Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining. Kate Trimble Sharber

Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining - Kate Trimble Sharber


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turning back to her.

      "Adopt an ancestor?"

      Her voice was trembling with excitement, which was not brought about by the annoyance of my chatter, and as I saw that she was nodding her head vigorously, I calmed down at once and regretted my precipitate action, for the doctor had said that any unusual exertion or change of routine would end her.

      "I only meant that I'd prefer these to grandfather and Uncle Lancelot," I explained soothingly, but her anxiety only increased.

      "Which one?" she demanded in a squeaky voice which fairly bubbled with a "bully-for-you" sound. "Which one, Grace?"

      "Him," I answered.

      "They're all hims!" she screamed impatiently.

      "I mean the artist."

      At this she tried to struggle to her feet, then settled back in exhaustion and drew a deep breath.

      "Come here! Come here quick!" she panted weakly.

      "Yes, 'um."

      She wiped away a tear, in great shame, for she was not a weeping woman.

      "Thank God!" she said angrily. "Thank God! That awful problem is settled at last! I knew I couldn't have a moment's peace a-dying until I had decided."

      "Decided what?" I gasped in dismay, for I was afraid from the look in her eyes that she was "seeing things." "Shall I call mother, or—some one?"

      "Don't you dare!" she challenged. "Don't you leave this room, miss. It's you that I have business with!"

      "But I haven't done a thing!" I plead, as weak all of a sudden as she was.

      "It's not what you've done, but what you are," she exclaimed. "You're the only member of this family that has an idea which isn't framed and hung up! Now, listen! I'm going to leave you something—something very precious. Do you know about that artist over there—James Mackenzie Christie—our really famous ancestor—my great-uncle, who has been dead these sixty years, but will always be immortal? Do you know about him?"

      "Yes—I know!"

      "Well, I'm going to leave—those letters—those terrible love-letters to you!"

      I drew back, as if she'd pointed a pistol straight at me.

      "But they're the skeleton in the closet," I repeated, having heard it expressed that way all my life.

      She was angry for a moment, then she began laughing reminiscently and rocking herself backward and forward slowly in her chair. Her face was as detached and crazy as Ophelia's over her botany lesson, when she gets on your nerves with her: "There is pansies, that's for thoughts," and so forth.

      "Yes, he left a skeleton—what was considered a skeleton in those days—Uncle James—our family's great man—but such a skeleton! People now would understand how wonderful it is—with its carved ivory bones—and golden joints and ruby eyes! You little fool!"

      "Why, I'm proud!" I denied, backing back, all a-tremble. "I'll love those letters, Aunt Patricia."

      "You'd better!"

      "I'll be sure to," I reiterated, but her face suddenly softened, and she caught up my hand in her yellow claw. She studied the palm for a moment.

      "You'll understand them," she sighed. "Poor little, heart-strong Christie!"

      And, whether her words were prophetic or delirious, she had told the truth. I have understood them.

      She gave them over into my keeping that day; and the next morning we found her settled back among her pillows, imagining that all her brothers and sisters were flying above the mantlepiece and that the Chinese vase was in danger. Another day passed, and on Sunday afternoon all the wardrobe shelves yielded up their black bonnets.

      I was not distressed, but I was lonely, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression over my spirits.

      "I believe I'll amuse myself by reading over those old letters," I suggested to mother, as time dragged wearily before the crowd began to gather. But she uttered a shriek, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression over its tone.

      "Grace, you amaze me!" she said.

      "She's really a most American child!" Cousin Pollie pronounced severely, having just finished doing the British Isles.

      After this it seemed that years and years and years of the twentieth century passed—all in a heap. I awoke one morning to find myself set in my ways. Most women, in the formation of their happiness, are willing to let nature take its course, then there are others who are not content with this, but demand a postgraduate course. I, unfortunately, belonged to this latter class. Growing up I was fairly normal, not idle enough at school to forecast a brilliant career in any of the arts, nor studious enough to deserve a prediction of mediocre plodding the rest of my life; but after school came the deluge. I was restless, shabby and single—no one of which mother could endure in her daughter.

      So I was a disappointment to her, while the rest of the tribe gloated. The name, Grace, with all appurtenances and emoluments accruing thereto, availed nothing. I was a failure.

      "My pet abomination begins with C," I chattered savagely to myself one afternoon in June, a suitable number of years after the above-mentioned christening, as I made my way to my own private desk in the office of The Oldburgh Herald, pondering family affairs in my heart as I went. "Of course this is at the bottom of the whole agony! They just can't bear to see me turn out to be a newspaper reporter instead of Mrs. Guilford Blake. And I hate everything that they love best—cities, clothes, clubs, culture, civilities, conventions, chiffons!"

      I was thinking of Cousin Pollie's comment when she first saw a feature story in the Herald signed with my name.

      "Is the girl named Grace or Disgrace?" she had asked. "Not since America was a wilderness has the name of any Christie woman appeared outside the head-lines of the society column!"

      "The whole connection has raised its eyebrows," I laughed, when I met the owner and publisher of the paper down in his private office the next day. He was an old friend of the family, having fought beside my revered grandfather, and he had taken me into the family circle of the Herald more out of sympathy than need.

      "That's all right! It's better to raise an eyebrow than to raise hell!" he laughed back.

      But on the June afternoon I have in mind, when I hurried up-town thinking over my pet abominations beginning with C, I was still a fairly civilized being. I lived at home with mother in the old house, for one thing, instead of in an independent apartment, after the fashion of emancipated women—and I still wore Guilford Blake's heirloom scarab ring.

      "Aren't your nerves a little on edge just now, Grace, from the scene this morning?" something kept whispering in my ears in an effort to tame my savagery. It was the soft virtuous personality of my inner consciousness, which, according to science, was Grandfather Moore. "You'll be all right, my dear, as soon as you make up your mind to do the square thing about this matter which is agitating you. And of course you are going to do the square thing. Money isn't all there is."

      "Now, that's all rot, parson!" Uncle Lancelot, in the other hemisphere of my brain, denied stoutly. "Don't listen to him, Grace! You can't go on living this crocheted life, and money will bring freedom."

      "He's a sophist, Grace," came convincingly across the wires.

      "He's a purist, Grace," flashed back.

      "Hush! Hush! What do two old Kilkenny cats of ancestors know about my problems?" I cried fiercely. Then, partly to drown out their clamor, I kept on: "My pet abominations in several syllables are—checkered career—contiguous choice—just because his mother and mine lived next door when they were girls—circumscribed capabilities—"

      "And the desire of your heart begins with H," Uncle Lancelot said triumphantly. "You want Happy Humanness—different brand and harder to get than Human


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