To lose out of sight the friend whom one has loved and lived to please
is to lose joy out of life. But if love is true, there comes presently a
higher joy of pleasing the ideal, that is to say, the perfect friend.
The same old happiness is lifted to a higher level. As for Martha, the
girl who stayed behind in Ashford, nobody’s life could seem duller to
those who could not understand; she was slow of step, and her eyes were
almost always downcast as if intent upon incessant toil; but they
startled you when she looked up, with their shining light. She was
capable of the happiness of holding fast to a great sentiment, the
ineffable satisfaction of trying to please one whom she truly loved. She
never thought of trying to make other people pleased with herself; all
she lived for was to do the best she could for others, and to conform to
an ideal, which grew at last to be like a saint’s vision, a heavenly
figure painted upon the sky.
On Sunday afternoons in summer, Martha sat by the window of her chamber,
a low-storied little room, which looked into the side yard and the great
branches of an elm-tree. She never sat in the old wooden rocking-chair
except on Sundays like this; it belonged to the day of rest and to happy
meditation. She wore her plain black dress and a clean white apron, and
held in her lap a little wooden box, with a brass ring on top for a
handle. She was past sixty years of age and looked even older, but there
was the same look on her face that it had sometimes worn in girlhood.
She was the same Martha; her hands were old-looking and work-worn, but
her face still shone. It seemed like yesterday that Helena Vernon had
gone away, and it was more than forty years.
War and peace had brought their changes and great anxieties, the face of
the earth was furrowed by floods and fire, the faces of mistress and
maid were furrowed by smiles and tears, and in the shy the stars shone
on as if nothing had happened. The village of Ashford added a few pages
to its unexciting history, the minister preached, the people listened;
now and then a funeral crept along the street, and now and then the
bright face of a little child rose above the horizon of a family pew.
Miss Harriet Pyne lived on in the large white house, which gained more
and more distinction because it suffered no changes, save successive
repaintings and a new railing about its stately roof. Miss Harriet
herself had moved far beyond the uncertainties of an anxious youth. She
had long ago made all her decisions, and settled all necessary
questions; her scheme of life was as faultless as the miniature
landscape of a Japanese garden, and as easily kept in order. The only
important change she would ever be capable of making was the final
change to another and a better world; and for that nature itself would
gently provide, and her own innocent life.
Hardly any great social event had ruffled the easy current of life since
Helena Vernon’s marriage. To this Miss Pyne had gone, stately in
appearance and carrying gifts of some old family silver which bore the
Vernon crest, but not without some protest in her heart against the
uncertainties of married life. Helena was so equal to a happy
independence and even to the assistance of other lives grown strangely
dependent upon her quick sympathies and instinctive decisions, that it
was hard to let her sink her personality in the affairs of another. Yet
a brilliant English match was not without its attractions to an
old-fashioned gentlewoman like Miss Pyne, and Helena herself was
amazingly happy; one day there had come a letter to Ashford, in which
her very heart seemed to beat with love and self-forgetfulness, to tell
cousin Harriet of such new happiness and high hope. “Tell Martha all
that I say about my dear Jack,” wrote the eager girl; “please show my
letter to Martha, and tell her that I shall come home next summer and
bring the handsomest and best man in the world to Ashford. I have told
him all about the dear house and the dear garden; there never was such a
lad to reach for cherries with his six-foot-two.” Miss Pyne, wondering a
little, gave the letter to Martha, who took it deliberately and as if
she wondered too, and went away to read it slowly by herself. Martha
cried over it, and felt a strange sense of loss and pain; it hurt her
heart a little to read about the cherry-picking. Her idol seemed to be
less her own since she had become the idol of a stranger. She never had
taken such a letter in her hands before, but love at last prevailed,
since Miss Helena was happy, and she kissed the last page where her name
was written, feeling overbold, and laid the envelope on Miss Pyne’s
secretary without a word.
The most generous love cannot but long for reassurance, and Martha had
the joy of being remembered. She was not forgotten when the day of the
wedding drew near, but she never knew that Miss Helena had asked if
cousin Harriet would not bring Martha to town; she should like to have
Martha there to see her married. “She would help about the flowers,”
wrote the happy girl; “I know she will like to come, and I’ll ask mamma
to plan to have some one take her all about Boston and make her have a
pleasant time after the hurry of the great day is over.”
Cousin Harriet thought it was very kind and exactly like Helena, but
Martha would be out of her element; it was most imprudent and girlish to
have thought of such a thing. Helena’s mother would be far from wishing
for any unnecessary guest just then, in the busiest part of her
household, and it was best not to speak of the invitation. Some day
Martha should go to Boston if she did well, but not now. Helena did not
forget to ask if Martha had come, and was astonished by the indifference
of the answer. It was the first thing which reminded her that she was
not a fairy princess having everything her own way in that last day
before the wedding. She knew that Martha would have loved to be near,
for she could not help understanding in that moment of her own happiness
the love that was hidden in another heart. Next day this happy young
princess, the bride, cut a piece of a great cake and put it into a
pretty box that had held one of her wedding presents. With eager voices
calling her, and all her friends about her, and her mother’s face
growing more and more wistful at the thought of parting, she still
lingered and ran to take one or two trifles from her dressing-table, a
little mirror and some tiny scissors that Martha would remember, and one
of the pretty handkerchiefs marked with her maiden name. These she put
in the box too; it was half a girlish freak and fancy, but she could not
help trying to share her happiness, and Martha’s life was so plain and
dull. She whispered a message, and put the little package into cousin
Harriet’s hand for Martha as she said good-by. She was very fond of
cousin Harriet. She smiled with a gleam of her old fun; Martha’s puzzled
look and tall awkward figure seemed to stand suddenly before her eyes,
as she promised to come again to Ashford. Impatient voices called to
Helena, her lover was at the door, and she hurried away, leaving her old
home and her girlhood gladly. If she had only known it, as she kissed
cousin Harriet good-by, they were never going to see each other again
until they were old women. The first step that she took out of her
father’s house that day, married, and full of hope and joy, was a step
that led her away from the green elms of Boston Common and away from her
own country and those she loved best, to a brilliant, much-varied
foreign life, and to nearly all the sorrows and nearly all the joys that
the heart of one woman could hold or know.
On Sunday afternoons Martha used to sit by the window in Ashford and
hold the wooden box which a favorite young brother, who afterward died
at sea, had made for her, and she used to take out of it the pretty
little box with a gilded cover that had held the piece of wedding-cake,
and the small scissors, and the blurred bit of a mirror in its silver
case; as for the handkerchief with the narrow lace edge, once in two or
three years she sprinkled it as if it were a flower, and spread it out
in the sun on the old bleaching-green, and sat near by in the shrubbery
to watch lest some bold robin or cherry-bird should seize it and fly
away.