gone. I had something of a time to get it. The old fellow was as
obstinate as a mule when he saw that my heart was set on it. Mother
hadn't a thing old enough--I ransacked everywhere--if I'd had time to go
to grandmother's I might have done better. She's ninety-three, you know,
and has some of her grandmother's things. This thing isn't a beauty to
look at, but it's old, and that's the chief consideration. Extreme old
age will compensate for its ugliness; which is an extenuation that I
haven't for mine. I'm going to-morrow."
"Oh, I want to see it," she exclaimed, not regarding his last remark.
"That's all you care," he said, disappointedly. "I thought you would be
sorry that I'm going."
"You know I am," she returned penitently, picking at the yellow cord.
"Perhaps when I am two hundred years old you'll be as anxious to look at
me as you are to look at that!"
"Oh, Hollis, I do thank you so."
"But you must promise me two things or you can't have it!"
"I'll promise twenty."
"Two will do until next time. First, will you go and see my mother as
soon as you get well, and go often?"
"That's too easy; I want to do something _hard_ for you," she answered
earnestly.
"Perhaps you will some day, who knows? There are hard enough things to do
for people, I'm finding out. But, have you promised?"
"Yes, I have promised."
"And I know you keep your promises. I'm sure you won't forget. Poor
mother isn't happy; she's troubled."
"About you?"
"No, about herself, because she isn't a Christian."
"That's enough to trouble anybody," said Marjorie, wisely.
"Now, one more promise in payment. Will you write to me every two weeks?"
"Oh, I couldn't," pleaded Marjorie.
"Now you've found something too hard to do for me," he said,
reproachfully.
"Oh, I'll do it, of course; but I'm afraid."
"You'll soon get over that. You see mother doesn't write often, and
father never does, and I'm often anxious about them, and if you write and
tell me about them twice a month I shall be happier. You see you are
doing something for me."
"Yes, thank you. I'll do the best I can. But I can't write like your
cousin Helen," she added, jealously.
"No matter. You'll do; and you will be growing older and constantly
improving and I shall begin to travel for the house by and by and my
letters will be as entertaining as a book of travels."
"Will you write to me? I didn't think of that."
"Goosie!" he laughed, giving her Linnet's pet name. "Certainly I will
write as often as you do, and you mustn't stop writing until your last
letter has not been answered for a month."
"I'll remember," said Marjorie, seriously. "But I wish I could do
something else. Did you have to pay money for it?"
Marjorie was accustomed to "bartering" and that is the reason that she
used the expression "pay money."
"Well, yes, something," he replied, pressing his lips together.
He was angry with the shoemaker about that bargain yet.
"How much? I want to pay you."
"Ladies never ask a gentleman such a question when they make them a
present," he said, laughing as he arose. "Imagine Helen asking me how
much I paid for the set of books I gave her on her birthday."
The tears sprang to Marjorie's eyes. Had she done a dreadful thing that
Helen would not think of doing?
Long afterward she learned that he gave for the plate the ten dollars
that his father gave him for a "vacation present."
"Good-bye, Goosie, keep both promises and don't run up a ladder again
until you learn how to run down."
But she could not speak yet for the choking in her throat.
"You have paid me twice over with those promises," he said. "I am glad
you broke the old yellow pitcher."
So was she even while her heart was aching. Her fingers held the parcel
tightly; what a hearts-ease it was! It had brought her peace of mind that
was worth more hard promises than she could think of making.
"He said his father's great-grandfather had eaten out of that plate over
in Holland and he had but one more left to bequeath to his little
grandson."
"I'm glad the great-grandfather didn't break it," said Marjorie.
Hollis would not disturb her serenity by remarking that the shoemaker
_might_ have added a century to the age of his possession; it looked two
hundred years old, anyway.
"Good-bye, again, if you don't get killed next time you fall you may live
to see me again. I'll wear a linen coat and smell of cheese and smoke a
pipe too long for me to light myself by that time--when I come home from
Germany."
"Oh, don't," she exclaimed, in a startled voice.
"Which? The coat or the cheese or the pipe."
"I don't care about the cheese or the coat--"
"You needn't be afraid about the pipe; I promised mother to-day that I
would never smoke or drink or play cards."
"That's good," said Marjorie, contentedly.
"And so she feels safe about me; safer than I feel about myself, I
reckon. But it _is_ good-bye this time. I'll tell Helen what a little
mouse and goose you are!"
"Hollis! _Hollis!_" shouted a gruff voice, impatiently.
"Aye, aye, sir," Hollis returned. "But I must say good-bye to your mother
and Linnet."
Instead of giving him a last look she was giving her first look to her
treasure. The first look was doubtful. It was not half as pretty as the
pitcher. It was not very large and there were innumerable tiny cracks
interlacing each other, there were little raised figures on the broad rim
and a figure in the centre, the colors were buff and blue. But it was a
treasure, twofold more a treasure than the yellow pitcher, for it was
twice as old and had come from Holland. The yellow pitcher had only come
from England. Miss Prudence would be satisfied that she had not hidden
the pitcher to escape detection, and perhaps her friend might like this
ancient plate a great deal better and be glad of what had befallen the
pitcher. But suppose Miss Prudence did believe all this time that she had
hidden the broken pieces and meant, never to tell! At that, she could not
forbear squeezing her face into the pillow and dropping a few very
sorrowful tears. Still she was glad, even with a little contradictory
faint-heartedness, for Hollis would write to her and she would never lose
him again. And she could _do_ something _for_ him, something hard.
Her mother, stepping in again, before the tears were dried upon her
cheek, listened to the somewhat incoherent story of the naughty thing she
had done and the splendid thing Hollis had done, and of how she had paid
him with two promises.
Mrs. West examined the plate critically. "It's old, there's no sham about
it. I've seen a few old things and I know. I shouldn't wonder if he gave
five dollars for it"
"Five dollars!" repeated Marjorie in affright "Oh, I hope not."
"Well, perhaps not, but it is worth it and more, too, to Miss Prudence's
friend."
"And I'll keep my promises," said Marjorie's steadfast voice.
"H'm," ejaculated her mother. "I rather think Hollis has the best of it."
"That depends upon me," said wise little Marjorie.
VI.
MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE.
"She was made for happy thoughts."--_Mary Howlet._
I wonder if there is anything, any little thing I should have said, that
tries a woman more than the changes in her own face, a woman that has
just attained two score and--an unmarried woman. Prudence Pomeroy was
discovering these changes in her own face and, it may be undignified, it
may be unchristian even, but she was tried. It was upon the morning of
her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out
upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance.
It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some
years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim
determination this birthday morning. It was a weakness, it may be, but we
all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.
She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself
did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white
curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with
her hand-glass held before her resolute face. It was something to go
through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of
birthdays past: but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang,
locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself
for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and
kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time. But that was
before the door was bolted. She gazed long at the reflection of the face
that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest
creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate
two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there
were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did
not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared
at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the
artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but
clearly defined--a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood,
a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above
her eyes--she had not discerned that, at first--there was a lack of
fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to
her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there
was a yellowness--she might as well give it boldly its right name--at the
temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a
positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than
herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there
was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her
chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was
the presence of age--her full forty years. And her hair! It was certainly
not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out
its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably thinner; she was
certainly slightly bald about the temples, and white hairs were
straggling in one after another, not attempting to conceal themselves. A
year ago she had selected them from the mass of black and cut them short,
but now they were appearing too fast for the scissors. It was a sad face,
almost a gloomy one, that she was gazing into: for the knowledge that her
forty years had done their work in her face as surely, and perhaps not as
sweetly as in her life had come to her with a shock. She was certainly
growing older and the signs of it were in her face, nothing could hide
it, even her increasing seriousness made it more apparent; not only
growing older, but growing old, the girls would say. Twenty years ago,
when she first began to write that birthday record, she had laughed at
forty and called it "old" herself. As she laid the hand-glass aside with
a half-checked sigh, her eyes fell upon her hand and wrist; it was
certainly losing its shapeliness; the fingers were as tapering as ever
and the palm as pink, but--there was a something that reminded her of
that plate of old china. She might be like a bit of old china, but she
was not ready to be laid upon the shelf, not even to be paid a price for
and be admired! She was in the full rush of her working days. Awhile ago
her friends had all addressed her as "Prudence," but now, she was not
aware when it began or how, she was "Miss Prudence" to every one who was
not within the nearest circle of intimacy. Not "Prudie" or "Prue" any
more. She had not been "Prudie" since her father and mother died, and not
"Prue" since she had lost that friend twenty years ago.
In ten short years she would be fifty years old, and fifty was half a
century: old enough to be somebody's grandmother. Was she not the bosom
friend of somebody's grandmother to-day? Laura Harrowgate, her friend
and schoolmate, not one year her senior, was the grandmother of
three-months-old Laura. Was it possible that she herself did not belong
to "the present generation," but to a generation passed away? She had no
daughter to give place to, as Laura had, no husband to laugh at her
wrinkles and gray hairs, as Laura had, and to say, "We're growing old
together." If it were only "together" there would be no sadness in it.
But would she want it to be such a "together" as certain of her friends
shared?
Laura Harrowgate was a grandmother, but still she would gush over that
plate from Holland two centuries old, buy a bracket for it and exhibit it
to her friends. A hand-glass did not make _her_ dolorous. A few years
since she would have rebelled against what the hand-glass revealed; but,
to-day, she could not rebel against God's will; assuredly it _was_ his
will for histories to be written in faces. Would she live a woman's life
and adorn herself with a baby's face? Had not her face been moulded by
her life? Had she stopped thinking and working ten years ago she might,
to-day, have looked at the face she looked at ten years ago. No, she
demurred, not a baby's face, but--then she laughed aloud at herself--was
not her fate the common fate of all? Who, among her friends, at forty
years of age, was ever taken, or mistaken, for twenty-five or thirty? And
if _she_ were, what then? Would her work be worth more to the world?
Would the angels encamp about her more faithfully or more lovingly? And,
then, was there not a face "marred"? Did he live his life upon the earth
with no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to
grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must
grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she
laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself
by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken
life hard. Another glance into the glass revealed another fact: her neck
was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a
suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars
and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide
Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she _was_ coming to
a hard place in her life. She had believed--oh, how much in vain!--that
she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here
there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it
was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The
acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something. She
remembered the remark of an old lady, who was friendless and poor: "The
hardest time of my life was between forty and forty-five; I had to accept
several bitter facts that after became easier to bear." Prudence Pomeroy
looked at herself, then looked up to God and accepted, submissively, even
cheerfully, his fact that she had begun to grow old, and then, she
dressed herself for a walk and with her sun-umbrella and a volume of
poems started out for her tramp along the road and through the fields to
find her little friend Marjorie. The china plate and pathetic note last
night had moved her strangely. Marjorie was in the beginning of things.
What was her life worth if not to help such as Marjorie live a worthier
life than her own two score years had been?
A face flushed with the long walk looked in at the window upon Marjorie
asleep. The child was sitting near the open window in a wooden rocker
with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground
sprinkled over with butterflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown
back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting
in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had
seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about
her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling
had abated but the discolored spot was plainly visible; her lips were
slightly parted, her cheeks were rosy; if this were the "beginning of
things" it was a very sweet and peaceful beginning.
Entering the parlor with a soft tread Miss Prudence divested herself of
hat, gloves, duster and umbrella, and, taking a large palm leaf fan from
the table, seated herself near the sleeper, gently waving the fan to and
fro as a fly lighted on Marjorie's hands or face. On the window seat were
placed a goblet half filled with lemonade, a small Bible, a book that had
the outward appearance of being a Sunday-school library book, and a copy
in blue and gold of the poems of Mrs. Hemans. Miss Prudence remembered
her own time of loving Mrs. Hemans and had given this copy to Marjorie;
later, she had laid her aside for Longfellow, as Marjorie would do by and
by, and, in his turn, she had given up Longfellow for Tennyson and Mrs.
Browning, as, perhaps, Marjorie would never do. She had brought Jean
Ingelow with her this morning to try "Brothers and a Sermon" and the
"Songs of Seven" with Marjorie. Marjorie was a natural elocutionist; Miss
Prudence was afraid of spoiling her by unwise criticism. The child must
thoroughly appreciate a poem, forget herself, and then her rendering
would be more than Miss Prudence with all her training could perfectly
imitate.
"Don't teach her too much; she'll want to be an actress," remonstrated
Marjorie's father after listening to Marjorie's reading one day.
Miss Prudence laughed and Marjorie looked perplexed.
"Marjorie is to comfort with her reading as some do by singing," she
replied. "Wait till you are old and she reads the Bible to you!"
"She reads to me now," he said. "She read 'The Children of the Lord's
Supper' to me last night."
Miss Prudence moved the fan backward and forward and studied the
sleeping, innocent face. I had almost written "sweet" again; I can
scarcely think of her face, as it was then, without writing sweet. It
would be long, Miss Prudence mused, before lines and creases intruded
here and there in that smooth forehead, and in the tinted cheeks that
dimpled at the least provocation; but life would bring them in time, and
they would add beauty if there were no bitterness nor hardness in them.
If the Holy Spirit dwelt in the temple of the body were not the lines
upon the face his handwriting? She knew more than one old face that
was growing more attractive with each year of life.
The door was pushed open and Mrs. West's broad shoulders and motherly
face appeared. Miss Prudence smiled and laid her finger on her lips and,
smiling, too, the mother moved away. Linnet, in her kitchen apron, and
with the marks of the morning's baking on her fingers, next looked in,
nodded and ran away. After awhile, the sleeping eyelids quivered and
lifted themselves; a quick flush, a joyous exclamation and Marjorie
sprang into her friend's arms.
"I _felt_ as if I were not alone! How long have you been here? Oh, why
_didn't_ you speak to me or touch me?"
"I wanted to have the pleasure all on my side. I never saw you asleep
before."
"I hope I didn't keep my mouth open and snore."
"Oh, no, your lips were gently apart and you breathed regularly as they
would say in books!"
Marjorie laughed, released Miss Prudence from the tight clasp and went
back to her chair.
"You received my note and the plate," she said anxiously.
"Both in perfect preservation. There was not one extra crack in the
plate, it was several hours older than when it left your hands, but that
only increases its value."
"And did you think I was dreadful not to confess before?" asked Marjorie,
tremulously.
"I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of _to_ me."
"I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.
Did you miss it?"
"I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was."
"Will the plate do, do you think? Is it handsome enough?"
"It is old enough, that is all the question. Do you know all about
Holland when that plate first came into existence?"
"No; I only know there _was_ a Holland."
"That plate will be a good point to begin with. You and I will study up
Holland some day. I wonder what you know about it now."
"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland
two hundred years ago?"
"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it.
But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has
promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its
mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that
George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a
legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren
when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover--not
a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow
pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years
ago."
"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie,
seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that _you_ were building
castles then."
"I had you and the pitcher for the foundation," said Miss Prudence, in a
tone of mock humility.
"Don't you think--" Marjorie's face had a world of suggestion in
it--"that 'The Swan's Nest' is bad influence for girls? Little Ellie sits
alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is 'shod in
silver, housed in azure' and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he
says 'O, Love, I love but thee.'"
"But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan's nest among the
reeds! And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the
wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds. That was the end
of her fine castle!"
"'If she found the lover, ever,
Sooth, I know not, but I know
She could never show him, never,
That swan's nest among the reeds,'"
quoted Marjorie. "So it did all come to nothing."
"As air-castles almost always do. But we'll hope she found something
better."
"Do people?" questioned Marjorie.
"Hasn't God things laid up for us better than we can ask or think or
build castles about?"
"I _hope_ so," said Marjorie; "but Hollis Rheid's mother told mother
yesterday that her life was one long disappointment."
"What did your mother say?"
"She said 'Oh, Mrs. Rheid, it won't be if you get to Heaven, at last.'"
"I think not."
"But she doesn't expect to go to Heaven, she says. Mother says she's
almost in 'despair' and she pities her so!"
"Poor woman! I don't see how she can live through despair. The old
proverb 'If it were not for hope, the heart would break,' is most
certainly true."
"Why didn't you come before?" asked Marjorie, caressing the hand that
still played with the fan.
"Perhaps you never lived on a farm and cannot understand. I could not
come in the ox-cart because the oxen were in the field, and every day
since I heard of your accident your uncle has had to drive your aunt to
Portland on some business. And I did not feel strong enough to walk until
this morning."
"How good you are to walk!"
"As good as you are to walk to see me."
"Oh, but I am young and strong, and I wanted to see you so, and ask you
questions so."
"I believe the latter," said Miss Prudence smiling.
"Well, I'm happy now," Marjorie sighed, with the burden of her trouble
still upon her. "Suppose I had been killed when I fell and had not told
you about the pitcher nor made amends for it."
"I don't believe any of us could be taken away without one moment to make
ready and not leave many things undone--many tangled threads and rough
edges to be taken care of. We are very happy if we have no sin to
confess, no wrong to make right."
"I think Hollis would have taken care of the plate for me," said
Marjorie, simply; "but I wanted to tell you myself. Mother wants to go
home as suddenly as that would have been for me, she says. I shouldn't
wonder if she prays about it--she prays about everything. Do people have
_that_ kind of a prayer answered?"
"I have known more than one instance--and I read about a gentleman who
had desired to be taken suddenly and he was killed by lightning while
sitting on his own piazza."
"Oh!" said Marjorie.
"That was all he could have wished. And the mother of my pastor at home,
who was over ninety, was found dead on her knees at her bedside, and she
had always wished to be summoned suddenly."
"When she was speaking to him, too," murmured Marjorie. "I like old
people, don't you? Hollis' grandmother is at his house and Mrs. Rheid
wants me to go to see her; she is ninety-three and blind, and she loves
to tell stories about herself, and I am to stay all day and listen to her
and take up her stitches when she drops them in her knitting work and
read the Bible to her. She won't listen to anything but the Bible; she
says she's too old to hear other books read."
"What a treat you will have!"