children screamed and quarreled in the road. At the door of a large tenement building, somewhat neater than the rest, but miserable enough, Gypsy stopped.

"What are you stopping for?" said Joy.

"This is where she lives."

"Here?"

"I just guess she does," put in a voice from behind; it was Winnie, who had followed them on tiptoe, unknown to them, all the way. "She's got a funny quirk in her back, 'n' she lies down pretty much. That's her room up there to the top of the house. It's a real nice place, I tell you . They have onions mos' every day. Besides, I saw a little boy here one time when I was comin' 'long with mother, 'n' he was smokin' some tobaccer. He said he'd give it to me for two napples, and mother just wouldn't let me."

" Here —a cripple!" exclaimed Joy.

"Here, and a cripple," said Gypsy, in a queer tone, looking very straight at Joy.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" broke out Joy, "playing such a trick on me. Do you suppose I'm going into such a place as this, to see an old beggar—a hunch-backed beggar?"

Gypsy turned perfectly white. When she was very angry, too angry to speak, she always turned white. It was some seconds before she could find her voice.

" A hunch-backed beggar! Peace? How dare you say such things of Peace Maythorne? Joy Breynton, I'll never forgive you for this as long as I live—never!"

The two girls looked at each other. Just at that moment I am afraid there was something in their hearts answering to that forbidden word, that terrible word—hate. Ah, we feel so safe from it in our gentle, happy, untempted lives, just as safe as they felt once. Remember this, girls: when Love goes out , Hate comes in. In your heart there stands an angel, watching, silent, on whose lips are kindly words, in whose hands are patient, kindly deeds, whose eyes see "good in everything," something to love where love is hardest, some generous, gentle way to show that love when ways seem closed. In your heart, too, away down in its darkest corner, all forgotten, perhaps, by you, crouches something with face too black to look upon, something that likewise watches and waits with horrible patience, if perhaps the angel, with folded wing and drooping head, may be driven out. It is never empty, this curious, fickle heart. One or the other must stand there, king of it. One or the other—and in the twinkling of an eye the change is made, from angel to fiend, from fiend to angel; just which you choose.

Joy broke away from her cousin in a passion. Gypsy flew into the door of the miserable house, up the stairs two steps at a time, to the door of a low room in the second story, and rushed in without knocking.

"Oh, Peace Maythorne!"

The cripple lying on the bed turned her pale face to the door, her large, quiet eyes blue with wonder.

"Why, Gypsy! What is the matter?"

Gypsy's face was white still, very white. She shut the door loudly, and sat down on the bed with a jar that shook it all over. A faint expression of pain crossed the face of Peace.

"Oh, I didn't mean to—it was cruel in me! How could I? Have I hurt you very badly, Peace?" Gypsy slipped down upon the floor, the color coming into her face now, from shame and sorrow. Peace gently motioned her back to her place upon the bed, smiling.

"Oh, no. It was nothing. Sit up here; I like to have you. Now, what is it, Gypsy?"

The tone of this "What is it, Gypsy?" told a great deal. It told that it was no new thing for Gypsy to come there just so, with her troubles and her joys, her sins and her well-doings, her plans and hopes and fears, all the little stories of the fresh, young life from which the cripple was forever shut out. It told, too, what Gypsy found in this quiet room, and took away from it—all the help and the comfort, and the sweet, sad lessons. It told, besides, much of what Peace and Gypsy were to each other, that only they two should ever exactly understand. It was a tone that always softened Gypsy, in her gayest frolics, in her wildest moods. For the first time since she had known Peace, it failed to soften her now.

She began in her impetuous way, her face angry and flushed, her voice trembling yet: —

"I can't tell you what it is, and that's the thing of it! It's about that horrid old Joy."

"Gypsy!"

"I can't help it—I hate her!"

"Gypsy."

Gypsy's eyes fell at the gentle word.

"Well, I felt just as if I did, down there on the steps, anyway. You don't know what Joy said. It's something about you, and that's what makes me so mad. If she ever says it again!"

"About me?" interrupted Peace.

"Yes," said Gypsy, with great, flashing eyes. "I wouldn't tell it to you for all the world; it's so bad as that, Peace. How she dared to call you a beg——"

Gypsy stopped short. But she had let the cat out of the bag. Peace smiled again.

"A beggar! Well, it doesn't hurt me any, does it? Joy has never seen me, doesn't know me, you must remember, Gypsy. Besides, nobody else thinks as much of me as you do."

"I didn't mean to say that; I'm always saying the wrong thing! Anyway, that isn't all of it, and I did think I should strike her when she said it. I can't bear Joy. You don't know what she is, Peace. She grows worse and worse. She does things I wouldn't do for anything, and I wish she'd never come here!"

"Is Joy always wrong?" asked Peace, gently. Peace rarely gave to any one as much of a reproof as that. Gypsy felt it.

"No," said she, honestly, "she isn't. I'm real horrid and wicked, and do ugly things. But I can't help it; Joy makes me—she acts so."

"I know what's the matter with you and Joy, I guess," said Peace.

"The matter? Well, I don't; I wish I did. We're always fight—fighting, day in and day out, and I'm tired to death of it. I'm just crazy for the time for Joy to go home, and I'm dreadfully unhappy having her round, now I am, Peace."

Gypsy drew down her merry, red lips, and looked very serious. To tell the truth, however, do the best she would, she could not look altogether as if her heart were breaking from the amount of "unhappiness" that fell to her lot. A little smile quivered around the lips of Peace.

"Well," said Gypsy, laughing in spite of herself, "I am. I never can make anybody believe it, though. What is the matter with Joy and me? You didn't say."

"You've forgotten something, I think."

"Forgotten something?"

"Yes—something you read me once out of an old Book."

"Book? Oh!" said Gypsy, beginning to understand.

"In honor preferring one another," said Peace, softly. Gypsy did not say anything. Peace took up her Bible that lay on the bed beside her—it always lay on the bed—and turned the leaves, and laid her finger on the verse. Gypsy read it through before she spoke. Then she said slowly:

"Why, Peace Maythorne. I—never could—in this world—never."

Just then there came a knock at the door. Gypsy went to open it, and stood struck dumb for amazement. It was Joy.

"Auntie said it was supper-time, and you were to come home," began Joy, somewhat embarrassed. "She was going to send Winnie, but I thought I'd come."

"Why, I never!" said Gypsy, still standing with the door-knob in her hand.

"Is this your cousin?" spoke up Peace.

"Oh, yes, I forgot. This is Peace Maythorne, Joy."

"I am glad to see you," said Peace in her pleasant way; "won't you come in?"

"Well, perhaps I will, a minute," said Joy, awkwardly, taking a chair by the window, and wondering if Gypsy had told Peace what she said. But Peace was so cordial, her voice so quiet, and her eyes so kind, that she concluded she knew nothing about it, and soon felt quite at her ease. Everybody was at ease with Peace Maythorne.

"How pleasant it is here!" said Joy, looking about the room in unfeigned astonishment. And indeed it was. The furniture was poor enough, but everything was as neat as fresh wax, and the sunlight, that somehow or other always sought that room the earliest, and left it the latest—the warm, shimmering sunlight that Peace so loved—was yellow on the old, faded carpet, on the paperless, pictureless wall, on the bed where the hands of Peace lay, patient and folded.

"It is pleasant," said Peace, heartily. "You don't know how thankful it makes me. Aunt came very near taking a room on the north side. Sometimes I really don't know what I should have done. But then I guess I should have found something else to like."

I should have found something else. A sudden thought came to the two girls then, in a dim, childish way—a thought they could by no means have explained; they wondered if in those few words did not lie the key to Peace Maythorne's beautiful, sorrowful life. They would not have expressed it so, but that was what they meant.

"See here," broke out Gypsy all at once, "Peace Maythorne wants you and me to make up, Joy."

"Your cousin will think I'm interfering with what's none of my business," said Peace, laughing. "I didn't say exactly that, you know; I was only talking to you."

"Oh, I'd just as lief make up now, but I wouldn't this morning," wondering for the second time if Peace could know what she said, and be so gentle and good to her; "I will if Gypsy will."

"And I will if Joy will," said Gypsy, "so it's a bargain."

"Do you have a great deal of pain?" asked Joy, as they rose to go, with real sympathy in her puzzled eyes.

"Oh, yes; but then I get along."

"Peace Maythorne!" put in Gypsy just then, "is that all the dinner you ate?" Gypsy was standing by the table on which was a plate containing a cold potato, a broken piece of bread, and a bit of beefsteak. Evidently from the looks of the food, only a few mouthfuls had been eaten.

"I didn't feel hungry," said Peace, evasively.

"But you like meat, for you told me so."

"I didn't care about this," said Peace, looking somewhat restless.

Gypsy looked at her sharply, then stooped and whispered a few words in her ear.

"No," said Peace, her white cheek flushing crimson. "Oh, no, she never told me not to. She means to be very kind. I cost her a great deal."

"But you know she'd be glad if you didn't eat much, and that was the reason you didn't," exclaimed Gypsy, angrily. "I think it's abominable!"

"Hush! please Gypsy."

Gypsy hushed. Just then the door opened and Miss Jane Maythorne, Peace's aunt, came in. She was a tall, thin, sallow-faced woman, with angular shoulders and a sharp chin. She looked like a New England woman who had worked hard all her life and had much trouble, so much that she thought of little else now but work and trouble; who had a heart somewhere, but was apt to forget all about it except on great occasions.

"I've been talking to Peace about not eating more," said Gypsy, when she had introduced Joy, and said good-afternoon. "She'll die if she doesn't eat more than that," pointing to the plate.

"She can eat all she wants, as far as I know," said Aunt Jane, rather shortly. "Nobody ever told her not to. It's nothing very fine in the way of victuals I can get her, working as I work for two, and most beat out every night. La! Peace, you haven't eaten your meat, have you? Well, I'll warm it over to-morrow, and it'll be as good as new."

"The old dragon!" exclaimed Gypsy, under her breath, as the girls went out. "She is a dragon, nothing more nor less—a dragon that doesn't scold particularly, but a dragon that looks . I'd rather be scolded to death than looked at and looked at every mouthful I eat. I don't wonder Peace doesn't eat. She'll starve to death some day."

"But why don't you send her down things?" asked Joy. Gypsy shook her head.

"You don't understand Peace. She wouldn't like it. Mother does send her a quantity of books and flowers and things, and dinner just as often as she can without making Peace feel badly. But Peace wouldn't like 'em every day."

"She's real different from what I thought," said Joy—"real. What pretty eyes she has. I didn't seem to remember she was poor, a bit."

"What made you come down?"

"'Cause," said Joy.

This excellent reason was all that was ever to be had out of her. But that first time was by no means the last she went to Peace Maythorne's room.

The girls were in good spirits that night, well pleased with each other, themselves, and everybody else, as is usually the case when one is just over a fit of ill-temper. When they were alone in bed, Gypsy told Joy about the verse of which Peace spoke. Joy listened in silence.

Awhile after, Gypsy woke from a dream, and saw a light burning on the table. Joy was sitting up in her white night-dress, turning the leaves of a book as if she were hunting for something.