Sunshine Jane

by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

  CHAPTER XV

  REAL CONVERSATION

  BOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Orif she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthyconsideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, didyou ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people actwhen you "come in suddenly"? It is one of the petty tortures of everydayexistence. "They stopped talking the instant they saw me!" "They bothturned red, when I opened the door!" Well, what if they did? Is it ahappening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread ofdiscovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what? Stop and realizethe real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase "He was abovesuspicion," and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evilthoughts _of_ others as well as being safe from the holding of evilthoughts _towards_ others. If people change color at your approach andit makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of orfrom others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root outthe double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable familyhappenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of familyintercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through suchrapids is--as the Irishman said--to pick up your canoe and port aroundthem. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard,because when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goesdown with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keepthem right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.

  "Oh, Jane," said Susan, "we're having such an interesting time talkingabout your religion."

  Jane smiled. "I'm glad," she said simply. "Did you decide to absorb someof it?"

  "Oh, I'm converted, anyhow," said the aunt; "nobody could live in thehouse with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while,too."

  Jane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. "It's a contagion in thetown," she said; "I feel like an ancient missionary."

  "I know," said Susan, "holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures."

  "Yes, and I hold up the cross, too," said Jane, "only most peoplewouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-agotimes,--before the Christian era?" she asked Lorenzo quickly.

  "No."

  "It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It wasthe holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodied divine lifedescending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth."

  "My!" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.

  Jane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. "I love mycross," she said; "it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and,just because we are human, it will always keep coming back into ourlives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preachedas an opportunity."

  Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. Hefelt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl whowas so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to justhim.

  "You'll end by being like Dinah in _Adam Bede_," he said, trying tolaugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?"

  "I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart andlips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice."

  "I don't think she's exactly human," said Susan meditatively; "shedoesn't strike me so."

  "Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to behuman more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feelthat I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon asunhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and beloved."

  "But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt.

  "But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman--or agirl."

  Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rathand I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity itis that there are so few in these days."

  "I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't soconspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.

  "I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're thewrong kind."

  "I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home andwasn't wild to get away and be going into business."

  Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots ofthem feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out andwork. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that'spushing us all on into different places."

  "I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. Iwas thinking of the others."

  "They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that wedon't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that noone can alter."

  "Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can seethat it is so now that you've put it into my head."

  "I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally towomen who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wantedto earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are,too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a powerthat sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be bigenough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better."

  "Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women areacting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.

  "No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand,or grasp, or--or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is orderedand ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day assurely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conductof the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don'tunderstand it all as I wish that I did."

  "You really do feel God as a friend," said Lorenzo, watching herilluminated face. "He isn't just a religion to you, then?"

  "He's _everything_ to me," said Jane reverently, "Help and Sunlight andStrength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests inus in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justicemanifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to usethem together, but they and all else are all God."

  Susan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzoby turns. "To think of talking like this in my house," she said; "thisis what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly didlift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Everykind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without theleast bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake fortea, so I'll have to go."

  She went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.

  There was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally heheld out his hand abruptly. "You've gone a long way, Jane," he said,"you've got a big grip on life and its meaning, and you make meunderstand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that thewheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you onlyprove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet,home-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in adifferent way from what most people understand. When she still exists,she exists for herself--not for a man."

  Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly. "Why do you say that?"

  "Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope toget you. Could he?"

  Her eyes dropped. "Do you think that it's all any harder on the man thanit is on the girl?" she asked. "If men feel bad nowadays over thechanges, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight andforced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's createdfor another kind of work, much harder and lasting, much longer than anyman's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone oronly half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are somegirls and women who like it,--but most of them don't. Most of them feeldreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and livethe life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behindnine out of every t
en bread-winning women, whether they go out washingor are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she'sforced to do so."

  "Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you anidealist? Look at Emily Mead--" he smiled in spite of his earnestness."If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't takeforce."

  Jane remained carefully grave. "That's more her mother's fault thanhers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry."

  "And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?"

  "It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man,and the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leavenwhich causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homelessby separating them widely on earth."

  "Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds ofthousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to beold maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays."

  "We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hangto them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us."

  "Do you mean woman?"

  "No, I mean everybody."

  "It's depressing, isn't it?"

  "I don't think so. I think it's grand."

  "Grand!"

  "Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm awoman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm alsogloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehensionthat's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles."

  "You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things."

  "Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life,because each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of.I'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to beguided by a rule that never fails."

  Lorenzo couldn't but laugh. "I tell you what," he said gayly, "I'll letyou into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learnhow to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad andgloriously happy, too."

  "You've got to be in earnest, you know," Jane said. "It's handling livewires to amuse oneself with any force of God, and will-power is more ofa force than electricity."

  "Oh, I'm in earnest," said the artist. "I've made my picture--as yousay--and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel asyou do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one,too."

  "I'm making ever so many homes," said Jane. "I'm teaching home-making.That's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me todesert my task. Besides--" she paused.