His wife was _marm_ and his mother _grandmarm_.
Marjorie ran in at the kitchen door and greeted the two occupants of the
roomy kitchen. Captain Rheid had planned his house and was determined
he said that the "women folks" should have room enough to move around in
and be comfortable; he believed in having the "galley" as good a place to
live in as the "cabin."
It was a handsome kitchen, with several windows, a fine stove, a
well-arranged sink, a large cupboard, a long white pine table, three
broad shelves displaying rows of shining tinware, a high mantel with
three brass candlesticks at one end, and a small stone jar of fall
flowers at the other, the yellow floor of narrow boards was glowing with
its Saturday afternoon mopping, and the general air of freshness and
cleanliness was as refreshing as the breath of the sea, or the odor of
the fields.
Marm and grandmarm liked it better.
"Deary me!" ejaculated grandma, "it's an age since you were here."
"A whole week," declared Marjorie, standing on tiptoe to hang up her sack
and hat on a hook near the shelves.
"Nobody much comes in and it seems longer," complained the old lady.
"I think she's very good to come once a week," said Hollis' sad-faced
mother.
"Oh, I like to come," said Marjorie, pushing one of the wooden-bottomed
chairs to grandmother's side.
"It seems to me, things have happened to your house all of a sudden,"
said Mrs. Rheid, as she gave a final rub to the pump handle and hung up
one of the tin washbasins over the sink.
"So it seems to us," replied Marjorie; "mother and I hardly feel at
home yet. It seems so queer at the table with Linnet gone and two
strangers--well, Mr. Holmes isn't a stranger, but he's a stranger at
breakfast time."
"Don't you know how it all came about?" inquired grandmother, who
"admired" to get down to the roots of things.
"No, I guess--I think," she hastily corrected, "that nobody does. We all
did it together. Linnet wanted to go with Miss Prudence and we all
wanted her to go; Mr. Holmes wanted to come and we all wanted him to
come; and then Mr. Holmes knew about Morris Kemlo, and father wanted a
boy to do the chores for winter and Morris wanted to come, because he's
been in a drug store and wasn't real strong, and his mother thought farm
work and sea air together would be good for him."
"And you don't go to school?" said Mrs. Rheid, bringing her work,
several yards of crash to cut up into kitchen towels and to hem. Her
chair was also a hard kitchen chair; Hollis' mother had never "humored"
herself, she often said, there was not a rocking chair in her house until
all her boys were big boys; she had thumped them all to sleep in a
straight-backed, high, wooden chair. But with this her thumping had
ceased; she was known to be as lax in her government as the father was
strict in his.
She was a little woman, with large, soft black eyes, with a dumb look of
endurance about the lips and a drawl in her subdued voice. She had not
made herself, her loving, rough boys, and her stern, faultfinding
husband, had moulded not only her features, but her character. She was
afraid of God because she was afraid of her husband, but she loved God
because she knew he must love her, else her boys would not love her.
"Is Linnet homesick?" she questioned as her sharp shears cut through the
crash.
"Yes, but not very much. She likes new places. She likes the school, and
the girls, so far, and she likes Miss Prudence's piano. Hollis has been
to see her, and Helen Rheid has called to see her, and invited her and
Miss Prudence to come to tea some time. Miss Prudence wrote me about
Helen, and she's _lovely_, Mrs. Rheid."
"So Hollis said. Have you brought her picture back?"
"Yes'm."
Marjorie slowly drew a large envelope from her pocket, and taking the
imperial from it gazed at it long. There was a strange fascination to her
in the round face, with its dark eyes and mass of dark hair piled high on
the head. It was a vignette and the head seemed to be rising from folds
of black lace, the only ornament was a tiny gold chain on which was
placed a small gold cross.
To Marjorie this picture was the embodiment of every good and beautiful
thing. It was somebody that she might be like when she had read all the
master's books, and learned all pretty, gentle ways. She never saw Helen
Rheid, notwithstanding Helen Rheid's life was one of the moulds in which
some of her influences were formed. Helen Rheid was as much to her as
Mrs. Browning was to Miss Prudence. After another long look she slipped
the picture back into the envelope and laid it on the table behind her.
"You are going with Miss Prudence when Linnet is through, I suppose?"
asked Mrs. Rheid.
"So mother says. It seems a long time to wait, but I am studying at home.
Mother cannot spare me to go to school, now, and Mr. Holmes says he would
rather hear me recite than not. So I am learning to sew and do housework
as well."
"You need that as much as schooling," returned Mrs. Rheid, decidedly. "I
wish one of my boys could have gone to college, there's money enough to
spare, but their father said he had got his learning knocking around the
world and they could get theirs the same way."
"Hollis studies--he's studying French now."
"Did you bring a letter from him?" inquired his mother, eagerly.
"Yes," said Marjorie, disappointedly, "but I wanted to keep it until the
last thing. I wanted you to have the best last."
"If I ever do get the best it will be last!" said the subdued, sad voice.
"Then you shall have this first," returned the bright, childish voice.
But her watchful eyes had detected a stitch dropped in grandmother's work
and that must be attended to first. The old lady gave up her work
willingly and laid her head back to rest while Marjorie knit once around.
And then the short letter was twice read aloud and every sentence
discussed.
"If I ever wrote to him I suppose he'd write to me oftener," said his
mother, "but I can't get my hands into shape for fine sewing or for
writing. I'd rather do a week's washing than write a letter."
Marjorie laughed and said she could write letters all day.
"I think Miss Prudence is very kind to you girls," said Mrs. Rheid. "Is
she a relation?"
"Not a _real_ one," admitted Marjorie, reluctantly.
"There must be some reason for her taking to you and for your mother
letting you go. Your mother has the real New England grit and she's proud
enough. Depend upon it, there's a reason."
"Miss Prudence likes us, that's the reason, and we like her."
"But that doesn't repay _money_."
"She thinks it does. And so do we."
"How much board does the master pay?" inquired grandmother.
"I don't know; I didn't ask. He has brought all his books and the spare
chamber is full. He let me help him pile them up. But he says I must not
read one without asking him."
"I don't see what you want to read them for," said the old lady sharply.
"Can't your mother find enough for you to do. In my day--"
"But your day was a long time ago," interrupted her daughter-in-law.
"Yes, yes, most a hundred, and girls want everything they can get now.
Perhaps the master hears your lessons to pay his board."
"Perhaps," assented Marjorie.
"They say bees pay their board and work for you beside," said Mrs. Rheid.
"I guess he's like a bee. I expect the Widow Devoe can't help wishing he
had stayed to her house."
"He proposed to come himself," said Marjorie, with a proud flash of her
eyes, "and he proposed to teach me himself."
"Oh, yes, to be sure, but she and the cat will miss him all the same."
"It's all sudden."
"[missing text] happen sudden, nowadays. I keep my eyes shut and things
keep whirling around."
Grandmother was seated in an armchair with her feet resting on a
home-made foot stool, clad in a dark calico, with a little piece of gray
shawl pinned closely around her neck, every lock of hair was concealed
beneath a black, borderless silk cap, with narrow black silk strings tied
under her trembling chin, her lips were sunken and seamed, her eyelids
partly dropped over her sightless eyes, her withered, bony fingers were
laboriously pushing the needles in and out through a soft gray wool sock,
every few moments Marjorie took the work from her to pick up a dropped
stitch or two and to knit once around. The old eyes never once suspected
that the work grew faster than her own fingers moved. Once she remarked
plaintively: "Seems to me it takes you a long time to pick up one
stitch."
"There were three this time," returned Marjorie, seriously.
"What does the master learn you about?" asked Mrs. Rheid.
"Oh, the school studies! And I read the dictionary by myself."
"I thought you had some new words."
"I want some good words," said Marjorie.
"Now don't you go and get talking like a book," said grandmother,
sharply, "if you do you can't come and talk to me."
"But you can talk to me," returned Marjorie, smiling, "and that is what I
want. Hollis wrote me that I mustn't say 'guess' and I do forget so
often."
"Hollis is getting ideas," said Hollis' mother; "well, let him, I want
him to learn all he can."
Marjorie was wondering where her own letter to Hollis would come in;
she had stowed away in the storehouse of her memory messages enough
from mother and grandmother to fill one sheet, both given with many
explanations, and before she went home Captain Rheid would come in
and add his word to Hollis. And if she should write two sheets this
time would her mother think it foolish? It was one of Mrs. West's
old-fashioned ways to ask Marjorie to let her read every letter that
she wrote.
With her reserve Marjorie could open her heart more fully to Miss
Prudence than she could to one nearer her; it was easier to tell Miss
Prudence that she loved her than to tell her mother that she loved her,
and there were some things that she could say to Mr. Holmes that she
could not say to her father. It may be a strange kind of reserve, but it
is like many of us. Therefore, under this surveillance, Marjorie's
letters were not what her heart prompted them to be.
If, in her own young days, her mother had ever felt thus she had
forgotten it.
But for this Marjorie's letters would have been one unalloyed pleasure.
One day it occurred to her to send her letter to the mail before her
mother was aware that she had written, but she instantly checked the
suggestion as high treason.
Josie Grey declared that Marjorie was "simple" about some things. A taint
of deceit would have caused her as deep remorse as her heart was capable
of suffering.
"Grandma, please tell me something that happened when you were little,"
coaxed Marjorie, as she placed the knitting back in the old fingers.
How pink and plump the young fingers looked as they touched the old
hands.
"You haven't told me about the new boy yet," said the old lady. "How old
is he? Where did he come from? and what does he look like?"
"_We_ want another boy," said Mrs. Rheid, "but boys don't like to stay
here. Father says I spoil them."
"Our 'boy,'--Morris Kemlo,--don't you think it's a pretty name? It's real
funny, but he and I are twins, we were born on the same day, we were
both fourteen this summer. He is taller than I am, of course, with light
hair, blue eyes, and a perfect gentleman, mother says. He is behind in
his studies, but Mr. Holmes says he'll soon catch up, especially if he
studies with me evenings. We are to have an Academy at our house. His
mother is poor, and has other children, his father lost money in a bank,
years ago, and died afterward. It was real dreadful about it--he sold his
farm and deposited all his money in this bank, he thought it was so sure!
And he was going into business with the money, very soon. But it was lost
and he died just after Morris was born. That is, it was before Morris was
born that he lost the money, but Morris talks about it as if he knew all
about it. Mr. Holmes and Miss Prudence know his mother, and Miss Prudence
knew father wanted a boy this winter. He is crazy to go to sea, and says
he wants to go in the _Linnet_. And that's all I know about him,
grandma."
"Is he a _good_ boy?" asked Mrs. Rheid.
"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "he brings his Bible downstairs and reads every
night. I like everything but doing his mending, and mother says I must
learn to do that. Now, grandma, please go on."
"Well, Marjorie, now I've heard all the news, and Hollis' letter, if
you'll stay with grandmarm I'll run over and see Cynthy! I want to see if
her pickles are as green as mine, and I don't like to leave grandmarm
alone. You must be sure to stay to supper."
"Thank you; I like to stay with grandma."
"But I want hasty pudding to-night, and you won't be home in time to make
it, Hepsie," pleaded the old lady in a tone of real distress.
"Oh, yes, I will, Marjorie will have the kettle boiling and she'll stir
it while I get supper."
Mrs. Rheid stooped to pick up the threads that had fallen on her clean
floor, rolled up her work, took her gingham sun-bonnet from its hook, and
stepped out into the sunshine almost as lightly as Marjorie would have
done.
"Cynthy" was African John's wife, a woman of deep Christian experience,
and Mrs. Rheid's burdened heart was longing to pour itself out to her.
Household matters, the present and future of their children, the news of
the homes around them, and Christian experience, were the sole topics
that these simply country women touched upon.
"Well, deary, what shall I tell you about? I must keep on knitting, for
Hollis must have these stockings at Christmas, so he can tell folks in
New York that his old grandmarm most a hundred knit them for him all
herself. Nobody helped her, she did it all herself. She did it with her
own old fingers and her own blind eyes. I'll drop too many stitches while
I talk, so I'll let you hold it for me. It seems as if it never will get
done," she sighed, dropping it from her fingers.
"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, cheerily, "it's like your life, you know; that
has been long, but it's 'most done.'"
"Yes, I'm most through," sighed the old lady with a long, resigned
breath, "and there's nobody to pick up the stitches I've dropped all
along."
"Won't God?" suggested Marjorie, timidly.
"I don't know, I don't know about things. I've never been good enough to
join the Church. I've been afraid."
"Do you have to be _good_ enough?" asked the little church member in
affright. "I thought God was so good he let us join the Church just as he
lets us go into Heaven--and he makes us good and we try all we can, too."
"That's an easy way to do, to let him make you good. But when the
minister talks to me I tell him I'm afraid."
"I wouldn't be afraid," said Marjorie; "because you want to do as Christ
commands, don't you? And he says we must remember him by taking the
bread and wine for his sake, to remember that he died for us, don't you
know?"
"I never did it, not once, and I'm most a hundred!"
"Aren't you sorry, don't you want to?" pleaded Marjorie, laying her warm
fingers on the hard old hand.
"I'm afraid," whispered the trembling voice. "I never was good enough."
"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, her eyes brimming over, "I don't know how to
tell you about it. But won't you listen to the minister, he talks so
plainly, and he'll tell you not to be afraid."
"They don't go to communion, my son nor his wife; they don't ask me to."
"But they want you to; I know they want you to--before you die,"
persuaded Marjorie. "You are so old now."
"Yes, I'm old. And you shall read to me out of the Testament before you
go. Hepsie reads to me, but she gets to crying before she's half through;
she can't find 'peace,' she says."
"I wish she could," said Marjorie, almost despairingly.
"Now I'll tell you a story," began the old voice in a livelier tone. "I
have to talk about more than fifty years ago--I forget about other
things, but I remember when I was young. I'm glad things happened then,
for I can remember them."
"Didn't things happen afterward?" asked Marjorie, laughing.
"Not that I remember."
This afternoon was a pleasant change to Marjorie from housework and
study, and she remembered more than once that she was doing something to
help pay Hollis for the Holland plate.
"Where shall I begin?" began the dreamy, cracked voice, "as far back as I
can remember?"
"As far back as you can," said Marjorie, eagerly. "I like old stories
best."
"Maybe I'll get things mixed up with my mother and grandmother and not
know which is me."
"Rip Van Winkle thought his son was himself," laughed Marjorie, "but you
will think you are your grandmother."
"I think over the old times so, sitting here in the dark. Hepsie is no
hand to talk much, and Dennis, he's out most of the time, but bedtime
comes soon and I can go to sleep. I like to have Dennis come in, he never
snaps up his old mother as he does Hepsie and other folks. I don't like
to be in the dark and have it so still, a dog yapping is better than no
noise, at all. I say, 'Now I lay me' ever so many times a day to keep me
company."
"You ought to live at our house, we have noisy times; mother and I sing,
and father is always humming about his work. Mr. Holmes is quiet, but
Morris is so happy he sings and shouts all day."
"It used to be noisy enough once, too noisy, when the boys were all
making a racket together, and Will made noise enough this time he was
home. He used to read to me and sing songs. I don't wonder Hepsie is
still and mournful, like. It's a changed home to her with the boys away.
My father's house had noise enough in it; he had six wives."
"Not all at once," cried Marjorie alarmed, confounding a hundred years
ago with the partriarchal age.
But the old story-teller never heeded interruptions.
"And my marm was the last wife but one. My father was a hundred years and
one day when he died. I've outlived all the children, I guess, for I
never hear from none of them--I most forget who's dead. Some of them was
married before I was born. I was the youngest, and I never remember my
own mother, but I had a good mother, all the same."
"You had four step-mothers before you were born," said Marjorie
seriously, "and one own mother and then another step-mother. Girls don't
have so many step-mothers nowadays."
"And our house was one story--a long house, with the eaves most touching
the ground and big chimneys at both ends. It was full of folks."
"I should _think_ so," interposed Marjorie.
"And Sunday nights we used to sing 'God of my childhood and my youth.'
Can you sing that? I wish you'd sing it to me. I forget what comes next."
"I never heard of it before; I wish you _could_ remember it all, it's so
pretty."
"Amzi used to sit next to me and sing--he was my twin brother--as loud
and clear as a bell. And when he died they put this on his tombstone:
"'Come see ye place where I do lie
As you are now so once was I:
As I be now so you will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.'"
"Oh," shivered Marjorie, "I don't like it. I like a Bible verse better."
"Isn't that in the Bible?" she asked, angrily.
"I don't believe it is."
"'Prepare to meet thy God' is."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "that was the text last Sunday."
"And on father's tombstone mother put this verse:
'O, my dear wife, do think of me
Although we've from each other parted,
O, do prepare to follow me
Where we shall love forever.'
"I wish I could remember some more."
"I wish you could," said Marjorie. "Didn't you have all the things we
have? You didn't have sewing machines."
"Sewing machines!" returned the old lady, indignantly, "we had our
fingers and pins and needles. But sometimes we couldn't have pins
and had to pin things together with thorns. How would you like that?"
"I'd rather be born now," said Marjorie. "I wouldn't want to have so many
step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than
_Experience_."
"Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my
mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves
into a smile. "I could tell you some _dreadful_ things, too, but Hepsie
won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though. I don't like to think
about the dreadful things myself. I used to tell them to my boys and
they'd coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things.
A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed
a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out
and he was hanged and she was left a widow!"
"Oh, dear, _dear_," exclaimed Marjorie, "have dreadful things been always
happening? Did she die with a broken heart?"
"No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband. She got
through, as people do usually, and then something good happened."
"I'll remember that," said Marjorie, her hazel eyes full of light; "but
it was dreadful."
"And there were robbers in those days."
"Were there giants, too?"
"I never saw a giant, but I saw robbers once. The women folks were alone,
not even a boy with us, and six robbers came for something to eat and
they ransacked the house from garret to cellar; they didn't hurt us at
all, but we _were_ scared, no mistake. And after they were gone we found
out that the baby was gone, Susannah's little black baby, it had died the
day before and mother laid it on a table in the parlor and covered it
with a sheet and they had caught it up and ran away with it."
"Oh, _dear_," ejaculated Marjorie.
"Father got men out and they hunted, but they never found the robbers or
the baby. If Susannah didn't cry nobody ever did! She had six other
children but this baby was so cunning! We used to feed it and play with
it and had cried our eyes sore the day it died. But we never found it."
"It wasn't so bad as if it had been alive," comforted Marjorie, "they
couldn't hurt it. And it was in Heaven before they ran away with the
body. But I don't wonder the poor mother was half frantic."
"Poor Susannah, she used to talk about it as long as she lived."
"Was she a slave?"
"Of course, but we were good to her and took care of her till she died.
My father gave her to me when I was married. That was years and years and
_years_ before we came to this state. I was fifteen when I was married--"
"_Fifteen_," Marjorie almost shouted. That was queerer than having so
many step-mothers.
"And my husband had four children, and Lucilla was just my age, the
oldest, she was in my class at school. But we got on together and kept
house together till she married and went away. Yes, I've had things
happen to me. People called it our golden wedding when we'd been married
fifty years, and then he died, the next year, and I've lived with my
children since. I've had my ups and downs as you'll have if you live to
be most a hundred."
"You've had some _ups_ as well as downs," said Marjorie.
"Yes, I've had some good times, but not many, not many."
Marjorie answered indignantly: "I think you have good times now, you have
a good home and everybody is kind to you."
"Yes, but I can't see and Hepsie don't talk much."
"This afternoon as I was coming along I saw an old hunch-backed woman
raking sticks together to make a bonfire in a field, don't you think she
had a hard time?"
"Perhaps she liked to; I don't believe anybody made her, and she could
_see_ the bonfire."
Marjorie's eyes were pitiful; it must be hard to be blind.
"Shall I read to you now?" she asked hurriedly.
"How is the fire? Isn't it most time to put the kettle on? I shan't sleep
a wink if I don't have hasty pudding to-night and I don't like it _raw_,
either."
"It shan't be raw," laughed Marjorie, springing up. "I'll see to the fire
and fill the kettle and then I'll read to you."
The old lady fumbled at her work till Marjorie came back to her with the
family Bible in her hands.
She laid the Bible on the table and moved her chair to the table.
"Where shall I read?"
"About Jacob and all his children and all his troubles, I never get tired
of that. He said few and evil had been his days and he was more than most
a hundred."
"Well," said Marjorie, lingering over the word and slowly turning back to
Genesis. She had opened to John, she wanted to read to the grumbling old
heart that was "afraid" some of the comforting words of Jesus: "Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
"Begin about Jacob and read right on."