thought of it than she had. He had given to her every letter he had
received from his brother, but they always avoided speaking his name;
indeed Prudence, in her young reverence for his age and wisdom, had
seldom named his Christian name to others or to himself, he was "Mr.
Holmes" to her.
John Holmes was her junior by three years, yet he had constituted himself
friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as
though he were her father, beside.
"It's good to have all in one," she once replied, "for I can have you all
with me at one time."
After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the
secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the "Point," urging her to
spend her summer there. Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in
early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in
the town on her way on a journey farther north.
This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the
front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing. This
chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades
nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that
served a purpose--a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging
over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that
boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings
to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane
that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was
born, and books! There were books everywhere--in the long pine chest, on
the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on
the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.
Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to
take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended
to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college
that was waiting for him out there.
"I should have to come back to my den, I couldn't write anywhere else."
"And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the
author of Butler's 'Analogy' once, I'll reply, as somebody replied: 'Not
dead, but buried.'"
"That is what I want to be," he had replied. "Don't you want a copy of my
little pocket dictionary? It just fits the vest pocket, you see. You
don't know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one
from his pocket one day!"
He opened his desk and handed her a copy; Marjorie looked at it and at
him in open-eyed wonder. And dared she recite to a teacher who had made a
book?
"When is your Speller coming out?"
"In the fall. I'm busy on my Reader now."
Prudence stepped to his desk and examined the sheets of upright
penmanship; it could be read as easily as print.
"And the Arithmetic?"
"Oh, I haven't tackled that yet. That is for winter evenings, when my
fire burns on the hearth and the wind blows and nobody in the world cares
for me."
"Then it won't be _this_ winter," said Marjorie, lifting her eyes from
the binding of the dictionary.
"Why not?" he questioned.
"Because somebody cares for you," she answered gravely.
He laughed and shoved his manuscript into the desk. He was thinking of
her as he raised his head from the desk this afternoon and found the sun
gone down; he thought of her and remembered that he had promised to call
to see her to-night. Was it to take tea? He dreaded tea-parties, when
everybody talked and nobody said anything. A dim remembrance of being
summoned to supper a while ago flashed through his mind; but it hardly
mattered--Mrs. Devoe would take her cup of tea alone and leave his fruit
and bread and milk standing on the tea-table; it was better so, she would
not pester him with questions while he was eating, ask him why he did not
take more exercise, and if his room were not suffocating this hot day,
and if he did not think a cup of good, strong tea would not be better for
him than that bowl of milk!
Mrs. Devoe, a widow of sixty-five, and her cat, Dolly, aged nineteen,
kept house and boarded the school-master. Her house was two miles nearer
the shore than the school-building, but he preferred the walk in all
weathers and he liked the view of the water. Mrs. Devoe had never kept a
boarder before, her small income being amply sufficient for her small
wants, but she liked the master, he split her wood and his own, locked
the house up at night, made no trouble, paid his board, two dollars per
week, regularly in advance, never went out at night, often read to her in
the evening after her own eyes had given out, and would have been perfect
if he had allowed her to pile away his books and sweep his chamber every
Friday.
"But no man is perfect," she had sighed to Mrs. Rheid, "even my poor
husband would keep dinner waiting."
After a long, absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea, where
the waves were darkening in the twilight, he arose in haste, threw off
his wrapper, a gray merino affair, trimmed with quilted crimson silk,
that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago, and went to
the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair.
He did not study his features as Prudence had studied hers that morning;
he knew so little about his own face that he could scarcely distinguish a
good portrait of himself from a poor one; but Prudence knew it by heart.
It was a thin, delicate face, marred with much thought, the features not
large, and finely cut, with deep set eyes as black as midnight, and, when
they were neither grave nor stern, as soft as a dove's eyes; cheeks and
chin were closely shaven; his hair, a heavy black mass, was pushed back
from a brow already lined with thought or care, and worn somewhat long
behind the ears; there was no hardness in any line of the face, because
there was no hardness in the heart, there was sin and sorrow in the
world, but he believed that God is good.
The slight figure was not above medium height; he had a stoop in the
shoulders that added to his general appearance of delicacy; he was
scholarly from the crown of his black head to the very tip of his worn,
velvet slipper; his slender hands, with their perfectly kept nails, and
even the stain of ink on the forefinger of his right hand, had an air of
scholarship about them. His black summer suit was a perfect fit, his
boots were shining, the knot of his narrow black neck tie was a little
towards one side, but that was the only evidence that he was careless
about his personal appearance.
"I want my boys to be neat," he had said once apologetically to Mrs.
Devoe, when requesting her to give away his old school suit preparatory
to buying another.
All he needed to be perfect was congenial social life, Prudence believed,
but that, alas, seemed never to enter his conception. He knew it never
had since that long ago day when he had congratulated his brother upon
his perfect share of this world's happiness. And, queerly enough,
Prudence stood too greatly in awe of him to suggest that his life was too
one-sided and solitary.
"Some people wonder if you were ever married," Mrs. Devoe said to him
that afternoon when he went down to his late supper. Mrs. Devoe never
stood in awe of anybody.
"Yes, I was married twenty years ago--to my work," he replied, gravely;
"there isn't any John Holmes, there is only my work."
"There is something that is John Holmes to me," said the widow in her
quick voice, "and there's a John Holmes to the boys and girls, and I
guess the Lord thinks something of you beside your 'work,' as you call
it."
Meditatively he walked along the grassy wayside towards the brown
farmhouse:
"Perhaps there _is_ a John Holmes that I forget about," he said to
himself.
X.
LINNET.
"Use me to serve and honor thee,
And let the rest be as thou wilt"--_E.L.E._
Marjorie's laugh was refreshing to the schoolmaster after his hard day's
work. She was standing behind her father, leaning over his shoulder,
and looking at them both as they talked; some word had reminded Mr.
Holmes of the subject of his writing that day and he had given them
something of what he had been reading and writing on Egyptian slavery.
Mr. Holmes was always "writing up" something, and one of Mr. West's
usual questions was: "What have you to tell us about now?"
The subject was intensely interesting to Marjorie, she had but lately
read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and her tears and indignation were ready to
burst forth at any suggestion of injustice or cruelty. But the thing that
she was laughing at was a quotation from one of the older versions of the
Bible, Roger's Version Mr. Holmes told them when he quoted the passage:
"And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe." She lifted her
head from her father's shoulder and ran out into the little front yard to
find her mother and the others that she might tell them about Joseph and
ask Miss Prudence what "Roger's Version" meant. But her mother was busy
in the milkroom and Linnet was coming towards the house walking slowly
with her eyes on the ground. Will Rheid was walking as slowly toward his
home as Linnet was toward hers.
Miss Prudence made a picture all by herself in her plain black dress,
with no color or ornament save the red rose in her black crape scarf, as
she sat upright in the rush-bottomed, straight-backed chair in the entry
before the wide-open door. Her eyes were towards the two who had parted
so reluctantly on the bridge over the brook. Marjorie danced away to find
her mother, suddenly remembering to ask if she might share the spare
chamber with Miss Prudence, that is--if Linnet did not want to very much.
Marjorie never wanted to do anything that Linnet wanted to very much.
Opening the gate Linnet came in slowly, with her eyes still on the
ground, shut the gate, and stood looking off into space; then becoming
aware of the still figure on the piazza hurried toward it.
Linnet's eyes were stirred with a deeper emotion than had ever moved her
before; Miss Prudence did not remember her own face twenty years ago, but
she remembered her own heart.
Will Rheid was a good young fellow, honest and true; Miss Prudence
stifled her sigh and said, "Well, dear" as the young girl came and stood
beside her chair.
"I was wishing--I was saying to Will, just now, that I wished there was a
list of things in the Bible to pray about, and then we might be sure that
we were asking right."
"And what did he say?"
"He said he'd ask anyhow, and if it came, it was all right, and if it
didn't, he supposed that was all right, too."
"That was faith, certainly."
"Oh, he has faith," returned Linnet, earnestly. "Don't you know--oh,
you don't remember--when the Evangelist--that always reminds me of
Marjorie"--Linnet was a somewhat fragmentary talker like her mother--"but
when Mr. Woodfern was here four of the Rheid boys joined the Church,
all but Hollis, he was in New York, he went about that time. Mr. Woodfern
was so interested in them all; I shall never forget how he used to pray
at family worship: 'Lord, go through that Rheid family.' He prayed it
every day, I really believe. And they all joined the Church at the first
communion time, and every one of them spoke and prayed in the prayer
meetings. They used to speak just as they did about anything, and people
enjoyed it so; it was so genuine and hearty. I remember at a prayer
meeting here that winter Will arose to speak 'I was talking to a man in
town today and he said there was nothing _in_ religion. But, oh, my! I
told him there was nothing _out_ of it.' I told him about that to-night
and he said he hadn't found anything outside of it yet."
"He's a fine young fellow," said Miss Prudence. "Mr. Holmes says he has
the 'right stuff' in him, and he means a great deal by that."
A pleasant thought curved Linnet's lips.
"But, Miss Prudence," sitting down on the step of the piazza, "I do wish
for a list of things. I want to know if I may pray that mother may
never look grave and anxious as she did at the supper table, and father
may not always have a cough in winter time, and Will may never have
another long voyage and frighten us all, and that Marjorie may have a
chance to go to school, too, and--why, _ever_ so many things!"
A laugh from the disputants in the parlor brought the quick color to Miss
Prudence's cheeks. No mere earthly thing quickened her pulses like John
Holmes' laugh. And I do not think that was a mere earthly thing; there
was so much grace in it.
"Doesn't St. Paul's 'everything' include your '_ever_ so many things?'"
questioned Miss Prudence, as the laugh died away.
"I don't know," hesitatingly. "I thought it meant about people becoming
Christians, and faith and patience and such good things."
"Perhaps your requests are good things, too. But I have thought of
something that will do for a list of things; it is included in this
promise: 'Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye
receive them and ye shall have them.' Desire _when_ ye pray! That's the
point."
"Does the time when we desire make any difference?" asked Linnet,
interestedly.
There were some kind of questions that Linnet liked to ask.
"Does it not make all the difference? Suppose we think of something we
want while we are ease-loving, forgetful of duty, selfish, unforgiving,
neither loving God or our neighbor, when we feel far from him, instead of
near him, can we believe that we shall have such a heart's desire as that
would be? Would your desire be according to his will, his unselfish,
loving, forgiving will?"
"No, oh, no," said Linnet, earnestly. "But I do think about father and
mother and Marjorie going to school and--when I am praying."
"Then ask for everything you desire while you are praying; don't be
afraid."
"_Is_ mother troubled about something?"
"Not troubled, really; only perplexed a little over something we have
been planning about; and she is very glad, too."
"I don't like to have her troubled, because her heart hurts her when she
worries. Marjorie don't know that, but she told me. That's one reason--my
strongest reason--for being sorry about going to Boston."
"But your father is with her and he will watch over her."
"But she depends on _me_," pleaded Linnet.
"Marjorie is growing up," said Miss Prudence, hopefully.
"Marjorie! It doesn't seem to me that she will ever grow up; she is such
a little puss, always absent-minded, with a book in her hand. And she
can't mend or sew or even make cake or clear up a room neatly. We spoil
her, mother and I, as much as she spoils her kitten, Pusheen. Did you
know that _pusheen_ is Irish for puss? Mr. Holmes told us. I do believe
he knows everything."
"He comes nearer universal knowledge than the rest of us," said Miss
Prudence, smiling at the girl's eagerness.
"But he's a book himself, a small volume, in fine print, printed in a
language that none of us can read," said Linnet.
"To most people he is," granted Miss Prudence; "but when he was seven I
was ten, I was a backward child and he used to read to me, so he is not
a dead language to me."
Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought
that shawl from Ireland a year ago.
"Miss Prudence, _do_ we have right desires, desires for things God likes,
while we are praying?"
"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at
the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask
his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving
heart, how can we desire anything selfish--for our own good only and not
to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant;
if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will,
is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in
praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give
us every time we go near to him?"
Linnet assented with a slight movement of her head. She understood many
things that she could not translate into words.
"Yesterday I saw in the paper the death of an old friend." They had been
silent for several minutes; Miss Prudence spoke in a musing voice. "She
was a friend in the sense that I had tried to befriend her. She was
unfortunate in her home surroundings, she was something of an invalid and
very deaf beside. She had lost money and was partly dependent upon
relatives. A few of us, Mr. Holmes was one of them, paid her board. She
was not what you girls call 'real bright,' but she was bright enough to
have a heartache every day. Reading her name among the deaths made me
glad of a kindness I grudged her once."
"I don't believe you grudged it," interrupted Marjorie, who had come in
time to lean over the tall back of the chair and rest her hand on Miss
Prudence's shoulder while she listened to what promised to be a "story."
"I did, notwithstanding. One busy morning I opened one of her long,
complaining, badly-written letters; I could scarcely decipher it; she was
so near-sighted, too, poor child, and would not put on glasses. Her
letters were something of a trial to me. I read, almost to my
consternation, 'I have been praying for a letter from you for three
weeks.' Slipping the unsightly sheet back into the envelope, hastily,
rather too hastily, I'm afraid, I said to myself: 'Well, I don't see how
you will get it.' I was busy every hour in those days, I did not have to
rest as often as I do now, and how could I spare the hour her prayer was
demanding? I could find the time in a week or ten days, but she had
prayed for it yesterday and would expect it to-day, would pray for it
to-day and expect it to-morrow. 'Why could she not pray about it without
telling me?' I argued as I dipped my pen in the ink, not to write to her
but to answer a letter that must be answered that morning. I argued about
it to myself as I turned from one thing to another, working in nervous
haste; for I did more in those days than God required me to do, I served
myself instead of serving him. I was about to take up a book to look over
a poem that I was to read at our literary circle when words from
somewhere arrested me: 'Do you like to have the answer to a prayer of
yours put off and off in this way?' and I answered aloud, 'No, I
_don't_.' 'Then answer this as you like to have God answer you.' And I
sighed, you will hardly believe it, but I _did_ sigh. The enticing poem
went down and two sheets of paper came up and I wrote the letter for
which the poor thing a hundred miles away had been praying three weeks. I
tried to make it cordial, spirited and sympathetic, for that was the kind
she was praying for. And it went to the mail four hours after I had
received her letter."
"I'm so glad," said sympathetic Linnet. "How glad she must have been!"
"Not as glad as I was when I saw her death in the paper yesterday."
"You do write to so many people," said Marjorie.
"I counted my list yesterday as I wrote on it the fifty-third name."
"Oh, dear," exclaimed Linnet, who "hated" to write letters. "What do you
do it for?"
"Perhaps because they need letters, perhaps because I need to write them.
My friends have a way of sending me the names of any friendless child, or
girl, or woman, who would be cheered by a letter, and I haven't the heart
to refuse, especially as some of them pray for letters and give thanks
for them. Instead of giving my time to 'society' I give it to letter
writing. And the letters I have in return! Nothing in story books equals
the pathos and romance of some of them."
"I like that kind of good works," said Marjorie, "because I'm too bashful
to talk to people and I can _write_ anything."
How little the child knew that some day she would write anything and
everything because she was "too bashful to talk." How little any of us
know what we are being made ready to do. And how we would stop to moan
and weep in very self-pity if we did know, and thus hinder the work of
preparation from going on.
Linnet played with the fringe of her shawl and looked as if something
hard to speak were hovering over her lips.
"Did mother tell you about Will?" she asked, abruptly, interrupting one
of Miss Prudence's stories to Marjorie of which she had not heeded one
word.
"About Will!" repeated Marjorie. "What has happened to him?"
Linnet looked up with arch, demure eyes. "He told mother and me while we
were getting supper; he likes to come out in the kitchen. The first mate
died and he was made first mate on the trip home, and the captain wrote a
letter to his father about him, and his father is as proud as he can be
and says he'll give him the command of the bark that is being built in
Portland, and he mustn't go away again until that is done. Captain Rheid
is the largest owner, he and African John, so they have the right to
appoint the master. Will thinks it grand to be captain at twenty-four."
"But doesn't Harold feel badly not to have a ship, too?" asked Marjorie,
who was always thinking of the one left out.
"But he's younger and his chance will come next. He doesn't feel sure
enough of himself either. Will has studied navigation more than he has.
Will went to school to an old sea-captain to study it, but Harold didn't,
he said it would get knocked into him, somehow. He's mate on a ship he
likes and has higher wages than Will will get, at first, but Will likes
the honor. It's so wonderful for his father to trust him that he can
scarcely believe it; he says his father must think he is some one else's
son. But that letter from the old shipmaster that Captain Rheid used to
know has been the means of it."
"Is the bark named yet?" asked Marjorie. "Captain Rheid told father he
was going to let Mrs. Rheid name it."
"Yes," said Linnet, dropping her eyes to hide the smile in them, "she is
named LINNET."
"Oh, how nice! How splendid," exclaimed Marjorie, "Won't it look grand in
the _Argus_--'Bark LINNET, William Rheid, Master, ten days from
Portland'?"
"Ten days to where?" laughed Linnet.
"Oh, to anywhere. Siberia or the West Indies. I _wish_ he'd ask us to go
aboard, Linnet. _Don't_ you think he might?"
"We might go and see her launched! Perhaps we all have an invitation;
suppose you run and ask mother," replied Linnet, with the demure smile
about her lips.
Marjorie flew away, Linnet arose slowly, gathering her shawl about her,
and passed through the entry up to her own chamber.
Miss Prudence did not mean to sigh, she did not mean to be so ungrateful,
there was work enough in her life, why should she long for a holiday
time? Girls must all have their story and the story must run on into
womanhood as hers had, there was no end till it was all lived through.
"When thou passest _through_ the waters I will be with thee."
Miss Prudence dropped her head in her hands; she was going through yet.
Will Rheid was a manly young fellow, just six feet one, with a fine,
frank face, a big, explosive voice, and a half-bashful, half-bold manner
that savored of land and sea. He was as fresh and frolicsome as a sea
breeze itself, as shrewd as his father, and as simple as Linnet.
But--Miss Prudence came back from her dreaming over the past,--would
Linnet go home with her and go to school? Perhaps John Holmes would take
Marjorie under his special tutelage for awhile, until she might come to
her, and--how queer it was for her to be planning about other people's
homes--why might he not take up his abode with the Wests, pay good board,
and not that meagre two dollars a week, take Linnet's seat at the table,
become a pleasant companion for Mr. West through the winter, and, above
all, fit Marjorie for college? And did not he need the social life? He
was left too much to his own devices at old Mrs. Devoe's. Marjorie, her
father with his ready talk, her mother, with a face that held remembrance
of all the happy events of her life, would certainly be a pleasant
exchange for Mrs. Devoe, and Dolly, her aged cat. She would go home to
her own snuggery, with Linnet to share it, with a relieved mind if John
Holmes might be taken into a family. And it was Linnet, after all, who
was to make the changes and she had only been thinking of Marjorie.
When Linnet came to her to kiss her good night, Miss Prudence looked down
into her smiling eyes and quoted:
"'Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise.'"
The low murmur of voices reached Miss Prudence in her chamber long after
midnight, she smiled as she thought of Giant Despair and his wife
Diffidence. And then she prayed for the wanderer over the seas, that he
might go to his Father, as the prodigal did, and that, if it were not
wrong or selfish to wish it, she might hear from him once more before she
died.
And then the voices were quiet and the whole house was still.
XI.
GRANDMOTHER.
"Even trouble may be made a little sweet"--_Mrs. Platt._