Warner Anne
Sunshine Jane

CHAPTER XIII
EMILY IS HERSELF FREELY

AS Emily turned from Mrs. Ralston's gate, she felt more buoyant happiness than anything in life had ever hitherto brought her. She felt licensed on high authority to revel in the hitherto forbidden. She wanted Lorenzo Rath, and she thought that she understood how to get him. We may follow her thought and then we will follow where it led her, for in all the surge of the new teaching there is no lesson greater to learn than this which Emily had failed to grasp, – that the possession of tools does not make one a carver; that all things spiritual must be learned exactly as all things material. One may have so lived previously that the learning is a mere showing how, but without experience nothing, either spiritual, mental, or physical, can be efficaciously handled. When people declare that something is not true because they tried it and it failed to work, remember Emily Mead. Emily had acquired just one idea out of Jane's exposition: "That you could get anything that you want." It is the idea that hosts of people find most attractive in this world, quite irrespective of its correlative esotericism, – that the soul growing towards infinite power learns every upward step by resolutely liking what it gets. No man can climb a stair by hacking down every step passed; he climbs by being so firm upon each step that he can poise his whole weight thereon as he mounts. It is part of the supremely beautiful logic of the highest teaching that the same effort which Jesus made – every great teacher has made – is sure to make, too. We must see the Divine embodied in the Present and the Weak and the Humble, before in our own spirit we may deal, for the good of all, with the Future and Strength and Power. When one seizes upon anything God-given as a means of acquiring earth-gifts, one has but seized the empty air; the idea and then ideal have never been in the possession of such an one. There is nothing shut away from those who really make God's teaching a vital part of themselves, but such men and women are no longer keen to selfishly possess, and the good which they reach out for flows easily in for their further distribution; in other words, they become what we were all designed to be, – the outward manifestations of God's purpose, the living breathing, blessed servants of His will.

How far this interpretation lay from poor Emily's comprehension the reader knows.

She hurried along, her whole being bounding with joy over the simplicity of the new lesson. It all seemed almost too story-book-like to be happening in her stupid, commonplace life. She had spent so many long hours in thinking over how things would never happen for her, that she had entirely lost faith in their ever changing their ways and now, all of a sudden, here was a complete reversal. Bonds were turned into wings; that unattainable being, a live man, was not only at hand, but available; she felt herself bidden not to doubt her power; she judged herself advised to say frankly all the things that girls may never say. This was the day of feminine freedom. To wish was to have. What one wanted was the thing that was best for one. Emily – with all of Jane's ideas swimming upside down in her head – felt superbly joyous and confident. After all, being alive was a pretty good thing.

She turned a corner into the lane that led in a roundabout way to her mother's back garden gate and walked swiftly. She was a fine, straight girl with a lithe, springy walk. Perhaps Lorenzo Rath could not have done better, from most standpoints, than to marry such an one. Many men do worse. And there was old Mr. Cattermole's money, too. Some of these views float in all human atmosphere to-day – float there securely, because the world is a practical world, and an automobile is obvious, while love and trust are absolutely unknown to many. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon too," and Mammon is very plain and practical, rolling on rubber tires to the best restaurant. Emily could not have reduced her roseate visions to any such sordid reasoning, but love to her meant leaving town and having a good-looking and lively young man to take her about. This was not really love, any more than the means by which she expected to acquire it were the religion taught by Jane. We hear much of the downfall of love and the downfall of religion in these days, but no one even stops to realize that religion and love cannot possibly even shake on their thrones. Their counterfeits may crumble and tumble, but real truth can never fail. It was the counterfeits at which Emily, like many another, grasped eagerly.

So now she was tripping lightly along and, turning the twist by the great chestnut tree, her heart gave a sudden flop, for just ahead she saw her quarry. He was propped against the fence, using his knees for an easel, while he made a rapid water-color sketch. He was good at those little impressions of an artistic bit, that nearly always show forth in youth a great artist struggling to grow.

Emily started, for she was very close to him before she saw him, and her rampant thoughts led her to blush, apologize, and stammer precisely as she might have done, had her sex never advanced at all but merely remained the dominant note that they have always been.

"Why, Mr. Rath," and then she paused.

Lorenzo – who wanted to finish his sketch – nodded pleasantly without looking up. "Grand day for walking," he said, as a supremely polite hint, and continued to work rapidly.

Emily went close beside him and looked downward upon the canvas. "How pretty! I wish I knew more about pictures. What is that brown hill? You can't see a hill from here."

"That's a cow," said Lorenzo, painting very fast indeed, "but don't ask me to explain things, for I can't work and talk at the same time."

Emily sank down beside him with a pleasant sense of proprietorship now that she could get him by will power alone. "I've just come from Mrs. Ralston's. They're in such distress over old Mrs. Croft."

"Is she worse?" The artist forgot to paint all of a sudden, and turned quickly towards her.

"Oh, no, – she was asleep when I left. Jane didn't seem a bit troubled, but Mrs. Ralston is almost wild over not knowing what to say to her sister when she comes back and finds that awful old woman there. It's a terrible situation. Everybody knows that young Mrs. Croft has run away. She just hated to stay and now she's gone. Isn't it awful?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Lorenzo, suddenly regaining his deep interest in work, "I have a distinct feeling that Miss Grey will bring things out all right for most people always. It's her way."

"Yes, she's a dear girl," said Emily, and paused to have time to consider things a little while, feeling that the conversation should be continued by the man. The man didn't continue the conversation, however, merely wielding his brush and looking completely absorbed.

Then she remembered her mission. "Mr. Rath, do you believe in frankness always?"

"I wish that I did."

"But don't you?"

"Civilization wouldn't stand for it."

"Perhaps not every one could bear it, but some could. I could, I'm sure."

"Are you so sure?"

"Yes, I am sure. I was talking with Jane alone just at the gate before I left, and she believes that frankness is best always."

"It's easiest, certainly." Lorenzo raised his eyebrows a little impatiently, but she paid no attention.

"Do you think so?"

"Why, of course. When one wants to be let alone and blurts out, 'Let me alone,' why, one gets let alone."

"Oh, but that would be impolite," said Emily, feeling that for an artist he used very crude metaphor. "Of course, Jane and I were not talking about that kind of people, or that kind of ways. We were talking of people like you and me – nice people, you know. Jane advised me to be quite frank with you."

Lorenzo opened his eyes widely. "About what, please?"

"Oh, about all things. You see I meet so few men, and men are so interesting, and I enjoy talking with them. I've read a good deal, and I don't care for the life in this place. I want to leave it dreadfully."

"So do I," said the artist. "I quite agree with you there."

"You see, Jane has been teaching me to understand life, and I am getting the feeling that I am meant for something else than just helping my mother, wandering about town, and going to church. I'm very tired and restless."

Lorenzo painted fast.

"Mr. Rath, if you – a man – felt as I do, what would you do?"

"Get out."

"But where?"

"Everybody can find a way, if they really want to."

"It isn't as if I had talent, you see."

"A good many people haven't talent and yet do very well, indeed."

"But I don't want to be a shop-girl or anything like that."

"Naturally not."

There was a pause.

"I'm very much interested in the progress women are making," said Emily. "I read all I can get hold of about it. Don't you think it remarkable?"

"I don't think much about it, and I skip everything on the subject."

"Oh, Mr. Rath!"

"I'm a jealous brute. I don't like to realize that a woman can do everything that is a man's work, even to the verge of driving him to starvation, while he can't do any of her work under any circumstances."

"He could wash and cook and sweep."

"Oh, he's invented machines to save her that."

"I see you've no sympathy with the advanced woman."

"Yes, I have. I'm very sorry for her. A nice mess the next generation will be."

"Oh, dear."

"My one comfort is that boys take after their mothers, and I'm looking to see a future generation of men so strong-minded that they smash ladies back to where they belong – in the rear with the tents."

"Goodness, Mr. Rath, then you don't like any of the ways things are going?"

"Of course I don't. Once upon a time a busy man's time was sacred; now any woman who feels like taking it, appropriates it mercilessly."

"I should lock the door, if I felt that way. But now really, don't you think that we might speak quite openly and frankly?"

Lorenzo began to put up his paints.

"I want to get to the bottom of a lot of things."

"Well?"

"You're the first man that I've ever known that I felt could understand what I meant, and I do want to know the man's side of things."

"A man hasn't got any side nowadays. He's not allowed one."

Emily looked a little surprised. "You speak bitterly."

"I think I've a right. Men are still observing the rules of the game and suffering bitter consequences."

"What do you mean?"

"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket money until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you never can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's pay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in business, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay and to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on bread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own home at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes to somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with perhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere."

"Dear me," said Emily, "I never thought of that."

"No," said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, "women don't think of that. But men do."

"But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families."

"Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call 'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!"

Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was not exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.

"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?"

"I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with civilization." He rose to his feet.

"Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise.

"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe this modern institution limping along with its burden of carefully fed and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I were a Zulu."

"Good Heavens!"

"Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now."

"Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet.

"I'd done all that I could under the circumstances."

"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time…" Emily was quite unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what her presence meant to the unhappy artist.

"Come, come," he repeated impatiently.

They walked away then through the pretty winding lane.

"It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless," Emily went on presently. "We are all put here and often see just what should be done and can't do it possibly."

"I do exactly what I choose," said Lorenzo, – then he added: "as a usual thing."

"You must be very happy." She paused. "I suppose that you have plenty of money to live as you please."

"I'm fortunate enough not to have any."

"Goodness!" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was dreadful. "Why do you call that fortunate?" she asked, after a little hasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, spaced off by going to the theater.

"Because it makes me know that I shall do something in the world. A very little money is enough to swamp a man nowadays, when the idea of later being supported by a woman is always a possibility. Oh," said Lorenzo, with sudden irritation, "if there weren't so many perfectly splendid women and girls in the world, I'd go off and become a Trappist. Everything's being knocked into a cocked hat. I've had girls practically make love to me. Disgusting."

Emily felt her heart hammer hard. "You're very old-fashioned in your views," she said, a little faintly.

They came out by her mother's back gate as she spoke.

"Yes, I am," said Lorenzo, "I admit it."

Mrs. Mead came running out of the back door. "Oh, Emily," she cried, "old Mrs. Croft is dead. Jane sent for the doctor – she sent a boy running – but she's dead. Wherever have you been for so long?"

CHAPTER XIV
JANE'S CONVERTS

THE feelings which revolved around the dead body of old Mrs. Croft can be better imagined than described; everybody had wondered as to every contingency except this. In the midst of the confusion Jane moved quietly, a little white and with lips truly saddened. "And I meant to do such a lot for her, – I meant to help her so much," she murmured from time to time.

The doctor, a ponderous gentleman of great weight in all ways, was very grave. The doctor said that he had warned the daughter of such a possible ending twenty years before. "Heart failure was always imminent," he declared severely, looking upon Jane, Susan, and Mrs. Cowmull, who had driven out with him and thus become instantly a privileged person. "She never ought to have been left alone a minute during these last forty years. Even if she had lived to be a hundred, the danger was always there. Such neglect is awful." He stopped and shook his head vigorously. "Awful," he declared again with emphasis, "awful!"

"I didn't know that she had heart disease," said Jane.

"No blame attaches to you," said the doctor, veering suddenly about as to the point in discussion; "nobody can blame you. I shall exonerate you completely. Of course, if you were not aware of the state of the case, you couldn't be expected to consider its vital necessities."

"Oh, and it was so vital," sobbed Mrs. Cowmull. "Dear, sweet, old Mrs. Croft. Our sunbeam. And to go off like that. What good is life when people can die any minute. Oh! Oh!"

There was a brief pause for silent sorrow.

"I never looked for her to die," Mrs. Cowmull went on, shaking her head. "I always told Emily she'd outlive even Brother Cattermole. So many people will, you know. Dear, kind, loving friend! And now to think she's gone. I can't make it seem true. She's been alive so long. Seems only yesterday that I was up to see Katie about making a pie for the social, and our dear, sweet friend was singing her favorite song, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, all the time. What spirits she did have everywhere, except in her legs."

Susan sat perfectly quiet. The doctor took Jane's arm and led her into the hall, there to speak of the first few necessary steps to be taken. Then he returned to the sitting-room, gathered up Mrs. Cowmull and departed, saying that he would send "some practical person at once." Mrs. Cowmull, who was widely known as having practical designs on him, did not resent the implied slur at her own abilities at all.

After they were gone, there was a slight further pause, and then Susan rose slowly and went and laid her hands upon her niece's shoulders. "Oh, Jane, that religion of yours is a wonderful thing. I'm converted."

Jane started. "Converted, Auntie?"

"Yes. You were sure that it would come out all right and now see."

Then a little white smile had to cross the young girl's face. "The poor old woman," she said gently, "to think of her lying there all alone all that day. I thought that she was sleeping so quietly."

"Well, she was," said Susan.

"Yes, of course she was. It's just our little petty way of thinking that masks all of what is truly sacred and splendid behind a veil of wrong thinking. Of course she was sleeping quietly."

"It'll be sort of awful if they can't find Katie, though," Susan said next; "she left no address, and I think it's almost silly to try to hunt her up. I'm only too pleased to pay for the funeral, I'm sure, and there won't be any real reason for her returning."

"No," said Jane thoughtfully.

"And I really can look forward to Matilda's coming back now," pursued Susan. "I shan't mind a bit. Old Mrs. Croft has done that much good, anyway, – she's made me feel that Matilda's coming back is just nothing at all. You see you knew that everything was coming out all right, but I'd never had any experience with that kind of doings up till now, and it was all new to me. I was only thinking of when you and me would have to face Matilda. Matilda would have looked pretty queer if she'd come home to old Mrs. Croft to tend, and me up and lively."

Jane didn't seem to hear. "I never once thought of her dying," she said again; "oh, dear, she had so much to learn. I expected to do her such a lot of good."

"I wouldn't complain, Jane. I wouldn't find fault with a thing. Goodness, think if she'd begun singing Captain Jinks last night. I've heard that sometimes she'd sing it six hours at a stretch."

Jane shook her head. "Who is to go down and pack up that house?" she wondered.

"Oh, the house can be rented furnished. It's a nice home for anybody," said Susan, "and the rent'll buy her a lovely monument."

The funeral was fixed for the third day, and some effort made to trace the daughter-in-law. But that lady evidently didn't care to be found.

"It's hardly any use going to a great deal of expense to hunt her up," Lorenzo said to Jane, "because the house is all there is, and a thorough search with detectives would just about eat it up alive."

He probably was not wholly disinterested in his outlook, for the next bit of news that shook the community was that Lorenzo Rath had taken Mrs. Croft's house and moved in! Naturally Mrs. Cowmull was far from pleased. "Of course it means he's going to get married," she said to Miss Vane, "but what folly to take a house so soon. Who's to cook for him? And who's he going to marry? Not Emily, I know. She wouldn't have him."

Miss Vane didn't know and didn't care. "Not my Madeleine," she said promptly, for her part; "she gets a letter every day. She'll marry that man."

"Then it's Jane Grey," said Mrs. Cowmull. The town was greatly exercised, and not as positive as to Emily's state of mind as her aunt.

"It'll be one of those two," Mrs. Ball said to Miss Crining (both very superior women and much given to meeting at the grocery store). "They're both after him. Emily chases him wherever he's posing woods and cows, and the little appetite that Mrs. Cowmull says he has, after going to Mrs. Ralston's, shows what they're thinking of."

Miss Crining shook her head. "Once on a time girls were so sweet and womanly," she said.

"My," said Mrs. Ball, "I remember when my husband asked me. I almost fell flat. I'd never so much as thought of him. I was engaged to a boy named Richie Kendall, and Mr. Ball was bald, and had all those children older than I was. There was some romance about life then."

"And me," said Miss Crining, with a gentle sigh, "I never told a soul I was in love till months after he was drowned. I didn't know I was in love myself. Girls used to be like that, modest, timid."

"Mr. Rath's very severe on girls nowadays, Mrs. Cowmull says," said Mrs. Ball; "but he's blind like all men are and will get hooked when he ain't looking, like they all do."

But Lorenzo Rath didn't care about any of the gossip; he was so happy over his home. "I'll have a woman come and cook occasionally," he explained blithely to Jane and Susan, "and I'll get all my illustrating off my hands in short order."

"Do you illustrate?" Jane asked.

"Yes, that's my bread-and-butter job."

"It'll be nice to have you in the neighborhood," said Susan placidly; "to think how it's all come about, too. I'm in heaven, no matter what I'm doing. I just sit about and pray to understand more of Jane's religion. I'm gasping it down in big swallows. I think it's so beautiful how she does right, without having to take the consequences."

Jane laughed a little at that and went out to get supper.

"She's a nice girl," Lorenzo said, looking after her; "when she leaves here, what shall we do?"

"Oh, heavens, I don't know," said Susan. "I try never to think of it."

"And what is she going to do?"

"Oh, she's going back to her nursing, and I want to cry when I think that other people will have her around and I shan't. I'll be here alone with Matilda. Not but what I'm a good deal more reconciled than I was, when I thought I'd be alone with Matilda and old Mrs. Croft, too."

"Yes, that would have been bad," said Lorenzo soberly. "Well, I must be running along. I've got a lot of work to do and a lot of thinking, too."

Susan contemplated him earnestly. "Well," she said, with fervor, "when Jane goes, I'll still have you, anyway."

Lorenzo, who had just risen, stopped short at that. "Do you know an idea that I'm just beginning to hold?" he asked suddenly.

"No; how should I?"

"It's this. Why shouldn't you and I try working Jane's Rule of Life a little? I'm dreadfully impressed with a lot she says. Suppose you and I pulled together and made up our minds that she was going to stay here in some perfectly right and pleasant and proper way. How, then? Don't you believe maybe we could manage it?"

Susan stared. "But there couldn't be any perfectly right, pleasant, proper way," she said sadly, "because she wants to go."

"I'd like to try."

The aunt shook her head, sighing heavily. "It's no use. There isn't a way. Nothing could keep her. You see, she's got some family debts to pay, and she can't rest till she's paid 'em. I've begged and prayed her to stay; I've told her that her own flesh and blood has first claim, but she won't hear to any kind of sense."

"I wish that we might try," Lorenzo insisted. "I've listened to her till I just about believe she really does know what she's talking about. It seems as if it's all so logical and after all, it's the way God made the world, surely."

"Yes, I know, but you and I ain't equal to making worlds and won't be yet awhile."

"I don't care," said the young man, turning towards the door, "I'm going at it alone, then. I don't believe that any one in the world needs her as much as I do, and I'm going to have her, and that by her own methods, too."

Susan's mouth opened in widest amazement. "Mercy on us, you ain't proposing to her by way of me, are you? You don't mean that you really do want to marry her, do you?"

"No, I don't mean that I want to marry her. I mean that I'm going to marry her."

"Oh! Oh!" the aunt cried faintly. "Oh, goodness me! But I don't know why I'm surprised, for I said you was in love with her right from the start. I couldn't see how you could help but be."

"Of course I couldn't help but be. Who could? She's one of the few real girls that are left in the world these days. The regular girls with lectures and diplomas and stiff collars have spoiled the sweetest things God ever made. Men don't thank Heaven for any of these late innovations wrought in womankind."

"Oh, I know," said Susan; "my husband was old-fashioned, too. I" – she stopped short, because just then the door opened, and Jane came in.