Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

  “Play something, Amy. Let them hear how much you have improved,” said Laurie, with pardonable pride in his promising pupil.

  But Amy whispered, with full eyes, as she twirled the faded stool, “Not tonight, dear. I can’t show off tonight.”

  But she did show something better than brilliancy or skill, for she sang Beth’s songs with a tender music in her voice which the best master could not have taught, and touched the listeners’ hearts with a sweeter power than any other inspiration could have given her. The room was very still, when the clear voice failed suddenly at the last line of Beth’s favorite hymn. It was hard to say-

  Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal;[315]

  and Amy leaned against her husband, who stood behind her, feeling that her welcome home was not quite perfect without Beth’s kiss.

  “Now, we must finish with Mignon’s song,[316] for Mr. Bhaer sings that,” said Jo, before the pause grew painful. And Mr. Bhaer cleared his throat with a gratified “Hem!” as he stepped into the corner where Jo stood, saying –

  “You will sing with me? We go excellently well together.”

  A pleasing fiction, by the way, for Jo had no more idea of music than a grasshopper. But she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a whole opera, and warbled away, blissfully regardless of time and tune. It didn’t much matter, for Mr. Bhaer sang like a true German, heartily and well, and Jo soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone.

  Know‘st thou the land where the citron blooms,

  used to be the Professor’s favorite line, for “das land” meant Germany to him; but now he seemed to dwell, with peculiar warmth and melody, upon the words –

  There, oh there, might I with thee,

  O my beloved, go

  and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she longed to say she did know the land, and would joyfully depart thither whenever he liked.

  The song was considered a great success, and the singer retired covered with laurels. But a few minutes afterward, he forgot his manners entirely, and stared at Amy putting on her bonnet; for she had been introduced simply as “my sister,” and no one had called her by her new name since he came. He forgot himself still further when Laurie said, in his most gracious manner, at parting –

  “My wife and I are very glad to meet you sir. Please remember that there is always a welcome waiting for you over the way.”

  Then the Professor thanked him so heartily, and looked so suddenly illuminated with satisfaction, that Laurie thought him the most delightfully demonstrative old fellow he ever met.

  “I too shall go, but I shall gladly come again, if you will gif me leave, dear madame, for a little business in the city will keep me here some days.”

  He spoke to Mrs. March, but he looked at Jo; and the mother’s voice gave as cordial an assent as did the daughter’s eyes, for Mrs. March was not so blind to her children’s interest as Mrs. Moffat supposed.

  “I suspect that is a wise man,” remarked Mr. March, with placid satisfaction, from the hearthrug, after the last guest had gone.

  “I know he is a good one,” added Mrs. March, with decided approval, as she wound up the clock.

  “I thought you’d like him,” was all Jo said, as she slipped away to her bed.

  She wondered what the business was that brought Mr. Bhaer to the city, and finally decided that he had been appointed to some great honor, somewhere, but had been too modest to mention the fact. If she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark.

  44

  My Lord and Lady

  Please, Madame Mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour? The luggage has come, and I’ve been making hay of Amy’s Paris finery, trying to find some things I want,” said Laurie, coming in the next day to find Mrs. Laurence sitting in her mother’s lap, as if being made “the baby” again.

  “Certainly. Go, dear, I forgot that you have any home but this.” And Mrs. March pressed the white hand that wore the wedding ring, as if asking pardon for her maternal covetousness.

  “I shouldn’t have come over if I could have helped it; but I can’t get on without my little woman any more than a – ”

  “Weathercock can without wind,” suggested Jo, as he paused for a simile. Jo had grown quite her own saucy self again since Teddy came home.

  “Exactly, for Amy keeps me pointing due west most of the time, with only an occasional whiffle round to the south, and I haven’t had an easterly spell since I was married; don’t know anything about the north, but am altogether salubrious and balmy, hey, my lady?”

  “Lovely weather so far; I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. Come home, dear, and I’ll find your bootjack;[317] I suppose that’s what you are rummaging after among my things. Men are so helpless, Mother,” said Amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband.

  “What are you going to do with yourselves after you get settled?” asked Jo, buttoning Amy’s cloak as she used to button her pinafores.

  “We have our plans; we don’t mean to say much about them yet, because we are such very new brooms, but we don’t intend to be idle. I’m going into business with a devotion that shall delight Grandfather, and prove to him that I’m not spoiled. I need something of the sort to keep me steady. I’m tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man.”

  “And Amy, what is she going to do?” asked Mrs. March, well pleased at Laurie’s decision and the energy with which he spoke.

  “After doing the civil all round, and airing our best bonnet, we shall astonish you by the elegant hospitalities of our mansion, the brilliant society we shall draw about us, and the beneficial influence we shall exert over the world at large. That’s about it, isn’t it, Madame Recamier?”[318] asked Laurie, with a quizzical look at Amy.

  “Time will show. Come away, Impertinence, and don’t shock my family by calling me names before their faces,” answered Amy, resolving that there should be a home with a good wife in it before she set up a salon as a queen of society.

  “How happy those children seem together!” observed Mr. March, finding it difficult to become absorbed in his Aristotle[319] after the young couple had gone.

  “Yes, and I think it will last,” added Mrs. March, with the restful expression of a pilot who has brought a ship safely into port.

  “I know it will. Happy Amy!” And Jo sighed, then smiled brightly as Professor Bhaer opened the gate with an impatient push.

  Later in the evening, when his mind had been set at rest about the bootjack, Laurie said suddenly to his wife, who was flitting about, arranging her new art treasures, “Mrs. Laurence.”

  “My lord!”

  “That man intends to marry our Jo!”

  “I hope so, don’t you, dear?”

  “Well, my love, I consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that expressive word, but I do wish he was a little younger and a good deal richer.”

  “Now, Laurie, don’t be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn’t matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women never should marry for money – ” Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity.

  “Certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend to do it sometimes. If my memory serves me, you once thought it your duty to make a rich match; that accounts, perhaps, for your marrying a good-for-nothing like me.”

  “Oh, my dearest boy, don‘t, don’t say that! I forgot you were rich when I said ‘Yes.’ I’d have married you if you hadn’t a penny, and I sometimes wish you were poor that I might show how much I love you.” And Amy, who was ve
ry dignified in public and very fond in private, gave convincing proofs of the truth of her words.

  “You don’t really think I am such a mercenary creature as I tried to be once, do you? It would break my heart if you didn’t believe that I’d gladly pull in the same boat with you, even if you had to get your living by rowing on the lake.”

  “Am I an idiot and a brute? How could I think so, when you refused a richer man for me, and won’t let me give you half I want to now, when I have the right? Girls do it every day, poor things, and are taught to think it is their only salvation; but you had better lessons, and, though I trembled for you at one time, I was not disappointed, for the daughter was true to the mother’s teaching. I told Mamma so yesterday, and she looked as glad and grateful as if I’d given her a check for a million, to be spent in charity. You are not listening to my moral remarks, Mrs. Laurence.” And Laurie paused, for Amy’s eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face.

  “Yes, I am, and admiring the dimple in your chin at the same time. I don’t wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I’m prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. Don’t laugh, but your nose is such a comfort to me.” And Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.

  Laurie had received many compliments in his life, but never one that suited him better, as he plainly showed though he did laugh at his wife’s peculiar taste, while she said slowly, “May I ask you a question, dear?”

  “Of course you may.”

  “Shall you care if Jo does marry Mr. Bhaer?”

  “Oh, that’s the trouble, is it? I thought there was something in the dimple that didn’t suit you. Not being a dog in the manger,[320] but the happiest fellow alive, I assure you I can dance at Jo’s wedding with a heart as light as my heels. Do you doubt it, my darling?”

  Amy looked up at him, and was satisfied; her last little jealous fear vanished forever, and she thanked him, with a face full of love and confidence.

  “I wish we could do something for that capital old Professor. Couldn’t we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in Germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?” said Laurie, when they began to pace up and down the long drawing room, arm in arm, as they were fond of doing, in memory of the chateau garden.

  “Jo would find us out, and spoil it all; she is very proud of him, just as he is, and said yesterday that she thought poverty was a beautiful thing.”

  “Bless her dear heart! She won’t think so when she has a literary husband, and a dozen little professors and professorins to support. We won’t interfere now, but watch our chance, and do them a good turn in spite of themselves. I owe Jo for a part of my education, and she believes in people’s paying their honest debts, so I’ll get round her in that way.”

  “How delightful it is to be able to help others, isn’t it? That was always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely, and, thanks to you, the dream has come true.”

  “Ah, we’ll do quantities of good, won’t we? There’s one sort of poverty that I particularly like to help. Out-and-out beggars get taken care of, but poor gentle folks fare badly, because they won’t ask, and people don’t dare to offer charity; yet there are a thousand ways of helping them, if one only knows how to do it so delicately that it does not offend. I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarneying beggar; I suppose it’s wrong, but I do, though it is harder.”

  “Because it takes a gentleman to do it,” added the other member of the domestic admiration society.

  “Thank you, I’m afraid I don’t deserve that pretty compliment. But I was going to say that while I was dawdling about abroad, I saw a good many talented young fellows making all sorts of sacrifices, and enduring real hardships, that they might realize their dreams. Splendid fellows, some of them, working like heroes, poor and friendless, but so full of courage, patience, and ambition that I was ashamed of myself, and longed to give them a right good lift. Those are people whom it’s a satisfaction to help, for if they’ve got genius, it’s an honor to be allowed to serve them, and not let it be lost or delayed for want of fuel to keep the pot boiling; if they haven‘t, it’s a pleasure to comfort the poor souls, and keep them from despair when they find it out.”

  “Yes, indeed, and there’s another class who can’t ask, and who suffer in silence. I know something of it, for I belonged to it before you made a princess of me, as the king does the beggarmaid in the old story. Ambitious girls have a hard time, Laurie, and often have to see youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a little help at the right minute. People have been very kind to me; and whenever I see girls struggling along, as we used to do, I want to put out my hand and help them, as I was helped.”

  “And so you shall, like an angel as you are!” cried Laurie, resolving, with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for the express benefit of young women with artistic tendencies. “Rich people have no right to sit down and enjoy themselves, or let their money accumulate for others to waste. It’s not half so sensible to leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while alive, and enjoy making one’s fellow creatures happy with it. We’ll have a good time ourselves, and add an extra relish to our own pleasure by giving other people a generous taste. Will you be a little Dorcas,[321] going about emptying a big basket of comforts, and filling it up with good deeds?”

  “With all my heart, if you will be a brave St. Martin,[322] stopping as you ride gallantly through the world to share your cloak with the beg gar.”

  “It’s a bargain, and we shall get the best of it!”

  So the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced happily on again, feeling that their pleasant home was more homelike because they hoped to brighten other homes, believing that their own feet would walk more uprightly along the flowery path before them, if they smoothed rough ways for other feet, and feeling that their hearts were more closely knit together by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest than they.

  45

  Daisy and Demi

  I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble historian of the March family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. Daisy and Demi had now arrived at years of discretion; for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their elders do. If there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being utterly spoiled by adoration, it was these prattling Brookes. Of course they were the most remarkable children ever born, as will be shown when I mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. At three, Daisy demanded a “needler,” and actually made a bag with four stitches in it; she likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Hannah’s eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming the letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his “sewin-sheen” – a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go “wound and wound”; also a basket hung over the back of a chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who, with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, “Why, Marmar, dat’s my lellywaiter, and me’s trying to pull her up.”

  Though utterly unlike in character, the twins got on remarkably well together, and seldom quarreled more than thrice a day. Of course, Demi tyrannized over Daisy, and gallantly defended her from every other aggressor, while Daisy made a galley slave of herself, and adored her brother as the one perfec
t being in the world. A rosy, chubby, sunshiny little soul was Daisy, who found her way to everybody’s heart, and nestled there. One of the captivating children, who seem made to be kissed and cuddled, adorned and adored like little goddesses, and produced for general approval on all festive occasions. Her small virtues were so sweet that she would have been quite angelic if a few small naughtinesses had not kept her delightfully human. It was all fair weather in her world, and every morning she scrambled up to the window in her little nightgown to look out, and say, no matter whether it rained or shone, “Oh, pitty day, oh, pitty day!” Everyone was a friend, and she offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the most inveterate bachelor relented, and baby-lovers became faithful worshipers.

  “Me loves evvybody,” she once said, opening her arms, with her spoon in one hand, and her mug in the other, as if eager to embrace and nourish the whole world.

  As she grew, her mother began to feel that the Dovecote would be blessed by the presence of an inmate as serene and loving as that which had helped to make the old house home, and to pray that she might be spared a loss like that which had lately taught them how long they had entertained an angel unawares. Her grandfather often called her “Beth,” and her grandmother watched over her with untiring devotion, as if trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her own could see.

  Demi, like a true Yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting to know everything, and often getting much disturbed because he could not get satisfactory answers to his perpetual “What for?”

  He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations[323] with him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the womenfolk.