Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
But David was in no wise offended. He was pleased at the idea of pleasing his sister. He knew their things were old and ugly and that probably if she had lived at home they would have been different; but Aunt Nancy's taste had been severely plain and they and their father had never thought, if they had known how, to get better. It did not matter anyway for just men, he said a little sadly and added: "But if you will stay and brighten up this old place for us—if you think you can stand it here and not get lonesome—why we'll do everything we can to make it pleasant for you. Joe is a little backward and he'll hold off for a few days, but he'll be acquainted with you in a little while, I guess, and then he won't seem quite so shy and sullen. He's not much but a boy anyway, you know, and he's always been inclined to be stubborn and have a way of his own. Maybe you can help make him different. I think father always had some idea of giving him a better education than could be got here, but things didn't go so well on the farm the last few years before he died and he couldn't. There was an old mortgage to pay off that kept him down all his life. But Joe and I paid the last cent on that two months ago, and I guess we can afford to paint the house and fix up a bit if you can stay with us. Things need to be different for a woman. Do you think you can stand it?" he asked wistfully.
“Of course I can,” she answered, brushing away happy tears that his words had brought to her eyes. “David, I came here to find my brothers. I don't care about things. But I should like to bring the furniture here, for I think I could make it cozier for you and Joseph, and so if you are sure you don't mind I'll send for them to-day. But see here, David. I have not come here to be a burden on you. I am not penniless. I'm to bear my full share of everything if! stay.” It was then that David sat down upon the stairs beside his sister, and they had a talk that was more like what a talk between brother and sister should be than Ruth had been able to hope for. She went back to her dinner getting and David to his farm-work, with happy, light hearts. Ruth sang about her work:
“Wherever he may guide me,
No want shall turn me back,
My Shepherd is beside me,
And nothing shall I lack.
His wisdom ever waketh,
His sight is never dim,
He knows the way he taketh
And I will walk with him.”
RUTH stood in the doorway of her brother Joseph's room. She was trying to plan what changes she would make, and what articles from the city home should be put into it. She felt like a fairy about to wave her wand and bring beauty over everything, and she was as excited and happy over it all as a child with a new toy. The bare room had given her a heartache. That any human being should have so dreary a place for the only spot which he could call his own seemed very pitiful to her brought up amid a wealth of beauty. She would delight to make it all different. Joseph had been told that his sister was to bring her furniture to the home, but he had not seemed to manifest much interest in it. He was still very reticent with his sister, to say the least. Indeed, he sometimes seemed harder to win than ever. Ruth could not understand it. She wondered about it now, as she stood in the door of the desolate room and planned how she would change it. Perhaps David might have explained his brother's actions if he had thought about them at all. In a measure, Ruth herself had had a hand in bringing about a dogged determination to have nothing whatever to do with her more than was absolutely necessary. It had happened in this wise.
During the frank, free talk which Ruth had held with her brother David, after the arrival of that letter about her house and furniture, the brother and sister had opened their hearts to one another in a way that each would have thought impossible an hour before. Ruth, as the talk concluded, made up her mind that she would find out the truth about that horrid pipe.
“David,” said she at last, lifting her clear, sweet eyes to his face, “I found something when I was clearing up that troubled me very much. I was so afraid it belonged to some member of my family. I do hope it doesn't. Do tell me it was the property of some hired man. I can't bear to think either of my brothers uses it. Wait! I'll get it,” and she slipped out to the back kitchen where she had deposited her paper, and brought it with very gingerly fingers.
David took it anxiously and opened the paper. Then the rich red blood rolled from neck to forehead. He was ashamed before this sweet sister. Never before had the old black pipe seemed obnoxious. He had always looked upon it as a friend in his loneliness, a thing as pleasant as anything which came into his life. But suddenly, without ever having heard an argument against smoking, without even reasoning on the subject, he seemed to see this little bit of filthy clay through the eyes of the young girl who stood beside him, and he felt a disgust for it and for himself that he had ever had to do with it. David's was a fine nature. It is not many men who would have felt this instinctively; others might have come to the point through reason or conscience or reverence for another's protest persistently made. This man saw in a flash, by the revelation of the curl of disgust in the delicate lips, and the eager pleading in the earnest eyes of his sister, how a more refined being such as she was might look upon this subject, and before his reason grasped it he had surrendered to what seemed grandest, noblest, and best in life to do. He might have a struggle with himself afterward to carry out his purpose—doubtless would—but certain it was, he would never willingly smoke again. He an-swered very little. His downcast eyes convicted him. He folded the paper together with a hasty movement.
“I am sorry about it. This shall not trouble you any more,” he said, and strode away to the barnyard; but the look he gave his sister as he said those words made her feel glad and proud of her brother, though she could not explain why.
But this was not the end. When Joseph came home that night his elder brother was on the watch for him and called him to the shelter of the barnyard. Now David was not so wise in his dealings with the brother but four years younger than himself as he might have been. Perhaps it was because he felt the load of anxiety so heavy upon him as he remembered his dying father's request: “David, you look after Joseph. He's not so steady as you, you know. Don't you let him get astray.” And David had tried to carry out his father's request; but Joseph bitterly resented being interfered with, and it was not always easy to keep him in the straight path.
“Joe,” said David severely, as they came in the shadow of the great barn, “don't you go to smoking around the house any more. She don't like it. She'd be perfectly horrified if she saw you with a pipe in your mouth, and if you dare so much as bring out a pipe to light it around where she is you'll be sorry, that's all. You had better give it up. She'll be sure to smell it on your clothes, and I know by the way she looked when she brought mine to me that she hates it. She'll never think anything of you if she finds out you smoke.”
David wanted to make his speech very intense, and so he had gone on saying the most unwise things that could be thought of. By the time he had come to this climax his younger brother was exceedingly angry.
“She needn't trouble herself,” he replied angrily. “The less she thinks of me the better I am pleased. If you think I am going to give up my rights in my own house, you are mistaken. I'll smoke as much as I please, and light my pipe in the kitchen if I choose. You've sat in that kitchen and smoked whole evenings yourself. You needn't be so holy all of a sudden. It is just as I expected. The minute you get a woman in the house everything has got to be turned upside down to suit her. If you're going in for that sort of thing I'll clear out. There's places enough I can smoke, if the house gets too hot for me.” Here his brows were drawn in an ugly, threatening scowl. “And as for my part, I shall do all in my power to make it uncomfortable for her, for the sooner she gets out of this and back to her city home the better I shall like it.”
With this parting hit he had betaken himself to the house where he had eaten his supper in silence and then departed to the village grocery. He meant to carry out his intention of smoking in the kitchen if he chose, but he preferred to think it over in the pleasant jovial atmosphere of the village grocery before he decided what line of action he would pursue. The supper had certainly been a good one and he had been hungry after the long day's work. Neither had he quite the face to carry out his threat that night; the new sister was so bright and smiling and ready to do anything or get anything for him. There came too an almost irresistible longing to give up and be a part of all this coziness which had come to the old farmhouse, only he was too stubborn to relent. At the grocery he was accosted by various welcomes born of curiosity. “Hello, Joe,” said some of his intimate friends who helped him to smoke the evening away. “Got company at your house, ain't you?” and in the question many things were expressed: curiosity, a decided wish to know how the land lay, eagerness for a bit of gossip and willingness to join in laugh or ridicule of the new guest if that was the mind of the brother. But Joseph did not give them much satisfaction.
He did not quite understand himself and so was not ready with his usual caustic sarcasms at the expense of anybody for them to laugh at. He said “Yes!” short and sharp and the company of loafers, young and old, understood that the door to that conversation had been shut; nay, rather, slammed and decidedly locked in their faces for the evening. They set to work to study Joseph in their dull way to find out what mystery of like or dislike there might be behind his manner, but could not determine. He was silent for the most part, unless there was opportunity to turn a joke against one of them and then his words were sharper than usual, fairly making some of his victims writhe.
He had come as yet to no conclusion except that he would do as he pleased; but the days went by, two or three of them, and he still continued to work in that far-away wood lot. He smoked a good deal during his lonely morning and on his homeward road, taking a fierce delight in thus defying his brother's urgent advice, but as yet he had not attempted to bring out pipe or match in the presence of his sister. If it were necessary in order to defy David he would have done it, but unless provocation should arise he would hardly have the face to do it. Nevertheless, he came to the table with the strong odor of tobacco about him and Ruth understood that her younger brother smoked, and thought and pondered how she might win his love that perchance she might get him to give up this habit some day.
And she stood in the desolate room. It was large and square and bare. To one not used to beautifying empty places it would have seemed a hopeless task to make it other than it was, but Ruth enjoyed the thought of what a change she would make. She puzzled her brows at first over what should go into it. There were rooms of various coloring in the city home. They had all been thought out with the exquisite taste that belongs to refinement and carried out as only those who have a well-filled purse can do. Perhaps just as beautiful effects might have been reached by a much less expenditure of money, but in this case there had been money and everything had been good, enduring, and beautiful. There was a room in sunset tints of rose and mauve and cream, whose carpet of soft coffee and cream color was scattered over here and there with tiny rose-pink buds and leaves. The furniture was curly maple and all the dainty accompaniments were pink and white. Ruth tried to imagine these things occupying the empty desolateness before her, but Joseph with his heavy muddy boots did not seem to fit into the delicate colorings. It might seem too fancy for him. She must choose something quieter. David said he was working in the woods; then maybe the woodland colors would seem more homelike to him. She did not want to startle him with a vivid contrast between his present room and the one she meant to make; no, only to soften and sweeten and brighten everything and make it a real home and not a mere spot in which to stay a few hours. She would choose the fern and moss carpet with all the wood tints blending and a hint of summer sunshine through the green. He would feel more at home with the woods about him. Then the windows should be draped in soft sheer white muslin, fastened back with green, and there should be ferns growing in a pretty green and brown jar. In that corner where the clothespress made a deep nook in the wall she would put the low bookcase that turned a corner and had the queer little niches for favorite books hidden behind the green curtains that had faint shadows of ferns in the pattern of their silk. She would be careful not to put too many fancy things on the bureau, and the pin-cushion should be severely plain and useful looking, and not the much be-ribboned and be-laced affair that belonged to the original room in the city.
She went on planning, seeing everything take its place in the room. She even chose, with great care, a few choice books and a picture or two which she thought would interest him. There must not be too many chairs, else he would feel the room too full if he was used to this bareness, and the main object in it all was to give him a spot in which he should delight. Would he, could he, appreciate it all? The tears almost dimmed her eyes at the thought that she might fail, and she knelt beside the one wooden chair the room contained and asked the Holy Spirit to guide her in her selection and furnishing of this room. What! ask the Holy Spirit of God to stoop to the selection of a chair or picture, to trouble himself with the texture of a carpet or the pattern of a curtain? And yet these things have more to do than we think with the influencing of human lives. People who live in a house made beautiful by refinement and taste, even though they may not have much money with which to carry out their pleasure in such taste, are nevertheless more able to appreciate beautiful words and high thoughts and holy living, than those who live where harmony is not and where colors and shapes are forever at variance. There is an education and an uplifting in beautiful things and in quiet, peaceful, restful surroundings, which does not count for naught, else God would not have made the world so beautiful. Ruth, as she rose from her knees, began to think she would have to pray in every room in that house before anything could ever be done with it. And then she brushed away a tear that would come from the longing for the dear ones gone, and a weariness of fear and hope in the life that was before her. Would she ever win this brother for Christ? For neither he nor David was a Christian, she was now certain. She felt alone in a strange and alien land. David was growing dear to her. Perhaps this work she was undertaking was too great for her, an unskilled girl. She might do more harm than good. Perhaps she had been audacious to attempt it. Should she leave it all and go back where people knew and loved her, and she could work, and not feel afraid of defeat?
These thoughts would come to her almost hourly, when she had met some new obstacle in her task. But indeed, there was so much to be done during the days that she had little time to reflect, and it was only at night in the stillness of the ungarnished chamber that she could ask herself these questions. It was always her Bible then that brought her some answer. Now it would be, “Fear thou not for lam with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee by the right hand of my righteousness.” Again, she would turn to this verse, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” “And when He has said that to me, why should I not ask him to help me select the right carpet for Joseph's room?” she asked herself.