THE LOST INTERVENTIONS by Elizabeth Glover

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 36.

THE LOST INTERVENTIONS.

By Elizabeth Glover

THE little dinner in the little dining-room was over at last. The maid-of-all-work, who had burned the gravy, and taken up the boiled pudding too soon, had now, with some clatter and stumbling, cleared the room, and arranged it for the evening. The children who had not minded her failures, and were merry and talkative because there was a guest who smiled upon them, had been coaxed and commanded away to bed.

At last little Mrs. Worden was free to sit down by her friend for a confidential talk, and her husband was free to withdraw with his newspaper, not to the library, but to the other side of the table. Mrs. Worden had her work-basket in her hand, but she put it aside as she looked into her friend's face—the heart was in her eyes.

"Oh, Margaret, I am so glad to see you!" she said. "It was so selfish of me to ask you to come now, but I never wanted you so before."

"And I never was so glad to come."

"Do you mean it? I used to take such pleasure in making your vacations pleasant, but everything is so different now. Everything is gone that you used to enjoy; the nice large room I kept for you, and the library, and the pictures, and the carriage, and even the piano."

"But, dear Helen, I didn't come to visit you for those."

"No; but I loved to think you enjoyed them. Now I have brought you to this little stuffy house, with the children all over it. You can hear their noise from morning till night. There is no Elise to keep them in the nursery, or take them off for an airing. They'll torment the life out of you."

"No," said Margaret, "my life never will go that way."

"But everything is so different. You saw Bridget. It's so different keeping house with her from what it used to be with the three nice maids I had. Indeed, I do my best, Margaret, but you saw how it was at dinner. We gave up all our real silver. John would, you know; and we kept only a partly broken set of china. The table does not look as it used to."

"Never mind, dear. Indeed, I don't think of that."

"No," said Mrs. Worden, mournfully. "But I can't even give you much of myself this time. I have to be busy every minute till the children are in bed. I ought to be sewing now. We can't have any more nice talks over books and questions, you know. I hardly know such things exist. My mind is full of nothing but housework and children. I've given up the Literary Club and the Charity Union, and I cannot make calls. Those nice people you used to like to meet I seldom see now. I've just dropped out of their way. I can't give any such nice little reception for you as we had last year."

"I don't want it; you know I don't"

"When I sent for you last week I was feeling as if I could not face New Year's without you. When I think of the change one little year has brought it seems like a nightmare. Everything pleasant went at once. It was hardest to lose our country house. We both loved it; it was so sweet and airy out there, and we had such lovely neighbors. When I looked forward to spending the whole summer in the city with the children it seemed dreadful."

"And has it proved as bad as you feared?"

"Well, no; I've really been so busy I hardly knew how the days passed. And we have been remarkably well, and John has been so thoughtful for me and the children. Poor John! think what a year this has been for him! He was so used to the sense of having a fortune to fall back upon. And now I know it fairly frightens him sometimes to think there is only his slender salary between us and want."

"There is more than that," said Margaret. "There's God's large, kind providence."

"Yes," said Helen, humbly. "I know, but I forget sometimes."

"I want to tell you something," said Margaret. "I mourned over your losses, dear Helen, but since I've been here I haven't been realizing them as you might think, I've been so happy over the gains."

"What gains?"

"Oh, my dear, you have got rid of the interventions!"

"What do you mean by the interventions?"

"Let me try to tell you. Helen, I was a hypocrite often in the days when you were rich, and I visited you. I pretended to be happy, and I did enjoy a great deal that I knew you wanted me to enjoy. But all the while there were such uneasy fears in my heart! Sometimes I thought I would tell you of them; then I blamed myself for a worrying, silly old maid, and was ashamed of them."

"But what was it all about, Margaret?"

"About the interventions; the interventions between you and your children, first of all. The big house with the big rooms seemed one of them. The nursery was so far from your sitting-room. How could you know the children

as you do now they are thrown right about you here? And Elise was another. She marshaled them to airings and meals and bed so irreproachably there seemed hardly a chance for them to get at you. And she was jealous when the baby cried for her 'dear lill mamma,' don't you remember? Mabel fidgeted under her rule, and wanted to play in the veranda near you instead of walking out with the baby-carriage. And when Maurice had those dreadful outbreaks of temper, and none of you knew what to do with him—forgive me, Helen—it seemed to me sometimes just a protest of his nature against uncongenial companionship. Would you or I not be cross, perhaps, if we had to spend six or eight solid hours of the day with people who did not satisfy our hearts and minds at all? And your children have natures like your own, sensitive to society, and minds like yours, bright and demanding."

"Oh, Margaret! why did you not speak of this?"

"I could not. It seemed meddlesome. I was not even sure I was right. But all that is gone now, and I am so glad."

"Maurice," said Mrs. Worden, thoughtfully, "has been the sweetest, best boy this last six months that a mother could ask for."

"And the Literary Club," Margaret resumed, "and the Charity Union, and the calls, and the shopping—yes, and new books, and the 'questions'—I was half jealous of them all the time, though they were so good and pleasant. They did intervene. They kept you hours and hours away from home, or took up so much time when you were there. All that time the children were among servants—your children, that have such active minds. My dear, I know I'm only a foreboding, anxious old maid; but when I read in the paper the stories that shock us so, about girls who have been reared in wealth and position, and elope with their father's servants, I bethink me that there is a simple reason back of every wonder. If a girl through many hours of her early life has found her best comfort and entertainment from some good-natured cook, or coachman, or gardener, why should we think like associations would prove repulsive to her afterward? Don't you remember what a fascination for your Jessie that slim, handsome mulatto, Jim, had?"

"Margaret! oh, Margaret!"

"I know; but I shivered to see her hovering about the butler's pantry whenever she could escape Elise. He had some monkey-tricks and little songs and stories that appealed to her imagination and delighted her. You yourself told me, laughing, how when John was to be away one evening, and Jessie heard you say you would be lonely, she replied, 'Send for Jim, mamma; he's real good company. I love him.'"

"But she was only six years old; a little child!"

"Yes, but it seems to me even a child of six who had always been her mother's companion would have felt relationships better than that."

"Why did you not speak, Margaret?"

"I could not then. I can now. The danger is over now. Helen, be thankful with me that your work is right here at home, where your little girls are, where they may learn to help you in it and be close to you."

Helen drew a long breath, but she did not speak.

"And there are some other suspected interventions that I miss," continued Margaret. "Those two pretty housemaids, with the white caps and the pink cheeks and bright eyes, who swept and dusted and waited so beautifully; and the coachman, with the shining carriage and horses, that came so punctually to your door every morning; they stood between you and your health. I felt almost sure of it. Don't you remember the headache and languor you used to suffer from? And the 'rubbists' that used to visit you, and the doctor's electrical treatment?"

"I couldn't afford them now," said Mrs. Worden. "Such bills would ruin us."

"And now you do not need them. You look so firm and active, and you have such color in your cheeks. Forgive me, dear, but I noticed the mouthfuls you took between spreading the baby's bread and cutting Mabel's meat and helping me, and I saw that you were hungry."

"I hardly have time to know it, but I am really hungry at meal-times. And I have wondered to find how many hours at a time I could be on my feet. Indeed, I am thankful for better health. What should I have done without it?"

"And, my dear, where is John's cigar?"

"Oh, he gave it up. Wasn't it good of him? Right in the midst of the trouble, too. I was frightened to have him do it, and yet I was glad. When I married him I thought I liked the odor of a good cigar; but it was getting to be always in his mouth. I was jealous of it. It seemed to make him indifferent even to me. Yes, I will own that was an intervention between us, Margaret. And, oh! how good and kind he is! If you were not here he would be reading his paper to me, and talking about it, too."

"Then I am an intervention now?"

"No, no; it is far better to talk with you than to hear any newspaper. But indeed, our trouble has brought us nearer to one another. He has been my great, great comfort."

"And you have been his. Dear Helen, I think you have taken it all so nobly!"

The tears came to Helen's eyes, and she wept a little with her head upon her friend's shoulder. Presently she said,—

"We have learned to say: 'Give us this day our daily bread' with some real asking in the prayer."

"There were interventions between you and God swept away in that loss?"

"Yes; we had to come near to him, asking for common things—shelter and work, and strength and sense to know how to live this new life."

"Then if God has put you in better possession of your health, and your children, and your husband, and Himself this year, don't you think we ought to have a growing happy year?"

"Does he always leave the best?" said Helen.

"Always; he only takes what intervenes between us and that."

And there was a very happy New Year's next day, when Mr. and Mrs. Worden, with Maurice, went peacefully to church, and Margaret took Jessie into the kitchen with her and allowed her to help dress the turkey, and make the cranberry sauce, and "snow" the potatoes—yes, and even let her make a lemon pudding with her own hands. Over that pudding was more pride and rejoicing than over the finest "Royal Diplomatique" that ever a French cook manufactured. It is true there were only two courses at that dinner, instead of seven as at last New Year's, and there was no company except Margaret. But there were some flowers, which she had secretly sent Bridget and Mabel and the baby to buy; and there were four good children, who did not come and go with the dessert, but sat all through the dinner like little gentlemen and ladies, and were unspeakably happy playing games afterward.

And when they were in bed their father said, thoughtfully,—

"Helen, I believe there are some ways in which this home is a better one for our children than the old one."

"Please God, we will make it so," said Helen, humbly.—Elizabeth Glover, in Christian Union.