Chapter XIX: "whatsoever."

I AM not sure that I can explain to you the state of mind in which Dorothy opened her eyes to the world on Monday morning. Unless you have had a like experience you will not understand it. She had always been a repressed rather than an indifferent girl. Under the apparently apathetic exterior there had boiled a perfect volcano of unsettled longing. She had not known what she wanted; she had not felt the least hope of ever discovering how her thoughts had taken new shape; she was in another world; she was another person; old things had passed away; all things had become new. She stood before her bit of mirror, and tried to arrange her heavy braids of hair as Louise wore hers; and, meantime, she was in a very eager, very unsettled state of mind. What was she to do? Where commence? The bare walls of her uninviting little room had always seemed to shut her in, and she had always hated them. Now it seemed to her that she had a right to get away from them—get outside, somewhere, and do something. How was it all to be accomplished? She looked with disdain upon her life; she felt her years, thus far, to have been wasted ones. Now she was ready to make a fresh start, only she could not imagine which stop to take first. You see her danger. Many a young life has shipwrecked its usefulness on just such rocks.

She threw down the covering of her bed, opened the window to let in the crisp winter morning, smelled of the frosty, sunlighted air, and looked abroad over her little world, shut in by hills and far-stretching meadows and home-like farms, and wondered just what she should do; and the sense of longing to get away from all this, whore there seemed nothing to do, was the strongest feeling that possessed her, unless the determination to accomplish it was a shade stronger.

She stepped out into the narrow little hall, and came face to face with Louise, who was fresh and smiling in a fresh calico and ruffles.

"Louise," said Dorothy, a whole world of repressed eagerness in her voice, "what am I going to do?"

"Ever so many things, I hope, dear," was Louise's prompt and cheery reply, and she emphasized it with a kiss.

"Yes," said Dorothy, with shining eyes, "I mean to, oh, I mean to; but—I don't know where to commence. What is there to do?—I mean for a beginning—and how shall I get to the first thing?"

"I think," said Louise, with smiling mouth and eyes, and sweet, decided voice, "I think, my dear, if I were you, I would begin with that black kettle."

Then you should have seen the sudden changing of Dorothy's face. Surprise, disappointment, intense mortification, all struggling with a sense of being misunderstood, being wronged, spoke in her eyes and the quiver of her lips.

"You think I am teasing you, Dorrie," and her new sister's voice was very tender. "Nothing is further from my intention. I honestly mean what I say. That very kettle which gives you Monday morning trouble can help you to a first victory; and it is a symbol of all the other things, small in themselves but amounting to much counted together, that can be made to serve you to-day."

"I did mean to try to do right; but I wanted to do something for Christ."

Dorothy's voice was subdued.

"And you think that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the black kettle, or the boiler, or the sink, or a dozen other things with which you will come in contact to-day? That is such a mistake. Don't you begin your Christian life by supposing that all these duties which fall upon us in such numbers consume just so much time that must be counted out, and with the piece that is left we are to serve him. Remember it is he who said, 'Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Doesn't that 'whatsoever' cover the pudding-kettle too, Dorrie?"

New light was struggling on Dorrie's face—just a glimmer, though, shadowed by bewilderment.

"It sounds as though it ought to," she said slowly. "And yet I cannot see how. What can my dish-washing have to do with serving Jesus? It seems almost irreverent."

"It can't be irreverent, dear, because he said it himself. 'Diligent in business, serving the Lord.' There is no period dividing these. I long ago discovered that I could make a bed and sweep a room for his sake as surely as I could speak a word for him. It is my joy, Dorrie, that he has not separated any moment of my life from him, saying, 'Here, so much drudgery each day, from which I must be entirely separated; then, when that is done, you may serve me.' Work so divided would be drudgery indeed. I bless him that I may constantly serve, whether I am wiping the dust from my table or whether I am on my knees."

"Well, how?" said Dorothy. She had a habit of occasionally flashing a question at one, a direct, firm way that meant business. The tone of this one said, "This is all new to me, but I mean to get at it, I intend to understand it and do it." "Louise, how could I be doing one thing for Jesus while I was washing the pudding-kettle?"

"Did you ever hear of the young servant-girl who was converted, and presented herself to the pastor desiring to be received into the Church? He asked her what proof she had that she was a Christian, and she answered, 'I sweeps the corners clean now.' I always thought that the poor girl gave good evidence of a changed purpose. I don't know whether she knew that verse, 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' but it is true, Dorrie, with pudding-kettles as well as with everything else."

I suppose that that simple little talk in that upper hall, on that Monday morning, actually changed the whole current of Dorothy Morgan's future life. Hitherto religion had had nothing whatever to do with pudding-kettles, or Monday mornings in the kitchen, or with the thousand little cares of everyday life. She had regarded them as so many nuisances, to be pushed aside as much as possible for actual work. I may as well frankly own to you that this young girl hated the neatly-painted kitchen in which most of her life was spent. She hated the dish-pan and the sink and the dishtowels with a perfect hatred. She hated brooms and dusters and scrub-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of household drudgery. It was literally drudgery to her.

Her new sister's wise eyes had singled out the thing which she perhaps hated most with which to illustrate this germ of truth that she had dropped into the soil of Dorothy's heart. An old-fashioned, heavy, black kettle, which had been handed down as an heirloom in the Morgan family for generations, and in which the favourite Sunday evening dish, hasty-pudding, was invariably cooked. Simmering slowly over the fire all Sunday afternoon, the pudding eaten at supper-time, the kettle filled with water and left to soak over night, and appearing on the scene with relentless regularity every Monday morning to be scraped and scrubbed by Dorothy's disgusted fingers. Dorothy hated hasty-pudding. Dorothy almost never washed that kettle with the degree of nicety that Mother Morgan demanded. She almost invariably left little creases of scorched pudding clinging to the sides, and a general greasiness of appearance about it that was fruitful of many sharp words on the mother's part and sullen defiance on Dorothy's. The idea that her religion actually had to do with this pudding-kettle came to Dorothy like a revelation. She went downstairs thinking it over. She realized that the thought gave new interest to life. If the fruits of Christian living were actually to be looked for in pudding-dishes, then what place was there where they could not show? There was a dignity in living, after all. It was not simple drudgery, and nothing else. She thought of it when the foaming milk was brought in, John setting down the pail with a thud, and saying,—

"Tend to that, and give us the pail; and don't be all day about it either."

I shall have to admit that Dorothy was more or less accustomed to this form of address, and yet that it always irritated her, and she was apt to reply, "I shall be just as long as I please; if you want it done quicker, do it yourself." Then would follow other cross or sullen words, neither person meaning to the full the words used, yet both feeling crosser when they parted. A sad state of living, truly, yet it had actually become a habit with these two, so much so that John looked at his sister in surprise when she lifted the pail silently, and presently returned it to him, with no other remark than the statement that Brownie was giving more milk than before. He made no answer to this, and went away actually surprised at the quietness of the kitchen. It is not my purpose to let you follow Dorothy closely through that day in the kitchen.

Monday morning is a time, you will remember, that tries the souls of many women. Mrs. Morgan was no exception. For some reason, best known to herself, she was particularly tried this morning. Nothing went right, and nothing could be made to go right. The fire at first would not burn enough; and then it burned too much, and sent the suds from the boiler sputtering over on the bright tins that Dorothy had arranged on the hearth to dry; and Mrs. Morgan was betrayed into saying that a child ten years old would have known better than to have put tins in such a place. And, despite Dorothy's earnest care, the starch presently lumped; and, worse than that, certain cloudy-looking streaks, coming from no one knew where, mixed with its clearness, and the mother affirmed that Dorothy ought to have her ears boxed for being so careless. Try as the daughter would, the mother was not to be pleased that morning. And Dorothy did struggle bravely. She made the smooth, black sides of the hated pudding-kettle shine as they had not before on any Monday morning on record. She scoured every knife, not forgetting the miserable little one with a notch in the end and a rough place in the handle, a knife that she had longed to throw away, and to which the mother pertinaciously clung; she rubbed at the hated sink until it shone like burnished steel; she rubbed at the dish-cloth, for which she had a separate and special feeling of disgust, until it hung white and dry on its line; she neglected no cup, or spoon, or shelf-corner, and she moved with brisk step and swift fingers, only to hear the metallic voice say, as it made its entrance from the outer kitchen where the rubbing and rinsing were going on,—

"I wonder if you are going to be all day washing that handful of dishes! I could have had them all put away and the kitchen swept an hour ago. I can't see how I came to have such a dawdler as you!"

Dear me! Have you been so fortunate as never to have heard mothers speak in this way? Good, honest mothers too. Mothers who would have sat with unwinking eyes and patient hands, night after night, caring for the wants, real and imaginary, of their sick daughters, who yet will stab them with unthinking words all day long. Words not true; for Mrs. Morgan knew perfectly well that she could not have finished all this work an hour before. Yet be just to her; she actually believed, energetic woman as she was, that she could have accomplished it all in much less time. For the matter of that, I suppose she could. Certainly Dorothy had not her mother's skill. The wonder was that the mother should have expected young hands to be as deft as her own.

So the day wore on. A trying one at every turn to poor young Dorothy, who had just enlisted, and was trying to buckle her armour on, and who kept up a brave struggle, and went steadily from one duty to another, doing not one of them as well as her mother could have done, but doing each one of them as well as she could. Could an angel do more? A hard day, both over the dishes and the dust and at the wash-tub; yet not by any means so hard as it might have been but for that bit of talk in the upper hall in the morning—a new idea that made a song in her heart despite all the trials—so much of a song that occasionally it flowed into words, and Dorothy's untrained voice was sweet and clear. She rarely used it over her work, but on this Monday twice she sang clear and loud,—

"Mine is an unchanging love;
Higher than the heights above."

Mrs. Morgan heard it—heard the tune; caught no words—wanted to hear none. The spirit of song was not in her heart that morning. All she said was,—

"Don't, for pity's sake, go to singing over the dish-pan. I always thought that was a miserable, shiftless habit. There is a time for all things."

And Dorothy, wondering much when was her time to sing, hushed her voice and finished the melody in her heart. So it seemed to her, when the day was done, that really it had been an unusually hard one. Many steps added to the usual routine. A dish broken; a leaking pail sending water all over the clean floor; John's muddy feet tracking through the kitchen just after the mopping was done; John's hands—traces of them on the clean towel; and then, by reason of trying to do two things at once at the mother's bidding, she actually allowed the starch to scorch. So that, in truth, when she sat down in the wooden-seated chair of her own room for a moment's breathing space, before it was time to set the table for tea, she looked back over the day with a little wondering sigh. What had she done this day for the glory of God? How could he possibly get any glory out of her honest efforts to do her whole duty that day? True, she had resisted the temptation to slam the door hard, to set down the tea-kettle with a bang, to say, in an undertone, "I don't care whether it is clean or dirty," when her attention was called to some undone task. Yet what had been the result? Mother certainly had never been so hard to please.

"She has found more to blame to-day than she ever did in the days when I only half tried," said poor Dorothy to herself.

So where was there any glory for the Master to be found in the day? Even then came the mother's voice calling,—

"Well, are we to have any supper to-night? or must I get it, with all the rest?"

Then Dorothy went down, and I am afraid that she set the cups and saucers on the table with more force than was needed. Life looked full of pin-pricks that hurt for the time being as much, or at least she thought they did, as though they had been made with lancets.

What was the trouble with Mother Morgan?

I do want you to understand her. She did not understand herself, to be sure; but that is no reason why you should not show more discrimination. It had been an unusually trying day to her. Apart from the pressure of domestic cares, which she, in common with many other housekeepers, made always twice as heavy as they should be, her nerves, or her heart, or her conscience, or all these combined, had been stirred within her by the words of prayer in the twilight of the Sabbath. Memory took her back to an old hillside farmhouse, surrounded by fields less rich and fruitful than those near which she dwelt; to an old arm-chair, in which an old man sat night and morning, by his side another chair, in which an old woman sat night and morning; and together they read out of the same Bible, together they knelt and prayed, and this cold-faced mother had heard herself prayed for many a time, not only by that old man, but by the gray-haired woman. And they were her father and her mother, both sleeping now, side by side, under the snow; and being dead, yet speaking—speaking loudly to her on that very Monday. As she looked at Dorothy she felt as though she were wronging her of a birthright. Dorothy had never heard her mother pray as she had heard her old mother many a time. Dorothy's mother had never said to her,—

"Dorothy, I want you to be a servant of God more than I want anything else."

That was what leer mother had said to her when she was Dorothy's age, and many a time afterward; and she was not a servant of God yet, and her conscience reproached her; and her child had never heard such words, and her heart reproached her. As truly as I write it, she pitied Dorothy. Yet, can you understand that this very feeling actually made her voice sharper and her words more impatient when she spoke to her? The human heart unchanged is a very strange and contradictory thing.

But I want to tell you what Dorothy Morgan does not know.

Her mother did discover the immaculate condition of the pudding-kettle, and said aloud—

"I declare, for once this is clean!"