THE OLD AND THE NEW.
Primrose Henry put on her camlet cloak and took several skeins of yarn
to one of the old ladies in the almshouses, to knit some stockings for
some other poor. Afterward she sauntered round with a guilty feeling.
She often ran in to see Phil and Andrew, and the one clerk always stared
at the radiant vision. She hesitated on the broad sill, then she opened
the door. There was a sort of counting room first, and that was vacant
now. Andrew was in the apartment beyond.
There was her promise to Rachel. Oh, what must she do!
"Philemon has gone," and Andrew glanced up with tender gravity as he
espied Primrose.
"Yes. I saw him. How is Aunt Lois, and Faith?"
"Very well." There was a different smile, now, a sense of amusement, and
a peculiar light in the eyes like relief.
"What is it?" Her heart-beat almost strangled her.
"Rachel was in this morning. And you cannot guess--she is to be married
presently."
"Married! And she cared so much for you," cried Primrose in
consternation.
Andrew colored and moved his head with a slow negative.
"No, it could not have been. Andrew--I wonder what kind of a wife you
would like?" turning her eyes away.
He could have reached out his hand and answered her with a clasp. But
there was another who loved her very much, who was young and gay and
full of ardent hopes. That would be better for the child.
"I shall not marry for years to come." His voice was very tranquil.
"There is my mother, and now we are so much to each other."
"And _she_ ought to be a Friend. You would like a Friend best, Andrew?
And no flighty young thing."
Was _she_ thinking of anything? Oh, she was too young and sweet. It
would be putting a butterfly in a cage.
"That would be better, certainly. When two people elect to spend their
lives together, it is best that they should have similar tastes and
desires."
"But a sweet and pretty one, Andrew. One like Miss Whiting, who is
intelligent and noble and reads a great many things and has a lovely
garden of flowers. I want you to be very, very happy, Andrew."
"Thank you, little one. Let me wish the same for you. A gallant young
lover with ambition, who can take his place in society and who will
enjoy with you the youthful pleasures that are so much to you, and then
grow older with you and come to ripe middle life and serene old age. I
think I could put my finger on someone----"
Primrose's sweet face was scarlet, and her eyes suddenly fluttered down
with tremulous lids.
"Thou hast been a dear little sister," going back to the Quaker speech.
"Thy happiness will be much to me; thy pain, if any happened to thee,
would be my pain. Thy prosperity will always be my prayer, for I think
thou wert born for sunniness and clear sailing and joy, with someone
bright and young like thyself."
"A little sister," she repeated softly. If it was that and only that,
her conscience would be clear.
"Yes. Didst thou ever doubt it?"
He raised his serene brown eyes and smiled. He was not one to carry all
his soul in his eyes.
"Nay, and I never shall." She pressed her lips to his forehead, which
was as fair as any girl's. How long it had been since he kissed her! He
might trust himself again on her wedding day.
"And now tell me about Rachel. We have queer talk of loves and such."
"He is a young man, a neighbor, the eldest of several sons. And Rachel
hath a nice dower. I hope all will go well."
She was infinitely sorry for Rachel at that moment.
"You will come soon and see us. I send love to Aunt Lois," and Primrose
turned.
"Fare thee well. Blessings attend thee, little one."
He sat there a long while, thinking how her mother had given up many
worldly things for the man she loved. Primrose would do it, too, he said
stoutly to himself, if she had loved. It was best this way. The sunshine
did not rise up from the brown earth, but shone down out of the radiant
blue sky.
Primrose Henry went home with a light heart. And that evening Allin
Wharton had his answer.
Madam Wetherill shook her head, but said smilingly, "If you take the
young woman you must take the old one, too. I will never give up
Primrose."
The girl's soft arms were around her neck and the sweet young voice,
with a rapture of emotion, cried, "Oh, madam, am I indeed so dear to
you?"
* * * * *
The world goes on and the stories of life are repeated, but to each one
comes that supreme taste of personal joy and rapture that is alone for
itself; that is new, no matter how many times it may have been lived
over.
There was a long, delightful engagement of the young people, who waited
for Allin to take his degree, and his father felt justly proud of his
standing. There was all the reckless happiness of two young people in
that wonderful joyousness of youth when one apes sorrows for the sake of
being comforted, indulges in dainty disagreements so that they can
repent with fascinating sweetness, and are inconsequent, unreasonable,
entrancing, and delightful, and gayety of any kind seems good, so that
it goes hand and hand with love. Primrose danced and laughed through her
April years, and then came May with bloom and more steadiness, and then
peerless, magnificent June.
"I am but a sad trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill.
"Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober Henry
blood in me?"
"Nay," was the answer. "We never find fault with the rose because it
does not bear an ear of corn or a stalk of grain. And yet so great a
thing as an oak tree is content to bear a small acorn."
And while they were being married and rejoicing in Phil's sturdy little
boy and dainty, golden-haired baby girl called Primrose, old
Philadelphia was making rapid strides. Indeed, in Washington's language,
the United Colonies had now "the opportunity to become a respectable
nation," and it came back to the city where it had first uttered its
lusty young cry and protest. In May of 1787, in the old State House,
assembled the delegates who were to frame a Constitution that would
stand the wear and tear of time. Their four months' work has come down
to us written in letters of imperishable glory, that were not to be too
large for the Thirteen Colonies, and large enough for any multiple the
nation might come to use in the course of its existence.
For the tardy treaty of peace had been signed, and though there were
much discussion and various opinions, such as children of one family
often have, it was all settled. And the next Fourth of July had a grand
procession, for the times, and a ship of state was dragged proudly
through the streets on a float, with some pretty boys for midshipmen;
the great judges in their official robes, soldiers, and civilians, and,
side by side, walked Andrew Henry and Philemon Henry, brothers indeed in
all the wide and varied interests that go to make up brotherhood and not
a little human love. The bells of Christ Church, that had once been
taken down and hidden from vandal hands, were rehung, and rung at
intervals all day long, while flags floated and bonfires blazed at
night, and a grand supper was eaten by the dignitaries at Bush Hill.
While other and larger matters were being discussed, a President
nominated, elected, and inaugurated, Philadelphia, like a prudent
householder, was attending to her own affairs. When Washington passed
through the city on his way to New York to receive the grandest
compliment of the nation, she again paid him all honor in his reception.
The beautiful city with its greenery and quiet, of which William Penn
had dreamed, and in many of whose footsteps the renowned Franklin had
followed, had gone through curious changes, and was putting on new
aspects with every year. But "Fairemount," with its homes that were to
be handed down in story a hundred years later; Stenton, with its grand
aspects; Lansdowne, with its woods and waters; the Logan House, the
Shippens', and old Mount Pleasant, and so on stretching up the banks of
the Schuylkill were to be left beautiful and tranquil and free from the
thought of business invasion. For Old Philadelphia is like a dream, and
there will always linger about it the youthful tenderness of William
Penn's plan and his life story.
And then, to the chagrin of New York, came the transference of the
Capital to Philadelphia. She had perked up and brightened up, stretched
out her wharves, filled up her low places, cleared her streets of
rubbish, and built rows of houses, had her library and her university,
and it seemed as if she had been getting ready for this accession within
her borders, the "Republican Court," as it was to be called.
A plain enough house, on High Street, it was, with a few fine old trees
about, where many famous decisions were shaped by wisdom that seems
wonderful to us now. When Congress was in session there were many
gayeties, dinners, private balls, suppers, and dances for the young
people, and then, to its ruler, the retirement of Mount Vernon.
With it all a sort of serene steadiness and refinement that never
allowed pleasures to degenerate into a maddening whirl. A thrift and
prudence, too, that had become a solid, underlying strand in the
character of the city.
The bell still rang out on market mornings and mistresses were not above
visiting the long, clean spaces, though there was much fault-finding
about the dearness of things, and Mrs. Adams complained of the
loneliness of Bush Hill, though she was afterward to be comforted by
being the first lady of the land at Washington, the final Capital.
Primrose Wharton was a pretty young wife and the mother of a
golden-haired little girl when she next saw "Lady Washington," as she
was often called. She had settled into a gracious, but still piquant,
matron, and she and Allin enjoyed the theater and still dearly loved a
dance. Madam Wetherill was yet a handsome and stately dame, and "foolish
over the little one," she said.
There were many memories of the dismal winter of Valley Forge renewed
when Mrs. Washington met some of the brave soldiers. And among them all
there was no finer nor more attractive figure than that of Andrew Henry,
now arrived at its full manliness. The Quaker costume became him as no
other would, though the Continental attire was distinctive and well
calculated to show off a man. Fair and fresh and strong, yet with
well-bred gentleness and a cultivated mind, he was often singled out at
the receptions, and more than one admiring girl would have gladly
enacted Bessy Wardour's romance.
Was there any story in the eyes that gave a glimpse of the great heart
back of them? tender, sweet, brave eyes? Sometimes Primrose Wharton
thought so, and all her pulses stood still in awesome silence. She was
very happy. She and Allin had had an April fling and had settled into
May bloom, but--could anything have been different--better? Not for her,
but for him. A little sister! Is she that?
He was very happy, now, in a larger house, with a study and book
shelves, his mother a tender and tranquil woman, Faith a contented
housekeeper with a servant, and hardly knowing which to adore the most,
Polly Henry's merry madcap household, or Primrose Wharton's sunny-haired
daughter.
The only thing Philemon Henry would undo are those years that he was
hardly answerable for.
"Of course it was not your fault," Polly declares in her impetuous,
fond, and justifying way. "I think it really braver, for it requires
more courage to own that a man has been wrong, than to go along in a
straight path already made for him. And I fell in love with you as a
redcoat, I really did, and fought with myself in the nights when I was
alone. For, of course, I couldn't have told Prim; she would have crossed
me quite out of her books. And I wouldn't have dared hint such a thing
to anybody. Now, truly, was I not a silly girl?"
A fond kiss is her answer.
If the war made enemies it also made brothers, informed with larger
wisdom.
A hundred and more years ago! Yet there are storied places that will
never die out and the old bell of freedom has clanged many a peal, and
the State House had many a Pilgrim. Truly there are numberless worthies
in the great beyond, who have left behind imperishable memories even in
a city that has grown anew more than once, and added beauty to beauty.
THE END.
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