CHAPTER IV.
AN OPEN DOOR.
WELL, surely there was a chance to teach music to private pupils? No,if you will credit it, there was not even such a chance! There was lessreasonable explanation for this closed door than the other. Surely,in the great city, full of would-be musicians, she might have found acorner! Doubtless she would have done so in time, but it amazed her asthe days went by, and one by one the pupils on whom she had countedwith almost certainty were found to have excellent reasons why theyought to remain with their present teacher, or why they ought not totake up music for the present.
In some cases the dilemma was real and the excuse good. In others itwas born simply of fear. Oh, yes, they knew that Miss Benedict was abrilliant player, there was not her equal in the city; and as for hervoice, it was simply superb; but then it did not follow that a finemusician was a fine teacher. She had not been educated for a teacher;that had been the farthest removed from her intention until necessityforced it upon her. It stood to reason that a girl who had been broughtup in luxury, and had cultivated her musical talent as a passion,merely for her own pleasure, should know nothing about the principlesof teaching, and have little patience with the drudgery of it. They hadalways been warned against broken-down ladies as teachers of anything.
There was a great deal of this feeling; and Claire, as she began torealize it more, was kept from bitterness because of the honesty of hernature. She could see that there was truth in these conclusions; andwhile she knew that she could give their children such teaching as theparents might have been glad to get, at any price, she admitted thatthey could not know this as she did, and were not to blame for caution.
She was kept from bitterness by one other experience.
There came to see her one evening, a woman who had done plain sewingfor her in the days gone by; whom she had paid liberally and for whomshe had interested herself to secure better paid labor than she hadfound her doing. This woman, with a certain confused air, as of oneasking a favor, had come to say that she would take it as a greatthing, if her Fanny could get into Miss Benedict's music class.
Miss Benedict explained kindly that she had no music class, but if sheshould form one in the city, it would give her pleasure to count Fannyas one of her pupils, and the mother could pay for it, if she wished,in doing a little sewing for them some time, when they should havesewing again to do. The sentence ended with a sigh. But the caller'sembarrassment increased. She even forgot to thank the lady for hergracious intention, and looked down at her somewhat faded shawl,and twisted the fringe of it, and blushed, and tried to stammer outsomething. Claire began to suspect that this was but a small part ofher errand, and to be roused to sympathy. Was there anything else shecould do for her in any way, she questioned.
No! oh, no! there was nothing, only would she--would it not be possibleto start a class with her Fanny, and let her pay, not in sewing, butin money, and the full value of the lessons, too; and here the womanstopped twisting the fringe of her shawl, and looked up with womanlydignity. She was doing better, she said; a great deal better than whenMiss Benedict first sought her out. Thanks to her, she had plenty ofsewing, as much as she could do, and of a good, paying kind; and shehad thought--and here the shawl fringe was twisted again--that is, shehad supposed or imagined--well, the long and short of it was, sometimesall that things wanted was a beginning, and she thought maybe if MissBenedict could be so kind as to begin with Fanny, others would come in,and a good class get started before she knew it.
There was a suspicious quiver of Claire's chin as she listened to this,but her voice was clear and very gentle as she spoke:
"Tell me frankly, Mrs. Jones, do you think Fanny has a decided talentfor music, which ought to be cultivated? I don't know the child, Ithink. Is she a singer?"
Then Mrs. Jones, all unused to subterfuge, and at home in the realmof frankness, was betrayed at once into admitting that she had neverthought of such a thing as Fanny taking music lessons. No, she didn'tsing: at least, not but very little, and she never said much aboutmusic; what she wanted was to learn to draw, but she, Mrs. Jones, hadthought, as she said--and maybe it was presumption in her to thinkso--that what most things needed was to get started. No sooner didshe get started in another kind of sewing, and among another kindof customers, than work poured in on her faster than she could do,and she thought Fanny would do maybe to start on. Long before theconclusion of this sentence the shawl fringe was suffering again.
Claire rose from her seat, and went over and stood before Mrs. Jones,her voice still clear and controlled:
"I thank you, Mrs. Jones, for your kind thought. So far from beingpresumptuous, it was worthy of your warm heart and unselfish nature.I shall not forget it, and it has done me good. But if I were you, Iwould not have Fanny take music lessons, and I would, if I could, giveher drawing lessons. I remember, now, your telling me that she wasalways marking up her books with little bits of pictures. She probablyhas a good deal of talent in this direction, and not for music; I wouldcultivate her talents in the line in which they lie. Miss Parkhurst hasa drawing-class just commencing. She is not very far from your corner,on Clark street. I hope Fanny can go to her, and if it would be anyconvenience to you to pay the bills in sewing, I am quite certain thatMiss Parkhurst would be glad to do it. She was speaking about somework of the kind only yesterday, and I recommended you to her as onewhom she could trust."
So they dropped once more into their natural characters, Claire thesuggester and helper, and Mrs. Jones the grateful recipient. She wentaway thanked and comforted, and convinced that Fanny ought to have achance at drawing, since Miss Benedict thought she had a talent.
As for Claire, she went back to her mother with two bright spotsglowing on her cheeks, and knelt down beside her chair, and said:
"Mamma, I have just had the most delicate little bit of thoughtfulnessshown me that I ever received from the world outside, and I'll tellyou one thing it has settled; I mean to accept the first opening, fromwhatever source, that will take me away from the city. I am almost surethere is no work for me in this city."
Yet you are not to suppose that the great world of friends who hadbeen glad of their recognition forgot them or ignored them. Much lessare you to suppose that the great church--of which Mr. Benedict wassuch a prominent part that the projected entertainment for which theyoung people had been so nearly ready, missionary though it was, wasindefinitely postponed when he died--forgot them or grew cold. Whateverthe world may do, or whatever solitary individuals in the church may dounder financial ruins, the great heart of the true church beats awayfor its own. And bravely they rallied around the widow, and heartilythey tried to be helpful, and were helpful, indeed, so far as warmwords and earnest efforts were concerned.
But they could not make vacancies for Claire in the line in which hertalents fitted her to work. They could not make a strong woman of themother, able to shoulder burdens such as are always waiting for strongshoulders. They could and would have supported them. For a time, atleast, this would have been done joyfully; they longed to do it. Theyoffered help in all possible delicate ways. The trouble was, thisfamily would have none of it. Grateful?--oh, yes, but persistent ingently declining that which was not an absolute necessity.
In the very nature of things, as the days passed, they would be in asense forgotten. Claire saw this, and the mother saw it. The rooms theyhad taken were very far removed from the old church and the old homeand the old circle of friends. It consumed hours of the day to make thejourney back and forth. Of course, it could not be made often, nor bymany. Of course, the gaps which their changes had made would be filledin time; it was not reasonable to expect otherwise. Nobody expected it,but it was very bitter.
And the very first open door that Claire saw was an opportunityto teach music in a little unpretentious academy, in a littleunpretentious town, away back among the hills, two hundred miles fromthe city that had always been her home.
It took talking--much of it--to reconcile the mother and
sister tothe thought of a separation. Through all their changes this one hadnot been suggested to their minds. They had expected, as a matter ofcourse, to keep together. But necessity is a wonderful logician. Thebank account was alarmingly small, and growing daily smaller. Eventhe unpractical mother and sister could see this. Something must bedone, and here was the open door. Why not enter it at once, insteadof waiting in idleness and suspense through the winter for somethingbetter? Thus argued Claire: "It will not be very easy to leave you,mamma, as you may well imagine," and here the sensitive chin wouldquiver, "but I should feel safe in doing so, for these ugly rooms arereally very conveniently arranged, and Dora would learn to look aftereverything that Molly could not do by giving two days of work in aweek. I have made positive arrangements with her for two days, andshe depends upon it; you must not disappoint her. And, mamma, I havethought of what papa said about us," here the low voice took on a toneof peculiar tenderness, "perhaps Dora will learn self-reliance if sheis left to shield and care for you; it will be a powerful motive. Youknow she leans on me now, naturally."
This was Claire's strongest argument, and, together with the argumentof necessity, prevailed.
Barely four weeks from the "to-morrow" which had contained her lastbright plans, she was installed as music teacher in the plain littleacademy building situated in South Plains.
And now I know that I need not even attempt to describe the sinking ofheart with which she moved down the shabby narrow aisle, and seatedherself in the uncushioned pew of the shabby little church on thatfirst Sabbath morning.
Uncushioned! that was by no means the worst of the pew's failings. Theback was at least four inches lower than it ought to have been, evenfor so slight a form as Claire's, and was finished with a moulding thatprojected enough to form a decided ridge. Of course, for purpose ofsupport, the thing was a failure, and, as to appearance, nothing moreawkward in the line of sittings could be imagined.
Fairly seated in this comfortless spot, the homesick girl looked abouther to take in her dreary surroundings. Bare floors, not over clean,the most offensive looking faded red curtains flapping disconsolatelyagainst the old-fashioned, small-paned soiled windows; a platform,whose attempts at carpeting represented a large-patterned, soiledingrain rag, whose colors, once much too bright for the place, hadfaded into disreputable ghosts of their former selves. The wholeeffect seemed to Claire by far more dreary than the bare floor of theaisles. A plain, square, four-legged table, that had not even beendusted lately, did duty as a pulpit desk, and a plain, wooden-backed,wooden-seated chair stood behind it. These were the sole attemptsat furnishing. The walls of this desolate sanctuary seemed begrimedwith the smoke of ages; they were festooned with cobwebs, thesefurnishing the only attempts at hiding the unsightly cracks. The fewdreary-looking kerosene lamps disposed about the room gave the sameevidence of neglect in their sadly smoked chimneys and general air ofdiscouragement. However, had Claire but known it, she had cause forgratitude over the fact that they were not lighted, for they couldprove their unfitness for the place they occupied in a much moreoffensive way.
Such, then, in brief, was the scene that greeted her sad eyes thatmorning. How utterly homesick and disheartened she was! It was all sodifferent from the surroundings to which she had all her life beenaccustomed! She closed her eyes to hide the rush of tears, and tothink, foolish girl that she was, of that other church miles and milesaway. She could seem to see familiar forms gliding at this moment downthe aisles, whose rich carpets gave back no sound of footfall. Howsoft and clear the colors of that carpet were! A suggestion of thedelicately carpeted woods, and the shimmer of sunlight on a summerday toward the sun setting. She had helped to select that carpetherself, and she knew that she had an artist's eye for colors and forharmony. It was not an extravagantly elegant church--as city churchesrank--that one to which her heart went back, but just one of thoseexquisitely finished buildings where every bit of color and carving anddesign which meet the cultured eye, rests and satisfies. Where the lawof harmony touches the delicately frescoed ceiling, reaches down to theluxuriously upholstered pews, finds its home in the trailing vines ofthe carpet, and breathes out in the roll of the deep-toned organ.
It was in such a church, down such a broad and friendly aisle, thatClaire Benedict had been wont to follow her father and mother onSabbath mornings, keeping step to the melody which seemed to stealof itself from the organ, and fill the lofty room. Can you imaginesomething of the contrast?