THE ACADEMY GIRL'S THANKSGIVING AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
Marion never knew that shortly after she fell asleep a tall, gaunt
woman with a gray-and-white blanket over her shoulders stole softly
into her room, holding her candle high above her bed, and standing
over, peered down at her.
As she gazed, a half-smile crept into her rugged face. "Pretty
creatur!" she said aloud; then, with deft and careful fingers she
tucked the bed-clothes close around the sleeping girl, smiled broadly,
and crept out.
The next morning when Marion waked, through the odd little oriel
window the late winter light was struggling fitfully in. At first she
could not tell where she was: the rafters over her head, the bare
white walls that surrounded her, the blue-and-white homespun quilt
that covered her, were unlike any thing she had ever seen before.
She was on her feet in a moment, half frightened at the dim light. Had
another night come? Had she slept over Thanksgiving?
When she went to the kitchen, Aunt Betty was there busy over the
cooking-stove. She was about making an apology for her lateness, but
she was interrupted by,--
"'Taint never too late to pray; you may read the Bible." She pointed
without another word to the old family Bible. Marion took it, opened
it slowly, waiting to be told where to read.
"Thanksgiving," said Aunt Betty briefly.
"It's all Thanksgiving my father says. He thinks the Bible was given
us to make us happy."
"Thirty-fourth Psalm, then," and a quiet look came into the old seamed
face.
When Marion had read it, her aunt rose from her chair, stepped behind
it, tilted it on its front legs, and folding her hands on its top
began to pray.
Like the grace at table, it was the same old prayer that had gone up
from that same old kitchen for one hundred and twenty years. Its
quaint simplicity was a marvel to the young girl who listened, but a
breath of its devotion reached and touched her heart.
Then followed breakfast. Marion wondered, as they two sat at the table
alone, how the old aunt could have borne the loneliness for so many
long years.
To her, on her first Thanksgiving away from her cheerful home, there
was something positively uncanny in the silence which settled down
over the house; even the old yellow dog, with his nose between his
front paws, slept soundly, and the great red rooster that had lighted
upon the forked stick that before the back door had held the farm
milk-pails for more than a century, instead of calling for his
Thanksgiving breakfast, as orthodox New England roosters are expected
to do, just flapped his wings lazily, and turned a much becombed head
imploringly toward the kitchen window.
What was to be done with the long, dull festival day? Marion may be
forgiven if she cast many longing thoughts back to the academy, to the
pleasant bustle that filled the long corridors, the merry laughs of
the girls, the endless chatter, the coming and the going that seemed
to her never to cease. She was homesick to see Miss Ashton, her
room-mates, and Helen, over whose daily life she had already installed
herself as responsible for its comforts and its pleasures, and who,
homeless and poor, remained almost by herself in the great empty
building.
She was not, however, left long in doubt as to the day's occupations.
Hardly had the breakfast dishes been put away, when Aunt Betty
said,--
"Meetin' begins at ten. We hain't got no bell, and we'll start in
season. You can put on your things."
The clock said nine; meeting began at ten. Five minutes were all she
needed for preparation. Here was time for a few lines at least of that
Greek tragedy. She had read one line, when the door opened, and there
stood Aunt Betty.
"Listen, Aunt Betty!" she said. "Hear how soft these words are." Then
she rattled off line after line of the chorus. This is Greek, she
said, pausing to take breath. "Listen! I will translate for you."
She carried her book to the oriel window, so the light would fall more
clearly on its page, and began,--
"Before the mirror's golden round,
Curious my braided hair I bound,
Adjusted for the night;
And now, disrobed, for rest prepared,
Sudden tumultuous cries are heard,
And shrieks of wild affright.
Grecians to Grecians shouting call,
'Now let the haughty city fall;
In dust her towers, her rampiers lay,
And bear triumphant her rich spoils away.'"
"Doesn't that roll along sublimely? Can't you hear the cries and the
shouts of the Grecian host?"
"I can hear Marion Parke making a fool of herself. Be you, or be you
not, goin' to meetin' with me?"
"Meeting? Why, of course I am. I wouldn't miss it for anything. I'll
be ready in half a minute. Will you?"
Aunt Betty, in her short black skirt, her old gray sack, and her heavy
shoes, did not make much of a holiday appearance. Something of this
crept slowly into her brain as she looked down, so she turned quickly,
and went away without another word.
Marion gave some girl-like twists to her brown hair, pinned a gay
scarlet bow to the neck of her sack, and, looking fresh and pretty as
a rosebud, went to the kitchen, where she had to wait some time before
Aunt Betty made her appearance.
Cousin Abijah had brought the old horse and sleigh round to the back
door. Here a long slanting roof ran down to the lintel of the door,
and up to the plain cornice snow-drifts lay piled. What a winter scene
it was! Marion, never having seen the like before, gazed at it in
wondering admiration.
When Aunt Betty and Marion started for the village meeting-house, the
thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero.
Aunt Betty took a rein in each hand, and as soon as the snow-banks
bordering the narrow path to the road were safely passed, began a
series of jerks at the horse's mouth, which Dan perfectly well
understood, too well, indeed, to allow himself to be hurried in the
least.
"One foot up, and one foot down,
That's the way to Lunnon town,"
laughed Marion when they had gone a few rods.
"Klick! Klick!" with more decisive tugs from Dan's mistress; but the
"Klicks," as well as the tugs, were of no avail, and Marion, afraid to
venture another comment, turned her eyes from the horse to the scenery
around her.
Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the ride to the little meeting-house
Marion will never forget. When she left the farmhouse it seemed to her
a short walk would bring her to the foot of the snow-clad mountains;
but, to her surprise, when they reached the church they were towering
up above the small village like huge sentinels, so still, so grand,
that, hardly conscious she was speaking aloud, Marion said,--
"I never knew before what it meant in the Bible where it says, 'The
strength of the hills is his also.' Wonderful! wonderful!"
"Eh?" asked Aunt Betty, only a dim comprehension of what Marion meant
having crept in beneath the big red hood that covered her head.
Marion repeated the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it
with, "'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt
become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with
shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.'" Not a word did she offer in
explanation; she only twitched the horse's head more emphatically, and
did not speak again until she reached the meeting-house door.
What a desolate-looking audience-room it was! Up in one corner roared
a big iron stove, which, do its best, failed to warm but a few feet of
the spaces around it. A gray-bearded minister in his overcoat was
reading from the pulpit a hymn, as they went in, and a dozen people,
most of them men, were scattered round in the bare pews.
They all looked pleased to see an addition to their number, and some
nodded to Aunt Betty; all stared at the new-comer.
There was no sermon, but a short address, which Marion strove to
remember, that she might repeat it to her father, as having come from
the old pulpit before which he had worshipped as a boy; but, do her
best to be attentive and decorous, her teeth chattered, and the "Amen"
was to her the most interesting part of the services.
The ride home was even colder than the one to the meeting; for a brisk
north-east wind had risen, and came howling down from the mountains in
strong, long gusts that betokened a coming storm.
Dan obstinately refused to move one foot faster than he chose, and
before they reached home they were thoroughly and, indeed, dangerously
benumbed with the cold.
Little thought had they of Thanksgiving, as they clung to the warm
stove and listened to the rising of the wind. It was Marion who first
remembered the day, and looked about for some way of keeping it. Poor,
pinched, half-frozen Aunt Betty had entirely forgotten it.
Now Marion made herself perfectly at home. She found old-fashioned
china that would have been held precious in many houses, decorating
with it the table in a deft and tasteful way that warmed lonely Aunt
Betty's heart, as she watched her, more than the blazing fire could;
and while she worked, she talked, or sang little snatches of college
songs learned at school, which rippled out in her rich voice with a
melody never heard in the old farmhouse before.
It was not long before Aunt Betty came to her help, and such a
bountiful dinner as she had prepared made Marion wish over and over
again that Helen, alone in that large academy building, could have
been there to share it with her.
"Thanksgiving night!" Marion kept saying this to herself over and over
again, as she sat alone with Aunt Betty over the kitchen stove.
A little oblong light stand was drawn up between them, holding a small
kerosene lamp. Not a book but the Bible, and a copy of the Farmer's
Almanac suspended by a string from the corner of the mantel, was to be
seen. Marion, having heard so much of the intelligence of the New
Hampshire farmers, supposed of course there would be a library in the
house, and had brought only her Greek Tragedy with her. This she did
not dare open again, so there she sat, Aunt Betty, not having yet
entirely recovered from the effects of her cold ride, alternately
nodding and rousing herself to a vain effort to keep her eyes open.
And all the time the storm was increasing, the wind rocking the house
with its rough blasts, until it seemed to utter loud groans, and the
sharp cold snapping and cracking the shaking timbers with short
volleys of sound like gun-shots. Frightened mice scurried about in the
low roof over the kitchen; and rats, lonely rats, seeking company,
came to the top of the cellar stairs, pushing the door open with their
pointed noses, and blinking in beseechingly with their big round
eyes.
Marion, who had never heard anything of the kind before, was really
frightened.
"O Aunt Betty," she said piteously, "do, please, wake up and tell me
if there are ghosts here!"
Aunt Betty just stared at her; she was wide awake now.
"There are such dreadful noises, and such mice, and--and rats!"
"Nonsense!" said Aunt Betty, listening. "Don't be a coward! It's only
the storm."
"It's fearful! What can we do?"
"Pop corn!"
Marion could not help laughing at the inconsequent answer; but
anything was better than the noisy stillness of the last hour, and
bringing a large brass warming-pan and some corn, they were soon busy
popping the corn.
It would have been difficult to say which of the two enjoyed the sport
the most. It carried Marion home, where the family were all gathered
together before the brisk fire in the cheerful sitting-room. Aunt
Betty was young again. Nat and Sam, Bertha and Molly, and little Ruth
filled the big, empty kitchen, laughed merrily over the crackling
corn, held out small hands to catch it as the cover swung back, pelted
each other with it till the spotless floor crunched beneath their
dancing feet. It had been long years since they had come home to her
before on Thanksgiving night, but here they were now, all evoked by
Marion's glad youth.
The moment the old clock struck nine, warming-pan, corn, and dishes
vanished from sight.
A long tallow-dip Aunt Betty held out to Marion, and pointed
up-stairs.
Marion obeyed; and though all night long the wind howled, the mice and
the rats held high carnival, Marion slept soundly, and never knew
that Aunt Betty, with her candle held high above her head, made
another visit to her bedside, and there, bending her old knees,
offered up her simple prayer, asking in much faith and love God's
blessing on this new-found niece.