Interrupted

FROM the back parlor there came the sound of fresh young voices brimming with energy. Several voices at once, indeed, after the fashion of eager young ladies well acquainted with one another, and having important schemes to further. Occasionally there were bursts of laughter, indicating that freedom of speech and good fellowship reigned among the workers.

The committee, or the society, or the association, whatever it was, was breaking up, for the door was ajar, one young lady standing near it, her hand out as if to open it wider, preparatory to departure, while she waited to say another of the many last things. Others were drawing wraps about them, or donning furs and overshoes, and talking as they worked. Their voices, clear and brisk, sounded distinctly down the long hall.

"And about the Committee on Award; you will attend to that, Claire, will you not?"

"Oh, and what are we to do about Mrs. Stuart?"

"Why, Claire promised to see her. She is just the one to do it. Mrs. Stuart will do anything for her."

"And, Claire, you must be sure to see the Snyders before the judge starts on his Southern trip! If we don't get his positive promise, we may have trouble."

"Claire Benedict, you promised to help me with my Turkish costume, you know. I haven't the least idea how to get it up."

Then a younger voice:

"Miss Claire, you will drill me on my recitation, won't you? Mamma says you are just the one to show me how."

"And, oh! Claire, don't forget to see that ponderous Doctor Wheelock and get his subscription. It frightens me to think of going to him."

In the sitting-room opposite stood Claire's younger sister, Dora Benedict. She had just come in from the outer world, and with part of her wraps still gathered about her, stood watching the falling snow, and listening to the voices in the back parlor. At this point she spoke:

"Mamma, just hear the girls! They are heaping up the work on Claire, giving her the planning and the collecting and the drilling, and the greater portion of the programme to attend to, and she calmly agrees to do it all."

"Your sister has a great amount of executive ability, my dear, and is always to be depended on. Such people are sure to have plenty of burdens to carry."

Mrs. Benedict said this in a gently modulated, satisfied voice, and leaned back in her easy chair and smiled as she spoke. She delayed a stitch in her crimson tidy, while she listened a moment to the sound of Claire's voice, calmly and assuringly shouldering the burdens of work; promising here, offering there, until the listeners in the sitting-room were prepared to sympathize with the words spoken in the parlor in a relieved tone of voice:

"I declare, Claire Benedict, you are a host in yourself! What we should do without you is more than I can imagine."

"I should think as much!" This from the girl in the brown-plumed hat, who listened in the next room. "You couldn't do without her! that is just all there would be about it! Two thirds of your nice plans, for which you get so much credit, would fall through. Mamma, do you think Claire ought to attempt so much?"

"Well, I don't know," responded the gentle-faced woman thus appealed to, pausing again in her fancy work to consider the question. "Claire has remarkable talent, you know, in all these directions. She is a born organizer and leader, and the girls are willing to follow her lead. I don't know but she works too hard. It is difficult to avoid that, with so many people depending on her I don't myself see how they would manage without her. You know Doctor Ellis feels much the same. He was telling your father, only last night, that there was not another young lady in the church on whom he could depend as he did on her. Your father was amused at his earnestness. He said he should almost feel like giving up his pastorate here, if he should lose her. Claire is certainly a power in the church, and the society generally. I should feel sorry for them if they were to lose her."

The mother spoke this sentence quietly, with the unruffled look of peace and satisfaction on her face. No foreboding of loss came to her. She thought, it is true, of the barely possible time when her eldest daughter might go out from this home into some other, and have other cares and responsibilities, but the day seemed very remote. Claire was young, and was absorbed in her church and home work.

Apparently, even the suggestion of another home had not come to her. It might never come. She might live always in the dear home nest, sheltered, and sheltering, in her turn, others less favored. Or in the event of a change, some time in the future, it might be, possibly, just from one street in the same city to another, and much of the old life go on still; and in any event the mother could say "their loss," not mine; for the sense of possible separation had not come near enough to shadow the mother's heart as yet; she lived in the dreamland of belief that a married daughter would be as near to the mother and the home as an unmarried one. Therefore her face was placid, and she sewed her crimson threads and talked placidly of what might have been, but was not; the future looked secure and smiling.

"You see," she continued to the young and but half-satisfied daughter, "it is an unusual combination of things that makes your sister so important to this society. There are not many girls in it who have wealth and leisure, and the peculiar talents required for leadership. Run over the list in your mind, and you will notice that those who have plenty of time would not know what to do with it unless Claire were here to tell them, and those who have plenty of money would fritter it all away, without her to guide, and set a grand example for them."

"I am not questioning her ability, mamma," the daughter said, with a little laugh, "that is, her mental ability; but it seems to me they ought to remember that she has a body, as well as the others. Still, she will always work at something, I suppose; she is made in that mold. Mamma, what do you suppose Claire would do if she were poor?"

"I haven't the least idea, daughter. I hope she would do the best she could; but I think I feel grateful that there seems little probability of our discovering by experience."

"Still, one can never tell what may happen."

"Oh, no, that is true; I was speaking of probabilities."

Still the mother's face was placid. She called them probabilities, but when she thought of her husband's wealth and position in the mercantile world, they really seemed to her very much like certainties.

And now the little coterie in the back parlor broke up in earnest, and, exclaiming over the lateness of the hour, made haste into the snowy world outside.

Claire followed the last one to the door; a young and pretty girl, afraid of her own decided capabilities, unless kissed and petted by this stronger spirit into using them.

"You will be sure to do well, Alice dear, and remember I depend on you."

This was the last drop of dew for the frightened young flower, and it brightened visibly under it, and murmured:

"I will do my best; I don't want to disappoint you."

Then Claire came into the sitting-room, and dropped with an air of satisfied weariness into one of the luxurious chairs, and folded her hands to rest.

"Dora thinks you are carrying too much on your shoulders, dear." This from the fancy worker.

"Oh, no, mamma, my shoulders are strong. Everything is in fine train. I think our girls are really getting interested in missions now, as well as in having a good time, that is what I am after, you know, but some of them don't suspect it. Why didn't you come to the committee meeting, Dora?"

"I have but just come in from Strausser's, on that commission, you know, and I thought if I appeared, there would be so many questions to answer, and so much to explain, that the girls would not get away to-night."

"Oh, did you see Mr. Strausser? Well, what did he say?" And Claire sat erect, her weariness gone, and gave herself to work again.

The door bell rang, and she was presently summoned to the hall.

"One of your poor persons," was the servant's message.

There seemed to be a long story to tell, and Claire listened, and questioned, and commented, and rang the bell to give directions for a certain package from a certain closet to be brought, and sent Dora to her room for her pocket-book, and finally the "poor person" went away, her voice sounding cheered and grateful as she said inquiringly:

"Then you will be sure to come over to-morrow?"

Dora laughed, as Claire returned to the easy chair.

"How many things you are going to do to-morrow, Claire? I heard you promise the girls a dozen or so. And that reminds me that Doctor Ellis wants to know if you will look in to-morrow, and go with Mrs. Ellis to call on a new family, of whom he said he told you."

"I know," said Claire, "I was thinking about them this morning. I must try and go to-morrow. They are people who ought not to be neglected. Did he say at what hour? Oh, mamma, have you that broth ready for aunt Kate? I might go around there with it now: I shall not have time to-morrow, and I promised her I would come myself before the week closed."

Then the fast falling snow was discussed, and demurred over a little by mother and younger sister, and laughingly accepted by Claire as a pleasant accessory to a winter walk; and it ended, as things were apt to end in that family, in Claire having her own way, and sallying forth equipped for the storm, with her basket of comforts on her arm.

She looked back to Dora to say that mamma must not worry if she were detained, for she had promised to look in at Mr. Anstead's and make some arrangements for to-morrow's committee meeting; and to add that the papers in the library were to be left as they were, ready for to-morrow.

"It is the eventful day," she said, laughingly, "our work is to culminate then. We are to discover what the fruit of all this getting ready is; we are to have things just as they are to be, without a break or a pause."

"Perhaps," said Dora.

"Why do you say 'perhaps,' you naughty croaker? Do you dare to think that anything will be less than perfect after the weeks of labor we have given it?"

"How can I tell? Nothing is ever perfect. Did you never notice, Claire, that it is impossible to get through a single day just as one plans it?"

"I have noticed it," Claire answered, smiling, "but I did not know that your young head had taken it in."

"Ah, but I have. I plan occasionally, myself, but I am like Paul in one thing, any way, 'how to perform I find not.' It is worse on Saturday than any other day. I almost never do as I intended."

"I wouldn't quote Bible verses with a twisted meaning, if I were you, little girl. It is a dangerous habit; I know by experience. They so perfectly fit into life, that one is sorely tempted. But I am not often troubled in the way you mention; my plans generally come out all right. Possibly because I have studied them from several sides, and foreseen and provided for hindrances. There is a great deal in that. You see, to-morrow, if I don't get through with all the engagements laid out for it. I have studied them all, and there really can't anything happen to throw me very far off my programme."

There was an air of complacency about the speaker, and a satisfied smile on her face as she tripped briskly away. She was a skilful and successful general. Was there any harm in her realizing it?

Dora went back to the gentle mother.

"The house will be alive all day to-morrow, mamma. Claire has half a dozen committee meetings here at different hours, and a great rehearsal of all their exercises for the literary entertainment. There will be no place for quiet, well-behaved people like you and me. What do you suppose is the matter with me? I feel like a croaker. If Claire had not just scolded me for quoting the Bible to suit my moods, I should have said to her, 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.'"

Mrs. Benedict looked up searchingly into the face of her young daughter, who was so unlike her sister, who took life doubtfully, and bristled with interrogation points, and dreamed while the other worked, and leaned on Claire everywhere and always, even as she knew she did herself.

"Claire isn't boastful, dear, I think," she said gently. "It is right for her to rest in the brightness of the present and to trust to-morrow."

"Oh, she has planned to-morrow, mamma; there is nothing to trust about."

Then after a moment:

"Mamma, she is good and splendid, just as she always is, and I am cross."

Whereupon she sprang to meet her father, and before he had divested himself of his snowy great-coat, she had covered his bearded face with kisses and dropped some tears on his hands.

It was after family worship that evening, when the father stood with a daughter on either side of him, with an arm around each, that he rallied Dora on her tearful greeting.

"Dora is mercurial," her mother said. "Her birthday comes in April, and there is very apt to be a shower right in the midst of sunshine."

"She has studied too hard to-day," the father said, kissing her fondly. "After a good night's rest, the sunshine will get the better of the showers."

"They both need developing in exactly different ways," he said to the mother when they were left to themselves.

He looked after his two beautiful girls fondly as he spoke, but the last words they had heard from him were:

"Good-night, daughters! Get ready for a bright to-morrow. The storm is about over."

"The storm did not trouble me," said Claire. "Real work often gets on better in a storm; and I think we shall have a chance to try it. I think papa is mistaken; the sky says to me that we shall have a stormy day."

When "to-morrow" came, the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky; but every shutter in the Benedict mansion was closed, and crape streamed from the doorknobs; and during all that memorable day neither daughter did one thing that had been planned for the day before.

* * *