THREE SISTERS OF THE WILDERNESS
OLLY'S room was done in soft pinks and lavenders and greens, with a creamy foundation. And this color scheme, developing with luminous unobtrusiveness along walls and curtains, creeping behind the white woodwork, and emerging subdued—the symphony’s andante—from the stained floor and the rugs, made you think of a pastel by some famous artist whose name I can’t remember just now. Yet it had all been accomplished by Molly’s mother, working with the enthusiasm of a bower bird ever since Molly came into the world, to make the world lovely as far as her hands could reach; and her slow, careful toil had brought such comfort, together with such harmony of color and line, to all the rooms of the doctor’s suite, that Molly’s environment wore an air of extreme prosperity and expense which caused Molly’s father to be rated as well to do far beyond the facts.
But the final crown of all the skill of Molly’s mother was the lovely gown that she had just spread out upon bed,—a party gown, a gray wonder with a flush of violet and a tiny flame of green worked in mysteriously. Tonight was Molly’s first great ball. And the gown was done, all done. Molly’s mother looked down at it peacefully, holding her sore left forefinger to her lips; for it was as rough as sandpaper from the embroidery she had just finished. But she smiled and hummed a little tune, one of the lullabys with which she had been used to put Molly to sleep years before; for she knew that, while her work was as good as any other dressmaker’s whose wares would be exhibited at that ball, the girl who was to wear it would beyond doubt be more beautiful than any other there.
They Talked Strangely Among Themselves.
A maid brought in a florist’s box. When Sidney had consulted her about the flowers, she had said that violets would go best with Molly’s eyes. She took off the wrappings and read Sidney’s card thoughtfully; then with an odd flicker of a smile she smelt of it. Disinfectants are terribly penetrating, and if they are in constant use in your daily work you can hardly be expected to keep them out of your merely social affairs: they follow as unhappy memories do or Black Care behind the horseman.
For all odors are the words of a language, and just as violets mean girls like Molly, so the breath of poor Sidney’s card meant the dreadful hospital cleanliness of pain and death. And, more than that, to Molly’s mother it meant a man not young and enthusiastic like Sidney, but an older man, overworked and weary and saddened, with heart a little calloused by the ceaseless tapping upon it of Sorrow’s fingertips,—a soldier who every day, all his life, must go down into the field against the pale horseman, whose sword often and often must be out of its scabbard all night long. Had she not helped him forth when his eyes were set in black disks of fatigue, and his face was as yellow as parchment, and his tongue stumbled as with wine?
But—Molly and Sidney—would it do? When Sidney began to be bowed by the great discouragements of that journey, when he was old before his time, and let his weariness appear at home, and kept his cheer and strength for his sick people abroad—would it do? Could Molly stand it? She looked about at Molly’s lovely room and stroked Molly’s lovely gown. Could Molly do—the sort of things that Molly s mother had done to make home sweet to a mortally tired man?
Molly came in. It was early in spring, and the air was keen and sweet. Her cheeks should have been finely red; but they were pale instead, and the light in her eyes was that of trouble and unrest.
“I’ve been down with the Settlement girls,’ said Molly.
Molly’s mother put Sidney Matthew’s card back among the violets and laid the box in Molly’s lap. Molly took up the card unsmiling.
“Did you see his little verse?” asked Molly’s mother as the girl was replacing the card without looking at its back.
“If a star could be a violet too.
And a violet a star,
I’d know a thing more like your eyes
Than just poor violets are. “
The shadow of a dimple flashed at her mouth corner. “Poor Sid!” said she. “I don’t see how he can spend his time on such nonsense.” She put the box aside indifferently and sat down on the bed without noticing the pale folds of the party gown. Indeed, it was only by quick foresight that her mother rescued a corner of it from being sat upon. She loved every stitch of that gown.
“I’ve been down with the Settlement girls,” said Molly again. “They were telling me—things.’
Molly’s mother sat very still, looking down at her locked hands. For the hands of a gentlewoman they seemed rather work roughened. “What things, Sweetheart?” she said at last, as Molly kept silent, staring with eyes that did not see at the little gray suede slippers that stood beside the long gray gloves on her dressing table.
“Things that I knew only the names of before,—about children in the slums, about little girls who have no care, about poverty and wickedness of all kinds, and what it’s like when people are cold and hungry.’
“Those are very terrible things,” said Molly’s mother.
“They were only words in the dictionary before,” said Molly; “but I know more now of what they mean. I saw some of the people—I rather think I’ll be a trained nurse, and do district work,” said Molly.
“You would feel like that,” said Molly’s mother, “of course.”
“Mother! You know about all the dreadfulness of the world, and yet you go around as jolly as anything, pottering—yes, forgive me. Only after learning what I’ve learned today it seems wicked to have a dear, contented home like ours, to spend time on—on embroidery.”
Molly’s mother touched her roughened finger to her lips as though it hurt.
“Embroidery, and all the little, tiny, everyday things of the house—”
“Does it seem so, Dear?”
“Oh, Mother, there was a girl there who had never had a chance. Miss Wayte was talking to her as I came in. They are going to do something for her; but she must die. Her poor face with the paint upon it, her poor high heeled shoes all run over at the side, her nervous laugh and pathetic slang—and she was younger than I!”
“And what then, my darling?”
“What then? I have seen this poor, wicked, dying thing— Wicked? Who am I to say so, who have been sheltered and petted all my life, while she was caught like a mouse and tortured as a mouse is by a cat? What could she do? And you say ‘What then?’ Why—then —am I to put on my pretty new gown tonight and my new slippers and my gloves and Sid’s violets, and dance? What right has one to be happy in such a world? And there were others. A little, thin, one-legged boy,—oh, such eyes, Mother!—and a poor Italian woman whose husband had been killed,—she had a week-old baby in her shawl,—and others. How can I dance tonight? Shall one dance on graves?”
“If there were no other place to dance,” said Molly’s mother very quietly.
“There is no other place, and one should not dance at all!” said Molly wildly. “Violets, verses to my eyes, and a Mother and Daddy to run my errands and smooth off every rough corner for me—why should I have all these things? I won’t live that way any longer! I must do something!” and she cried very hard with her face in her mother’s lap.
I’LL tell you a story,” said Molly’s mother, “a fairy story. Pretend you’re little again and I’m rocking you to sleep. You were so very little once,—do you remember?—so very little, and now so tall!”
“Once upon a time,” said Molly’s mother, “there were three sisters, Princesses. In fairy stories the three sisters always are Princesses, aren’t they? And they lived in a palace on a Hill just above a Wilderness.
“It was a very dreadful Wilderness—you know Dore’s dismal pictures ? Like that, with quicksands and odors of decay and monsters,—things that were cruel because they liked cruelty, and stupid creatures that knew no better. People lived there too. Many of them did not mind; perhaps some even liked it. But others stayed only because they didn’t know how to get out.
“The people on the Hill used to have their washing done there; in fact, all the rough work of the Hill people was done there as a matter of course.
“‘Civilization,’ the Hill people said, ‘is without doubt the most important thing m the world; but naturally it takes a great deal of work to keep it up properly. That is what these Wilderness people are for. How, for instance, could we dress for dinner if nobody ironed our shirts? We work too; just as hard as they, but in a different way. We work with our heads instead of our hands—at least some of us do. That is—’
“‘How perfectly beautiful the sunsets are over beyond the Wilderness! If it weren’t for the mists, you could see the Delectable Mountains tonight.’
“‘If the swamp were drained, we shouldn’t have these mists and could see the Delectable Mountains every evening.’
"I'm Going Down! I Can't Stand It Any Longer!"
“‘That’s true. ‘Twould almost be worth the price,
