the tears in his voice would have overcome her had she not laughed
instead. And he was going far away, too.
"Morris, I didn't know you were quite such a volcano. I don't believe Mr.
Holmes stays here and _pokes_ because of Miss Prudence. I know he is
melancholy, sometimes, but he writes so much and thinks so much he can't
be light-hearted like young things like us. And who does as much good as
Miss Prudence? Isn't she another mother to Linnet and me? And if she
doesn't find somebody to love as Linnet does Will, I don't see how she
can help it."
"It isn't in her heart or she would have found somebody; it is what is in
peoples' hearts that makes the difference! But when they keep the brain
at work and forget they have any heart, as you two do--"
"It isn't Miss Prudence's brain that does her beautiful work. You ought
to read some of the letters that she lets me read, and then you would
see how much heart she has!"
"And you want to be just like her," he sighed, but the sigh was almost a
groan.
Certainly, in some experiences he had outstripped Marjorie.
"Yes, I want to be like her," she answered deliberately.
"And study and go around and do good and never be married?" he
questioned.
"I don't see the need of deciding that question to-day."
"I suppose not. You will when Hollis Rheid asks you to."
"Morris, you are not like yourself to-day, you are quarrelling with me,
and we never quarrelled before."
"Because you are so unreasonable; you will not answer me anything."
"I have answered you truly; I have no other answer to give."
"Will you think and answer me when I come home?"
"I have answered you now."
"Perhaps you will have another answer then."
"Well, if I have I will give it to you. Are you satisfied?"
"No," he said; but he turned her face up to his and looked down into her
innocent earnest eyes.
"You are a goosie, as Linnet says; you will never grow up, little
Marjorie."
"Then, if I am only eight, you must not talk to me as if I were eighty."
"Or eighteen," he said. "How far on the voyage of life do you suppose
Linnet and Captain Will are."
"Not far enough on to quarrel, I hope."
"They will never be far enough for that, Will is too generous and Linnet
will never find anything to differ about; do you know, Marjorie, that
girl has no idea how Will loves her?"
Marjorie stopped and faced him with the utmost gravity.
"Do you know, Morris, that man has no idea how Linnet loves him?"
And then the two burst into a laugh that restored them both to the
perfect understanding of themselves and each other and all the world. And
after an early supper he shook hands with them all--excepting "Mother
West," whom he kissed, and Marjorie, whom he asked to walk as far as
"Linnet's" with him on his way to the train--and before ten o'clock was
on board the _Linnet_, and congratulating again the bridegroom, who was
still radiant, and the bride, who was not looking in the least bit
homesick.
"Will," said Linnet with the weight of tone of one giving announcement to
a mighty truth, "I wouldn't be any one beside myself for _anything_."
"And I wouldn't have you any one beside yourself for _anything_," he
laughed, in the big, explosive voice that charmed Linnet every time
afresh.
XIV.
A TALK AND ANOTHER TALK.
"Life's great results are something slow."--Howells.
Morris had said good-bye with a look that brought sorrow enough in
Marjorie's eyes to satisfy him--almost, and had walked rapidly on, not
once turning to discover if Marjorie were standing still or moving toward
home; Mr. Holmes and Miss Prudence had promised to start out to meet her,
so that her walk homeward in the starlight would not be lonely.
But they were not in sight yet to Marjorie's vision, and she stood
leaning over the gate looking at the windows with their white shades
dropped and already feeling that the little, new home was solitary. She
did not turn until a footstep paused behind her; she was so lost in
dreams of Linnet and Morris that she had not noticed the brisk, hurried
tread. The white rose had fallen from her hair and the one at her throat
had lost several petals; in her hand was a bunch of daisies that Morris
had picked along the way and laughingly asked her to try the childish
trick of finding out if he loved her, and she had said she was afraid
the daisies were too wise and would not ask them.
"Haven't you been home all this time?" asked Hollis, startling her out of
her dream.
"Oh, yes, and come back again."
"Do you find the cottage so charming?"
"I find it charming, but I could have waited another day to come and see
it. I came to walk part of the way with Morris."
She colored, because when she was embarrassed she colored at everything,
and could not think of another word to say.
Among those who understood him, rather, among those he understood, Hollis
was a ready talker; but, seemingly, he too could not think of another
word to say.
Marjorie picked her daisies to pieces and they went on in the narrow foot
path, as she and Morris had done in the afternoon; Hollis walking on the
grass and giving her the path as her other companion had done. She could
think of everything to say to Morris, and Morris could think of
everything to say to her; but Morris was only a boy, and this tall
stranger was a gentleman, a gentleman whom she had never seen before.
"If it were good sleighing I might take you on my sled," he remarked,
when all the daisies were pulled to pieces.
"Is Flyaway in existence still?" she asked brightly, relieved that she
might speak at last.
"'Stowed away,' as father says, in the barn, somewhere. Mr. Holmes is not
as strict as he used to be, is he?"
"No, he never was after that. I think he needed to give a lesson to
himself."
"He looks haggard and old."
"I suppose he is old; I don't know how old he is, over forty."
"That _is_ antiquated. You will be forty yourself, if you live long
enough."
"Twenty-two years," she answered seriously; "that is time enough to do a
good many things in."
"I intend to do a good many things," he answered with a proud humility in
his voice that struck Marjorie.
"What--for example?"
"Travel, for one thing, make money, for another."
"What do you want money for?" she questioned.
"What does any man want it for? I want it to give me influence, and I
want a luxurious old age."
"That doesn't strike me as being the highest motives."
"Probably not, but perhaps the highest motives, as you call them, do not
rule my life."
And she had been praying for him so long.
"Your mother seems to be a happy woman," was her reply, coming out of a
thought that she did not speak.
"She is," he said, emphatically. "I wish poor old father were as happy."
"Do you find many happy people?" she asked.
"I find you and my mother," he returned smiling.
"And yourself?"
"Not always. I am happy enough today. Not as jubilant as old Will,
though. Will has a prize."
"To be sure he has," said Marjorie.
"What are you going to do next?"
"Go to that pleasant home in Maple Street with Miss Prudence and go to
school." She was jubilant, too, today, or she would have been if Morris
had not gone away with such a look in his eyes.
"You ought to be graduated by this time, you are old enough. Helen was
not as old as you."
"But I haven't been at school at all, yet," she hastened to say. "And
Helen was so bright."
"Aren't you bright?" he asked, laughing.
"Mr. Holmes doesn't tell me that I am."
"What will your mother do?"
"Oh, dear," she sighed, "that is what I ask myself every day. But she
insists that I shall go, Linnet has had her 'chance' she says, and now it
is my turn. Miss Prudence is always finding somebody that needs a home,
and she has found a girl to help mother, a girl about my age, that hasn't
any friends, so it isn't the work that will trouble me; it is leaving
mother without any daughter at all."
"She is willing to let Linnet go, she ought to be as willing to let you."
"Oh, she is, and father is, too. I know I don't deserve such good times,
but I do want to go. I love Miss Prudence as much as I do mother, I
believe, and I am only forty miles from home. Mr. Holmes is about
leaving, too. How father will miss _him_! And Morris gone! Mother sighs
over the changes and then says changes must needs come if boys and girls
will grow up."
"Where is Mr. Holmes going?"
"To California. The doctor says he must go somewhere to cure his cough.
And he says he will rest and write another book. Have you read his book?"
"No, it is too dry for me."
"We don't think it is dry; Morris and I know it by heart."
"That is because you know the author."
"Perhaps it is. The book is everything but a story book. Miss Prudence
has a copy in Turkey morocco. Do you see many people that write books?"
"No," he said, smiling at her simplicity. "New York isn't full of them."
"Miss Prudence sees them," replied Marjorie with dignity.
"She is a bird of their feather. I do not fly, I walk on the ground--with
my eyes on it, perhaps."
"Like the man with the muck rake," said Marjorie, quoting from her old
love, _Pilgrims Progress_, "don't you know there was a crown held above
his head, and his eyes were on the ground and he could not see it."
"No, I do not know it, but I perceive that you are talking an allegory at
me."
"Not at you, _to_ you," she corrected.
"You write very short letters to me, nowadays."
"Your letters are not suggestive enough," she said, archly.
"Like my conversation. As poor a talker as I am, I am a better talker
than writer. And you--you write a dozen times better than you talk."
"I'm sorry I'm so unentertaining to-night. When Linnet writes she says:
"'I wish I could _talk_ to you,' and when I talk I think: 'I wish I could
write it all to you.'"
"As some one said of some one who could write better than he talked, 'He
has plenty of bank notes, but he carries no small change, in his
pocket.'"
"It is so apt to be too small," she answered, somewhat severely.
"I see you are above talking the nonsense that some girls talk. What do
you do to get rested from your thoughts?"
How Marjorie laughed!
"Hollis, do talk to me instead of writing. And I'll write to you instead
of talking."
"That is, you wish me near to you and yourself far away from me. That is
the only way that we can satisfy each other. Isn't that Miss Prudence
coming?"
"And the master. They did not know I would have an escort home. But do
come all the way, father will like to hear you talk about the places
you have visited."
"I travel, I don't visit places. I expect to go to London and Paris by
and by. Our buyer has been getting married and that doesn't please the
firm; he wanted to take his wife with him, but they vetoed that. They say
a married man will not attend strictly to business; see what a premium
is paid to bachelorhood. I shall understand laces well enough soon: I can
pick a piece of imitation out of a hundred real pieces now. Did Linnet
like the handkerchief and scarf?"
"You should have seen her! Hasn't she spoken of them?"
"No, she was too full of other things."
"Marriage isn't all in getting ready, to Linnet," said Marjorie,
seriously, "I found her crying one day because she was so happy and
didn't deserve to be."
"Will is a good fellow," said Hollis. "I wish I were half as good. But I
am so contradictory, so unsatisfied and so unsatisfying. I understand
myself better than I want to, and yet I do not understand myself at all."
"That is because you are _growing_," said Marjorie, with her wise air. "I
haven't settled down into a real Marjorie yet. I shouldn't know my own
picture unless I painted it myself."
"We are two rather dangerous people, aren't we?" laughed Hollis. "We will
steer clear of each other, as Will would say, until we can come to an
understanding."
"Unless we can help each other," Marjorie answered. "But I don't believe
you need to be pulled apart, but only to be let alone to grow--that is,
if the germ is perfect."
"A perfect germ!" he repeated. Hollis liked to talk about himself to any
one who would help him to self-analysis.
But the slowly moving figures were approaching, the black figure with
bent shoulders and a slouched hat, the tall slight figure at his side in
light gray with a shawl of white wool across her shoulders and drawn up
over her hair, the fleecy whiteness softening the lines of a face that
were already softened.
"O, Prudence, how far ahead we are of those two," exclaimed the
school-master, "and they are wiser than we, perhaps, because they do not
know so much."
"They do not know so much of each other, surely," she replied with a low
laugh. That very day Mr. Holmes had quoted to her, giving it a personal
application: "What she suffered she shook off in the sunshine."
He had been arguing within himself all day whether or not to destroy that
letter in his pocket or to show it to her. Would it give her something
else to shake off in the sunshine?
Hollis was wondering if this Marjorie, with her sweet, bright face, her
graceful step and air of ladyhood, with modest and quick replies, not at
all intruding herself, but giving herself, unconsciously, could be the
same half-bashful little girl that he had walked with on a country road
four years before; the little girl who fell so far behind his ideal, the
little girl so different from city girls; and now, who among his small
circle of girlhood at home could surpass her? And she was dressed so
plainly, and there were marks of toil upon her fingers, and even freckles
hidden beneath the fresh bloom of her cheek! She would hunt eggs tomorrow
and milk the cows, she might not only weed in the garden, but when the
potatoes were dug she might pick them up, and even assist her father in
assorting them. Had he not said that Marjorie was his "boy" as well as
her mother's girl? Had she not taken the place of Morris in all things
that a girl could, and had she not taken his place with the master and
gone on with Virgil where Morris left off?
"Marjorie, I don't see the _need_ of your going to school?" he was saying
when they joined the others.
"Hollis, you are right," repeated the master, emphatically, "that is only
a whim, but she will graduate the first year, so it doesn't matter."
"You see he is proud of his work," said Marjorie, "he will not give any
school the credit of me."
"I will give you into Miss Prudence's keeping for a term of years, to
round you off, to make you more of a woman and less of a student--like
herself."
Marjorie's eyes kindled, "I wish Morris might hear that! He has been
scolding me,--but that would satisfy him."
After several moments of light talk, if the master ever could be said to
encourage light talk, he touched Miss Prudence, detaining her with him,
and Marjorie and Hollis walked on together.
Marjorie and Hollis were not silent, nor altogether grave, for now and
then her laugh would ripple forth and he would join, with a ringing,
boyish laugh that made her forget that he had grown up since that day he
brought her the plate.
But the two behind them were altogether grave; Miss Prudence was
speaking, for Mr. Holmes had asked her what kind of a day she had had.
"To-morrow is to be one of our anniversaries, you know," she replied;
"twenty-four years ago--to-morrow--was to have been to me what to-day
is to Linnet. I wonder if I _were_ as light hearted as Linnet."
"You were as blithe a maiden as ever trod on air," he returned smiling
sadly. "Don't I remember how you used to chase me around that old garden.
When we go back let us try another chase, shall we?"
"We will let Marjorie run and imagine it is I."
"Prudence, if I regain my strength out there, I am coming home to tell
you something, may I?"
"I want you to regain your strength, but I am trembling when I think of
anything to be told. Is it anything--about--"
"Jerome? Yes, it is about him and about my self. It is about our last
interview when we spoke of you. Do you still believe that he is living?"
"Yes, we are living, why should he not be alive?"
"Do yon know how old he would be?"
"He was just twenty years older than I."
"Then he must be sixty-four. That is not young, Prudence, and he had
grown old when I said goodbye to him on the steamer--no, it was not a
steamer, he avoided the publicity, he went in a merchant ship, there was
not even one passenger beside himself. He had a fine constitution and he
knew how to take care of himself; it was the--worry that made him look
old. He was very warm-hearted and lovable."
"Yes," escaped Miss Prudence's lips.
"But he was weak and lead astray--it seems strange that your silver
wedding day might be almost at hand, and that tall boy and girl in front
of you my brother's children to call me Uncle John."
"John," she sobbed, catching her breath.
"Poor child! Now I've brought the tears. I was determined to get that
dead look out of your eyes that was beginning to come to-night. It shall
go away to-night and you shall not awake with it in the morning. Do you
know what you want? Do you want to tell me what you pray about on your
wedding day?"
"Yes, and you can pray with me to-morrow. I always ask repentance and
remission of sins for him and for myself that I may see him once more
and make him believe that I have forgiven him."
"Did you ever wish that you had been his wife and might have shared his
exile?"
"Not at first; I was too indignant; I did not forgive him, at first; but
since I have wished it; I know he has needed me."
"But he threw you off."
"No, he would not let me share his disgrace."
"He did not love you well enough to keep the disgrace from you, it
seems," said John Holmes, bitterly.
"No, I could not keep him from sin. The love of a woman is not the love
of God. I failed as many a woman has failed. But I did not desert him; I
went--but he would not see me."
"He was sorry afterward, he tried to write to you, but he always broke
down and could not go on; you were so young and he had been a shame to
you."
"You never told me this before."
"Because I hated him, I hated my brother, for disgracing you and
disgracing my mother and myself; I have grown forgiving since, since God
has forgiven me. He said that last day that you must not forget him."
"He knew I would not forget," said Miss Prudence, proudly.
"Did you ever hate him?"
"Yes, I think I did. I believed he hastened poor father's death; I knew
he had spoiled all my life; yes, I hated him until my heart was softened
by many sorrows--John, I loved that man who went away--so far, without
me, but I held myself bound, I thought your brother would come back and
claim [missing text] was while Jerome was in--before he went to Europe--
and I said the shame and horror was too great, I could not become
anybody's happy wife with that man who was so nearly my husband in such a
place."
"Have you regretted that decision since?" he questioned in a dry hard
tone.
"Yes."
How quiet her voice was! "I was sorry--when I read of his sudden death
two years ago--and I almost hated your brother again for keeping so much
from me--it is so hard not to hate with a bitter hatred when we have been
so wronged. How I have prayed for a forgiving heart," she sighed.
"Have you had any comfort to-day?"
"Yes, I found it in my reading this morning. Linnet was up and singing
early and I was sitting at my window over her head and I learned a lesson
of how God waits before he comforts in these words that were given new to
me. 'And the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen
clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.'"
"I cannot see any comfort in that."
There was a broken sound in the master's voice that Miss Prudence had
never heard before, a hopelessness that was something deeper than his old
melancholy. Had any confession that she had made touched him anew? Was he
troubled at that acknowledged hardness towards his brother? Or was it
sorrow afresh at the mention of her disappointments? Or was it sympathy
for the friend who had given her up and gone away without her?
Would Miss Prudence have been burdened as she never had been burdened
before could she have known that he had lost a long-cherished hope for
himself? that he had lived his lonely life year after year waiting until
he should no longer be bound by the promise made to his brother at their
parting? The promise was this; that he should not ask Prudence, "Prue"
his brother had said, to marry him until he himself should be dead; in
pity for the brother who had educated him and had in every way been so
generous, and who now pleaded brokenly for this last mercy, he had given
the promise, rather it had been wrung out of him, and for a little time
he had not repented. And then when he forgot his brother and remembered
himself, his heart died within him and there was nothing but hard work
left to live for; this only for a time, he found God afterward and worked
hard for him.
He had written to his brother and begged release, but no word of release
had come, and he was growing old and his health had failed under the
stress of work and the agony of his self-control, "the constant anguish
of patience."
But the letter in his pocket was of no avail now, Prudence had loved him
only as a brother all these long years of his suspense and hope and
waiting; that friend whose sudden death had moved her so had been in her
thoughts, and he was only her dear friend and--Jerome's brother.
It is no wonder that the bent shoulders drooped lower and that the
slouched hat was drawn over a face that fain would have hidden itself.
Prudence, his sister Prudence, was speaking to him and he had not heard a
word. How that young fellow in front was rattling on and laughing as
though hearts never ached or broke with aching, and now he was daring
Marjorie to a race, and the fleet-footed girl was in full chase, and the
two who had run their race nearly a quarter of a century before walked on
slowly and seriously with more to think about and bear than they could
find words for.
"I found comfort in that. Shall I tell you?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, "if you can make me understand."