Lisa

“ Lisa fretted more than any one else against enforced economies, but, after all, managed to enjoy herself by taking on new duties and new pleasures. Her kindergarten studies gave her plenty of mental application, and she also became interested in a church guild, talking with a little womanly air about her “girls” and their needs. There was less friction between her and Persis now, for the latter was obliged to concede that Lisa, as a society lady, must have more latitude than a school-girl, and enjoyed nothing more than to see her handsome sister arrayed for a dance or a theatre party. ”

“ Hush, dear Phil; Lisa is the most unselfish creature in the world. Has she not given you up to me? And for the pleasure she supposed it would give you to have money of your own earning, she was willing to part with even a thing so precious as a picture painted by you for her. Do not question her motive for a moment. Take the money, and buy her something useful. Come, we will go get a pretty work-basket; she will find it even more to her taste than a picture. ”

“ I am not the enemy you think me. There is no sacrifice I would not make for you. You know so little of the world that perhaps you hardly know how much a man of good birth sacrifices when he takes a wife who can bring him nothing but his heart’s desire. Try and understand that, Lisa. I love you too well to count the cost—too well to care that marriage with you cuts me off from all chance of marrying a woman whose money would quadruple my fortune and buy me a peerage. I could make such a marriage as that to-morrow if I choose, Lisa. ”

“ Don’t I fly into the kitchen when Prue is out, and with real housewifely mind make gingerbread and ‘other country messes,’ like the neat-handed Phyllis in L’Allegro? And doesn’t papa always send me to pay bills when he cannot go himself? And—why, mamma, I’m not queenly like Lisa, nor seraphic like Mellicent. I am just plain me, the least good-looking of your trio. I am the mortal, Lisa the queen, Mellicent the fairy. But a mortal can love you just as hard; can’t she, mamma?”
“Very hard,” laughed her mother, as a kindling glance of Persis’s eye showed signs of a second energetic attack. ”

“ She would lie down here and die with Mr. Grubb and the babies and the umbrella. Atlantic and Pacific would be sure to come back; nobody who had ever known it could live without this place. Miss Mary would find them. She would make everything right. The mere thought of Mistress Mary brought a strange peace into poor Lisa’s over-wrought, distraught mind.
She opened the closet door. It was as dainty and neat as Mistress Mary herself, and the mere sight of it bred order in Lisa’s thoughts. On the top of a pile of envelopes lay the sewing-picture that Atlantic had spoiled that day. ”

“ And Lisa buried her head in her hands. “I hate him!” she whispered.
“No, dear. I understand. Ah, my darling, I am glad your best self is aroused. He must be a good man who could make you respond to the best within you.”
“He is good,” answered Lisa, in a little breathless way. “He is too good; but, oh, mamma, he doesn’t—oh, I don’t know.” And then from a full heart she told her mother all that had occurred which bore upon her acquaintance with Mr. Danforth.
“Well, my dear one, I am so glad you have come to me with all this. No one is a truer friend than your mother,” Mrs. Holmes assured her. ”

“ And now, Si’ora, and la Zia, tell me that you are satisfied with me, and that what I am glad to do for you will be in some sense an atonement for—what I did that night.”
Lisa burst into a flood of tears.
“You are too generous; you do too much,” she cried. “He would never have done so much, not even if he had been rich. ”

“ The general plan will be to train Lisa's hands and speak to her senses in every possible way, since her organs of sense are within your reach, and those of thought are out of it. The hardest lesson for such a child to learn is the subordination of its erratic will to our normal ones. Lisa's affection is the most hopeful thing about her, and encourages me more than anything else. ”

“ The princess shook her head.
"No," she said, "I shan't be at dinner tonight."
Charlotte looked at her and then broke out into protest: "No, no, you mustn't go. Let Raimundo go, if he must, but not you. Don't desert me, Lisa, because I have the misfortune to be married to a man who does not understand. Oh, to think that anything should have happened in my house that has hurt your feelings! I shall never forgive Dan—never! But don't go—for my sake, Lisa."
"It's for your sake I'm going, my dear." ”

“ There comes a shout, "Boat ahoy!" Lisa's heart beats wildly, for it is her father's voice. Quick as thought, the sailor pulls to the place where the sound came from. And there Lisa found her father clinging to a rock. ”

“ He was always there to draw my arm through his, and offer me the conventional attentions that became so delightful at length. We never spoke of love, Lisa; we never talked sentiment at one another, but it was impossible to deny that—that—”
“You loved one another,” said Lisa, seriously. She put on no arch looks, affected no jests—this was a grave subject to her.
“But we never said so, Lisa,” said Blanche, quickly. “We never said so; it was enough for us to be together. One morning I received a note from Helen Clarke, begging me go to her as she was very ill. ”

“ HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW
‘Now, Rhoda dear,’ said Mistress Mary one day, when Lisa had become somewhat wonted to her new surroundings, ‘you are to fold your hands respectfully in your lap and I will teach you things,—things which you in your youth and inexperience have not thought about as yet. The other girls may listen, too, and catch the drippings of my wisdom. I really know little about the education of defective children, but, thank heaven, I can put two and two together, as Susan Nipper said. ”

“ I thought I had never seen a more beautiful creature than my sister Lisa, when, on her way to Treherne Court, she came home for a day.
Home? I forget, it is not her home now. How strange this must have been to her—if she thought about it. Possibly she did not; being never given to sentiment. And, though with us she was not the least altered, it was amusing to see how, to everybody else, she appeared quite the married lady; even with Mrs. Granton, who, happening to call that day, was delighted to see her, and seems not to cherish the smallest resentment in the matter of “my Colin.” ”

“ The countess strolled into the garden, and, fancying that she heard a whispered conversation proceeding from the little gate leading into the Rue Arc en Ciel, she turned her footsteps in that direction.
"Is that you, Lisa?" asked the countess, rightly suspecting that the muslin dress, fluttering in the moonlight, could belong to none other than the daughter of the worthy Mme. Ledru, and that she was about to surprise a tête-à-tête between the coquettish Lisa, and her gardener, the enamored François. ”

“ All of the women, except Lisa, were coarse peasant women, with stout arms and legs, broad backs, and but little inferior in physical strength to men. Lisa, on the contrary, was more delicate, more thin and pale than she had ever been before. She worked steadily, neither turning to the right nor to the left, not even when one of the women pointed to her and uttered a jeer, which was greeted with coarse laughter. ”

“ This was Lisa, the pretty young hostess of the village inn, who having once received attentions herself from the handsome Elvino, had felt slighted when he fixed his affections upon Amina, whose beauty and sweet winning ways had made her the belle of the village; and now, as she mingled with the merry throng on the green, she was filled with envy for the happy fate of the bride-elect, and could do nothing but make spiteful remarks about her rival, declaring her to be a mere nobody, and not worthy of so great a piece of fortune. ”

“ She dresses herself neatly now, braids her own hair, and ties her ribbons prettily. Edith has kept up her gymnastics, and even taught her to row and play nine-pins. For the first time in my life, Rhoda, I can fully understand a mother’s passion for a crippled, or a blind, or a defective child. I suppose it was only Lisa’s desperate need that drew us to her at first. We all loved and pitied her, even at the very height of her affliction; but now she fascinates me. I know no greater pleasure than the daily miracle of her growth. ”

“ She hardly knew why, but Mistress Mary’s wet eyes tortured her; she made an ejaculation of discomfort and resentment, and taking the corner of her apron wiped her new friend’s face softly, gazing at her with a dumb sorrow until the smile came back; then she took out her string and her doll and played by herself as contentedly as usual.
It was thus that heaven began to dawn on poor Marm Lisa. At first only a physical heaven: temporary separation from Atlantic and Pacific; a chair to herself in a warm, sunshiny room; beautiful, bright, incomprehensible things hanging on the walls ”

“ This grand “show” house has no pretensions to the character of “nest,” or “home.” To use the word in it seems half-ridiculous, or pathetic; though Lisa does not find it so. Stately and easy, our girl moves through these magnificent rooms, and enjoys her position as if she were born to it. She shows good taste and good feeling too—treats meek, prosy, washed-out Lady Augusta Treherne, and little, fussy, infirm Sir William, whose brown scratch-wig and gold spectacles rarely appear out of his own room, with unfailing respect and consideration. They are mightily proud of her, as they need to be. ”

“ There will be plenty of traces of their journey, for once seen they are never forgotten. Nobody but a hero would think of kidnapping them, and nobody but an idiot would expect a ransom for them!"
"I hope you didn’t upbraid Mrs. Grubb," said Mary, divining from Rhoda’s clouded brow that her interview had not been a pleasant one. "You know our only peaceful way of rescuing Lisa from her hold is to make a friend of her, and convert her to our way of thinking. Was she much disturbed about the children?" ”

“ Lisa was looking worse when we went back to her at the hotel, but Aunt Lil didn’t notice that either. She is always nice to Lisa, but she doesn’t like her, and it is only when you really care for people that you observe changes in them when you are busy thinking of your own affairs.
I advised Lisa to rest in her own room, instead of shopping, as she would have the long motor run later in the day, and a night journey; but she was dressed and seemed to want to go out. ”

“ Lisa was wilful; the twins had a moral relapse; the young minister came again, and, oh, the interminable length of time he held Rhoda’s hand at parting! Is it not strange that, with the whole universe to choose from, his predatory eye must fall upon my blooming Rhoda? I wonder whether the fragrance she will shed upon that one small parsonage will be as widely disseminated as the sweetness she exhales here, day by day, among our “little people all in a row”? ”

“ I should like to see her”—with a moody look. “Is she handsome, much handsomer than I?”
“There are some people who would think you the lovelier. Beauty is not all in all, Lisa. We love because we love.”
[Pg 177]
“‘We love because we love,’” she repeated slowly. “Ah, that is what makes it so hard. We cannot help ourselves. Love is destiny.”
“Your destiny was in the past, Lisa. It came to you at Burano.”
“No, no, no. I never cared for him as I have cared for you. I was happier in that one day on the Lido, and that one evening in Venice, than in all my life with him. ”

“ And now the flower of heroes must he be
Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily,
So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly.
Young Lisa saw this hero in the king;
And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring
Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne
Was lily-odored ”

“ These were some of the questions that assailed Marm Lisa’s mind, but in so incoherent a form that she left them, with all other questions, unanswered. Atlantic and Pacific were curious, too, but other passions held greater sway with them; for when the children disappeared and the music ceased, they called loudly for more, and usually scratched and pinched Marm Lisa as they were lifted down from the fence; not seeing daily how anybody else could be held answerable for the cessation of the entertainment, and scratches and pinches being the only remedial agencies that suggested themselves. ”

“ Poor, dear Twenty, who never will believe that Seventy could have been “the same.” But I forgot to sigh for this, so concerned I was at this breaking of Lisa’s reticence, that enviable flowery armour of young womanhood. So I waited, folding and refolding my Mechlin, until I had won her confidence. ”

“ Slowly, reluctantly, painfully, the swarm settled itself into lines in conformance with some hidden law or principle unknown to Marm Lisa. Then, when comparative order had been evolved from total chaos, the most beautiful angel of all would appear in a window; and the reason she always struck the onlookers as a being of beauty and majesty was partly, perhaps, because her head seemed to rise from a cloud of white (which was in reality only a fichu of white mull) , and partly because she always wore a slender fillet of steel to keep back the waves of her fair hair. ”

“ S. Cora Grubb without rebellion or violence or treachery! Why, dear girls, such a task, if it did not appeal to one on the moral, certainly would on the intellectual, side. Marm Lisa will teach us more in a year, you may be sure, than we shall teach her. Let us keep a record of our experiments; drop all materials that seem neither to give her sensations nor wake her discriminative power, and choose others that speak to her more clearly. ”