Susan Warner - The Letter of Credit

"Why! – that's very simple."

"Not so simple as you think."

"Mother, that is the way people did in the second chapter of Acts, that we were reading yesterday. Nobody said that anything he had was his own."

"That was when everybody was full of the love of Christ. I grant you, Rotha, that makes things easy. My child, let us take care we act on that principle."

"We have nothing to give," said Rotha. "Mother, how that girl was dressed too, that came out of that same carriage. Did you see her?"

"Hardly."

"She was about as old as I am, I guess. Mother, she had a feather in her hat and a beautiful little muff, and a silk frock too, though there was no train to it. Her silk was red – dark red," Rotha added with a sigh.

Mrs. Carpenter had been struck and moved, as well as her daughter, by the appearance of the figures in question, though, as she said, she had scarce seen more than one of them. But her thoughts were in a different channel.

When she got home, contrary to all her wont, Mrs. Carpenter sat down and put her head in her hands, instead of going to work. She said she was a little tired, which was very true; but the real reason was a depression and at the same time a perturbation of mind which would not let her work. She had been several times lately engaged with the thought, that it might be better, that it might be her duty, to make herself known to her sister. She felt that her strength lately had been decreasing; it had been with much difficulty that she accomplished her full tale of work; help, even a little, would be very grateful, and a friend for Rotha might be of the greatest importance. It was over with those thoughts. That one glimpse of her sister as she swept past, had shewn her the utter futility of such an appeal as she had thought of making. There was something in the whole air and style of the rich woman which convinced Mrs. Carpenter that she would not patiently hear of poor relations in her neighbourhood; and that help given, even if she gave it, would be so given that it would be easier to do without it than to accept it. She was thrown back upon herself; and the check and the disappointment shewed how much, secretly she had been staying herself upon this hope which had failed her.

She said nothing to her daughter, and Rotha never knew what that encounter had been. But a few days later, finding herself still not gaining strength, and catching at any thread of hope or help, Mrs. Carpenter took another long walk and delivered at its place of address the letter which her English guest had left her. She hardly expected ever to hear anything from it again; and in fact it was long before she did hear either of the letter or of its writer.

The months of winter went somewhat painfully along. Mrs. Carpenter's health did not mend, and the constant sewing became more and more difficult to bear. Mrs. Carpenter now more frequently went out with her work herself; leaving Rotha to make up the lost time by doing some of the plainer seams, for which she was quite competent.

One cold afternoon in the latter part of January, a stranger came to Mrs. Marble's door and begged for a few minutes' interview. He did not make it longer; but after a very brief conversation on religious matters, and giving her a tract or two, inquired if there was anybody else in the house?

"Lodgers," said Mrs. Marble. "They've got the second floor. A woman and a girl."

"What sort of people?"

"Well, I should say they were an uncommon sort. Your sort, I guess. Religious. I mean the mother is. I reckon the little one haint anything o' that kind about her."

"Then they pay their rent, I suppose?"

"As regular as clockwork. 'Taint always easy, I know; but it comes up to the day. I don't believe much in the sort o' religion that don't pay debts."

"Nor I; but sometimes, you know, the paying is not only difficult but impossible. Why is it difficult in this case?"

"Don't ask me! Because another sort of religious folk, that go to church regular enough and say their prayers, won't pay honest wages for honest work. How is a woman to live, that can't get more than a third or a quarter the value o' what she does? So they don't live; they die; and that's how it's goin' to be here."

A tear was glittering in Mrs. Marble's honest eyes, while at the same time she bit off her words as if they had been snap gingerbread.

"Is it so bad as that?" asked the visiter.

"Well, I don' know if you ought to call it, 'bad,'" said Mrs. Marble with a compound expression. "When livin' aint livin' no longer, then dyin' aint exactly dyin'. 'Taint the worst thing, anyhow; if it warnt for the folk left behind. If I was as ready as she is, I wouldn't mind goin', I guess. I s'pose she thinks of her child some."

"Would they receive a visit from me?"

"I don' know; but they don't have many. So long as they've been here, and that's more'n a year now, there aint a livin' soul as has called to ask after 'em. I guess they'd receive most anybody that come with a friend's face. Shall I ask 'em?"

"Not that , but if they will see me. I shall be much obliged."

Mrs. Marble laid down her work and tripped up stairs.

"Rotha," she said putting her head inside the door, "here's somebody to see you."

The girl started up and a colour came into her face, as she eagerly asked, "Who?"

"I don't know him from Adam. He's a sort of a missionary; they come round once in a while; and he wants to see you."

"Mother's gone out," said Rotha, her colour fading as quick as it had risen.

"May he come and see you? He's a nice lookin' feller."

"I don't care," said Rotha. "I don't want to see any missionary."

"O well! it won't hurt you to see this one, I guess."

A few minutes after came a tap at the door, and Rotha with a mingling of unwillingness and curiosity, opened it. What she saw was not exactly what she had expected; curiosity grew and unwillingness abated. She asked the stranger in with tolerable civility. He was nice looking, she confessed to herself, and very nicely dressed! not at all the rubbishy exterior which Rotha somehow associated with her idea of missionaries. He came in and sat down, quite like an ordinary man; which was soothing.

"Mother is out," Rotha announced shortly.

"It is so much the kinder of you to let me come in."

"I was not thinking of kindness," said Rotha.

"No? Of what then?

"Nothing in particular. You do not want kindness."

"I beg your pardon. Everybody wants it."

"Not kindness from everybody then."

"I do."

"But some people can do without it."

"Can they? What sort of people?"

"Why, a great many people. Those that have all they want already."

"I never saw any of that sort of people," said the stranger gravely.

"Pray, did you?"

"I thought I had."

"And you thought I was one of them?"

"I believe so."

"You were mistaken in me. Probably you were mistaken also in the other instances. Perhaps you were thinking of the people who have all that money can buy?"

"Perhaps," Rotha assented.

"Do you think money can buy all things?"

"No," said Rotha, beginning to recover her usual composure; "but the people who have all that money can buy, can do without the other things."

"What do you mean by the 'other things'?"

Rotha did not answer.

"I suppose kindness is one of them, as we started from that."

Rotha was still silent.

"Do you think you could afford to do without kindness?"

"If I had money enough," Rotha said bluntly.

"And what would you buy with money, that would be better?"

"O plenty!" said Rotha. "Yes, indeed! I would stop mother's working; and I would buy our old home, and we would go away from this place and never come back to it. I would have somebody to do the work that I do, too; and I would have a garden, and plenty of flowers, and plenty of everything."