Recompense | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1882

Recompense.

“A LETTER from George,” exclaimed sister Kate, coming up from the post-office, and holding up for our inspection a large yellow envelope. “And addressed to mother. Isn’t it funny?”

“To me!” exclaimed the mother in turn, laying down the blue sock she was mending, and smoothing her apron as though she was going to take the baby. “Dear me!”

“Why, how queer!” said Hattie, dropping her book and looking at Kate, wonderinglly. “George hasn’t written to any of us in an age, and never to ma. What secret’s brewing now, I wonder?”

“Maybe he and Millie are coming home on a visit,” said I.

“Not so early in the spring as this,” returned Hattie, sagely; “Millie and the house-cleaning can’t be separated.”

At this moment mother, who had succeeded in tearing off the envelope with eager, trembling fingers, and had commenced reading the letter, suddenly twisted her chair around so as to turn her face from us, cleared her throat, and wiped her eyes on a corner of her gingham apron.

“Anything the matter, mother?” questioned Kate, anxiously, while Hattie and I sat in wondering silence.

There was no answer for a moment, then turning toward us, she held out the letter, saying, “Read it aloud, Kate; Millie is taken very ill with the typhoid fever, and George has written for me to come to them. Dear child, I wish I was so I could go.”

“Go!” echoed Kate decisively, “of course you’ll go, and take one of us girls along to help nurse, too.”

“But the work, my dear. How will you manage?”

“Some way,” said Kate. “Let’s see; the express goes at half-past six, and its half-past five now—just an hour. Go and get ready, mother, and Cad and I’ll pack your valise.”

“But your father—”

“We’ll take care of him, never fear, and he’ll be home before you go. Hattie, you’re not fit for much at home except to run errands and keep awake at nights, and you can do that there. Get ready as quickly as possible, and help mother; she’s so excited she’ll be sure to get her dress hinside before, and forget to lace up her shoes.”

My energetic sister had by this time gathered together their clothes, and, bringing the valise from the wardrobe, was packing them in a manner which foretold their coming out a mass of wrinkles, I meantime helplessly looking on. By dint of her earnest efforts they were ready in season; and when father came home from work, he found us hailing a street-car to take them to the depot.

“Now, what’s to be done first?” inquired Kate, after we had seen them off, and had re-entered the house, with something of a realizing sense of the responsibility we had undertaken weighing our minds.

“There’s supper to get, of course, and—Nellie can wash the dishes. That’s all, isn’t it?”

“Mother said something about baking to-morrow,” I suggested with a vague idea that a certain preparation was generally made concerning the bread the evening before its manufacture.

“To-morrow? Well, let to-morrow take care of itself,” she answered so promptly that I was at once silenced. “Let’s see what’s for supper; light bread, cookies, float, and cold beef. Very good. The clouds disperse, and the sky is most serene and fair. Set the table, Cad, while I make tea.”

And now, while I am doing that, if the reader will take a little retrospective glance over our lives up to this point, she will no doubt the better understand why we were all so ignorant in household affairs. There was a large family of us—ten children in all; John, the master workman in one of the machine shops in the flourishing manufacturing town of which we were resident; Millie, the married sister, and a general favorite; Kate and myself, twins, but totally unlike, both in looks and disposition; Hattie, a studious girl of sixteen; Ross, a boisterous schoolboy of fourteen; Nellie, a delicate, petted child of eleven; and three little boys in a row, aged respectively nine, seven, and four, whom we call Tip, Earle, and Benny. And mother did the work for us all. I don’t know how she managed it, but she did. Millie was the only one that had taken to house-work, and mother was one of those domesticated burden-bearers who never consider their burdens so heavy but that they can add another trifle.

Father had never been fortunate, pecuniarily; and being anxious to give all their children a good education, the labor of saving for this end was added to their other toil. And then, like many another good and unselfish, but unwise mother, she allowed us our own way, and spoiled us through indulgence; and as we had often heard her say she would rather do a thing herself than take the trouble to teach us how, we felt as if we were actually conferring a favor upon her by letting things alone.

To be sure we could sweep, dust, wash dishes, and make beds, and were familiar with some of the minor details of cookery; but trying to keep the domestic machinery well oiled and in constant motion, was to us like conversing in an unknown tongue. And so now, without any adequate knowledge of work and its responsibilities, we found ourselves with a mountain of difficulties to surmount, and a pretty mess we made of it for a few days, too.

It was not at all difficult to get through supper, for thanks to mother’s provident hands, there was plenty prepared for that meal; but when, next morning, we found the bread was out, the cookies all gone, and not a stray pie for dinner, our troubles began—and they broadened and deepened with every moment, as we became painfully aware that making bread and pastry was a branch of our education which had been terribly neglected; and when, about ten o’clock, father, in blissful ignorance of the novice in charge at home, sent a sirloin roast and the information that a stranger would dine with us, and fifteen minutes later the washer-woman brought in the clothes for us to iron, I was ready to melt in tears, and Kate was so cross that it was dangerous to speak to her.

O, that weary, weary day! But only the beginning of many similar ones that followed it. How we longed for mother’s skillful hands to straighten out the tangled threads our awkward fingers had managed to produce. There was something to be done from early morning till late at night; so no sooner did we fancy ourselves free for half an hour, than some duty undone would stare us in the face, or the children would come in with clamoring tongues and empty stomachs, and in a few days I became addicted to chronic fretfulness, while Kate was transformed into a veritable scold. John scowled over the miserable meals; Ross teased us in every vulnerable point, but poor, patient father pitied our often infirmities, and ate what was set before him for conscience’s sake.

It went on this way for about a fortnight, when, after a very trying day, we took our books and sat down for a quiet evening. But alas for our hopes! Only ten minutes of peace, and then an ominous “ahem” from father caused us to look up.

“Do you know, girls,” he inquired, “whether mother mended my pants before she went away? I should like them to put on in the morning. She generally did her mending every week, I believe.”

“There!” burst out Kate, shutting her book with a bang, while I, after one desponding glance at the fascinating pages of “David Copperfield,” went to examine the mending-basket.

It was full to the brim; shirts, socks, little ging-ham coats with the pockets torn down, and buttons pulled half off, with shreds of cloth hanging to them; father’s pants, and Nellie’s school dress with a great rent clear across the front. With a doleful sigh I lifted the basket, and without a word we sat down to the unwelcome task.

Nine, ten o’clock came and went, and the basket was not half emptied of its contents. Father, John, Ross, and Nellie gaped and stretched, and one by one followed the children off to bed. Eleven, and still we sat, silent and grim as ghosts, solemnly stitching away at the endless rents.

“Cad,” said Kate, at last, jerking the words out as if she hated them, “how do you like it?”

“Like what?” I asked in astonishment.

“This life of slavery. This humdrum, everlasting stick-to-it, unsatisfactory existence, with not a speck of spice in the way of variety about it. Just over and over, round and round, until we seek our rest ‘low in the ground.’”

“Oh Kate!” I exclaimed, almost shocked, “not so bad as that; not nearly so bad as that.”

“Yes, worse than that with many, very many, Cad Rouncewell. My plain opinion very plainly expressed, is that women are fools.”

“Why Kate!”

“Don’t ‘why Kate’ me. Just look at the mending-basket. It has been filled and emptied year after year; filled by our carelessness, and emptied by our mother’s slavish toil, and we, great, healthy, over-grown girls, sat calmly by and saw her do it. And she, weak, unselfish woman that she is, hasn’t snap enough about her to rap us over the head for our ugliness.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she made a dab at me with her needle, and I desisted.

“Don’t expostulate!” she exclaimed, I hate it. Look at yourself as you are, and as you have been ever since you were born, a little, useless bit of furniture, and see if you don’t look ugly. I have been taking just such a view of myself ever since we’ve found ourselves trying to fill mother’s place, and found we couldn’t, and have got so full of indignation at myself for being so blind, that I shall burst if I don’t out with it.”

“But we can’t help it now, Kate,” I ventured to remonstrate.

“No, of course we can’t, you goose. The past isn’t ours, but the present is, and the future may be. That’s what I’m coming at, exactly. We must not let mother and father die, yet awhile.”

“Die!” I exclaimed, shocked beyond expression.

“Yes, Caddy, I didn’t notice it any more than you have, until the past two weeks; but it seems to me now that I could count every furrow in father’s brow, and every thread of mother’s white hair. They are all beyond their years, Caddy. They have been worked to death, and because they loved us so well as to bear it all patiently, we never saw it.”

Kate’s voice was all of a tremble, and I burst into tears.

“Mother is an intellectual woman,” she went on in a moment, “with a mind capable of rare development. But how much time do you suppose she has had for reading and reflection beyond the wants and necessities of her large family? And don’t you know, Cad, how often we have excused ourselves from reading aloud to her, letting her sit digging away into this very basket, solitary and lone, through the long evening hours? I fairly hate myself when I think of it.”

I did, too, by this time, and I said so.

“But, Katie,” I added, “isn’t there a bright side to it somewhere?”

“We can make one,” she answered decisively. “I have been thinking of that; how would it do to work and get the house-cleaning all done before she gets home? It will be vacation next week, and Ross and Nellie will be here to help us.”

To this plan I readily assented, and then we went to bed. When we arose next morning it was with very different views of life and its stern realities from what we had ever cherished before.

But we were determined to enter into the conflict armed with a strength higher than our own, and through that to conquer. And we did. Two weeks more and the house wore a new aspect from garret to cellar; everything was as fresh and clean as could be, and well repaid we felt for all our toil. One spot in the house was our especial attraction, and that was mother’s and father’s room; hitherto a bare, sparsely-furnished apartment, with the same stamp of self-denial upon it there had always been upon everything that was individually their own; but now the most cheery, tastefully arranged of any room in the house. We girls had planned the renovation, and John—dear, good, honest fellow—had lovingly paid the bills. And now, with all in readiness for her coming, with a well-cooked meal upon the table, with an air of thrift and neatness upon everything, which gave us the utmost satisfaction, we looked for our

mother home. But when she came—when we saw the dear face looking eagerly out of the hack window to catch a glimpse of home and its treasured inmates—the revulsion of feeling was too much for us, and we ran behind the door to hide our tears. Such a foolish thing, but we did not stay there long. She called us as she came in, and we came out of our hiding-place, all tear-stained as we were, and greeted her. And such a time as we had taking her over the house and witnessing her delight and surprise, mingled with little soft-hearted rebukes for working so hard while she was gone! But when she came upon her own room, and her eyes fell upon the bright, new carpet, the bed with its snowy spread and ruffled pillows, the easy-chair, and dressing-table with all its little appointments, it was really refreshing to hear her exclaim over the extravaganza we had been guilty of, and all for the sake of a woman who was fast growing old. But oh, when we told her that we had done it all that she might dwell in perpetual youth; when we whispered in her ear the lesson we had learned by putting ourselves in her place; when we told her what we proposed to do in the future, that she might live, not a slave, but a queen, among her children, how her heart melted into tears, and with what manifest love she clung to us!

And as the years still come and go, we are reaping a blessed recompense! The rich reward of our struggle with idleness and self-indulgence we see before us in the faces of our loved and loving parents, where sits a sweet content, and beams a look of youth once more. They share with us our pleasures and our entertainments; we share with them the otherwise solitary hours, and in the interchange of thought and feeling, find wisdom we could have gained from no other source. Rejoicing in the knowledge that we are smoothing for them the rugged pathway of mortality, we feel our recompense to be incorruptible, being assured that it is as gold laid up in the treasure-house of God, and bringing it forth an hundred fold.