Chapter 24

"It means something to me. I am more at home with Linnet than I am with her. She has changed; she keeps within herself."

"Then you must bring her out."

"How can she care, if she thinks I have trifled with her?"

"I didn't say she thought so, I said _I_ thought so!"

"You have hastened this very much. I wanted her to know me and trust me. I want my wife to love me, Mrs. West."

"No doubt of that, Master Hollis," with a sigh of congratulation to herself. "All you have to do is to tell her what you have told me. She will throw you off."

"Has she _said_ so?" he inquired eagerly.

"Do you think she is the girl to say so?"

"I am sure not," he answered proudly.

"Hollis, this is a great relief," said Marjorie's mother.

"Well, good-bye," he said, after hesitating a moment with his eyes on the kitchen floor, and extending his hand. "I will speak to her when I come back."

"The Lord bless you," she answered fervently.

Just then Marjorie ran lightly down-stairs singing a morning hymn, entering the kitchen as he closed the door and went out.

"Hollis just went," said her mother.

"Why didn't he stay to breakfast?" she asked, without embarrassment.

"He had to meet his friends early," replied her mother, averting her face and busying herself at the sink.

"He will have to eat breakfast somewhere; but perhaps he expects to take a late breakfast on the fish he has caught. Mother, Linnet and I are to be little girls, and go berrying."

"Only be happy, children; that's all I want," returned Mrs. West, her voice breaking.

While Marjorie fried the fish for breakfast her mother went to her chamber to kneel down and give thanks.

XXVII.

ANOTHER WALK AND ANOTHER TALK.

"We are not to lead events but to follow them."--_Epictetus_.

Marjorie was so happy that she trembled with the joy of it. The relief from her burden, at times, was almost harder to bear than the burden itself. She sang all day hymns that were the outpouring of her soul in love to Christ.

"What a child you are, Marjorie," her mother said one day. "You were as doleful as you could be, and now you are as happy as a bird."

"Do you remember what Luther says?"

"Luther says several wise and good things."

"And this is one of them; it is one of Aunt Prue's favorite sayings: 'The Christian should be like a little bird, which sits on its twig and sings, and lets God think for it.'"

"That's all very well for a bird; but we have to _do_," replied her mother sharply.

"We have to _do_ what God _thinks_, though," returned Marjorie quickly.

"Child, you are your father all over again; he always wanted to wait and see; but mine was the faith that acted."

"But now can we act, until we wait and see?" persisted Marjorie. "I want to be sure that God means for us to do things."

"Many a thing wouldn't have happened if I hadn't pushed through--why, your father would have been willing for Linnet to be engaged years and years."

"So would I," said Marjorie seriously.

A week later, one afternoon towards dusk, Marjorie was walking home from her grandfather's. Her happy face was shaded by a brown straw hat, her hands were sunburned, and her fingers were scratched with numerous berrying expeditions. There was a deepened color in the roundness of her cheeks; she was a country maiden this afternoon, swinging an empty basket in her hand. She was humming to herself as she walked along, hurrying her steps a little as she remembered that it was the mail for her long, foreign letter. This afternoon she was as happy as she wanted to be. Within half a mile of home she espied a tall figure coming towards her,--a figure in a long linen duster, wearing a gray, low-crowned, felt hat. After an instant she recognized Hollis and remembered that to-day he was expected home. She had not thought of it all day.

"Your mother sent me to meet you," he said, without formal greeting. Instantly she detected a change in his manner towards her; it was as easy as if he were speaking to Linnet.

"I've been off on one of my long walks."

"Do you remember our walk together from your grandfather's--how many years ago?"

"When I appealed to your sympathies and enlisted you in my behalf?"

"You were in trouble, weren't you? I believe it is just seven years ago."

"Physiologists tell us we are made over new every seven years, therefore you and I are another Hollis and another Marjorie."

"I hope I am another Hollis," he answered gravely.

"And I am _sure_ I am another Marjorie," she said more lightly. "How you lectured me then!"

"I never lectured any one."

"You lectured me. I never forgot it. From that hour I wanted to be like your cousin Helen."

"You do not need to copy any one. I like you best as yourself."

"You do not know me."

"No; I do not know you; but I want to know you."

"That depends upon yourself as well as upon me."

"I do not forget that. I am not quick to read and you are written in many languages."

"Are you fond of the study--of languages? Did you succeed in French?"

"Fairly. And I can express my wants in German. Will you write to me again?"

There was a flush now that was not sunburn; but she did not speak; she seemed to be considering.

"Will you, Marjorie?" he urged, with gentle persistence.

"I--don't know."

"Why don't you know."

"I have not thought about it for so long. Let me see--what kind of letters did you write. Were they interesting?"

"_Yours_ were interesting. Were you hurt because--"

It happened so long ago that she smiled as she looked up at him.

"I have never told you the reason. I thought Morris Kemlo had a prior claim."

"What right had you to think that?"

"From what I heard--and saw."

"I am ignorant of what you could hear or see. Morris was my twin-brother; he was my blessing; he _is_ my blessing."

"Is not my reason sufficient?"

"Oh, yes; it doesn't matter. But see that sumach. I have not seen anything so pretty this summer; mother must have them. You wouldn't think it, but she is very fond of wild flowers."

She stepped aside to pluck the sumach and sprays of goldenrod; they were growing beside a stone wall, and she crossed the road to them. He stood watching her. She was as unconscious as the goldenrod herself.

What had her mother meant? Was it all a mistake? Had his wretched days and wakeful nights been for nothing? Was there nothing for him to be grieved about? He knew now how much he loved her--and she? He was not a part of her life, at all. Would he dare speak the words he had planned to speak?

"Then, Marjorie, you will not write to me," he began afresh, after admiring the sumach.

"Oh, yes, I will! If you want to! I love to write letters; and my life isn't half full enough yet. I want new people in it."

"And you would as readily take me as another," he said, in a tone that she did not understand.

"More readily than one whom I do not know. I want you to hear extracts from one of Mrs. Holmes' delicious letters to-night."

"You are as happy as a lark to-day.

"That is what mother told me, only she did not specify the bird. Morris, I _am_ happier than I was Sunday morning."

He colored over the name. She smiled and said, "I've been thinking about him to-day, and wanting to tell him how changed I am."

"What has changed you?" he asked.

Her eyes filled before she could answer him. In a few brief sentences, sentences in which each word told, she gave him the story of her dark year.

"Poor little Mousie," he said tenderly. "And you bore the dark time all by yourself."

"That's the way I have my times. But I do not have my happy times by myself, you see."

"Did nothing else trouble you?"

"No; oh, no! Nothing like that. Father's death was not a trouble. I went with him as far as I could--I almost wanted to go all the way."

"And there was nothing else to hurt you?" he asked very earnestly.

"Oh, no; why should there be?" she answered, meeting his questioning eyes frankly. "Do you know of anything else that should have troubled me?"

"No, nothing else. But girls do have sometimes. Didn't your mother help you any? She helps other people."

"I could not tell her. I could not talk about it. She only thought I was ill, and sent for a physician. Perhaps I did worry myself into feeling ill."

"You take life easily," he said.

"Do I? I like to take it as God gives it to me; not before he gives it to me. This slowness--or faith--or whatever it is, is one of my inheritances from my blessed father. Who is it that says, 'I'd see to it pretty sharp that I didn't hurry Providence.' That has helped me."

"I wish it would some one else," he said grimly.

"I wish it would help _every one_ else. Everything is helping me now; if I were writing to you I could tell you some of them."

"I like to hear you talk, Marjorie."

"Do you?" she asked wonderingly. "Linnet does, too, and Mrs. Kemlo. As I shall never write a book, I must learn to talk, and talk myself all out. Aunt Prue is living her book."

"Tell me something that has helped you," he urged.

She looked at the goldenrod in her hand, and raised it to her lips.

"It is coming to me that Christ made everything. He made those lilies of which he said, 'Consider the lilies.' Isn't it queer that we will not let him clothe us as he did the lilies? What girl ever had a white dress of the texture and whiteness and richness of the lily?"

"But the lily has but one dress; girls like a new dress for every occasion and a different one."

"'Shall he not much more clothe you?' But we do not let him clothe us. When one lily fades, he makes another in a fresh dress. I wish I could live as he wants me to. Not think about dress or what we eat or drink? Only do his beautiful work, and not have to worry and be anxious about things."

"Do you _have_ to be?" he asked smiling.

"My life is a part of lives that are anxious about these things. But I don't think about dress as some girls do. I never like to talk about it. It is not a temptation to me. It would not trouble me to wear one dress all my life--one color, as the flowers do; it should be a soft gray--a cashmere, and when one was soiled or worn out I would have another like it--and never spend any more thought about it. Aunt Prue loves gray--she almost does that--she spends no thought on dress. If we didn't have to 'take thought,' how much time we would have--and how our minds would be at rest--to work for people and to study God's works and will."

Hollis smiled as he looked down at her.

"Girls don't usually talk like that," he said.

"Perhaps I don't--usually. What are you reading now?"

"History, chiefly--the history of the world and the history of the church."

They walked more and more slowly as they drifted into talk about books and then into his life in New York and the experiences he had had in his business tours and the people whom he had met.

"Do you like your life?" she asked.

"Yes, I like the movement and the life: I like to be 'on the go.' I expect to take my third trip across the ocean by and by. I like to mingle with men. I never could settle down into farming; not till I am old, at any rate."

They found Marjorie's mother standing in the front doorway, looking for them. She glanced at Hollis, but he was fastening the gate and would not be glanced at. Marjorie's face was no brighter than when she had set out for her walk. Linnet was setting the tea-table and singing, "A life on the ocean wave."

After tea the letter from Switzerland was read and discussed. Miss Prudence, as Mrs. West could not refrain from calling her, always gave them something to talk about. To give people something to think about that was worth thinking about, was something to live for, she had said once to Marjorie.

And then there was music and talk. Marjorie and Hollis seemed to find endless themes for conversation. And then Hollis and Linnet went home. Hollis bade them good-bye; he was to take an early train in the morning. Marjorie's mother scanned Marjorie's face, and stood with a lighted candle in her hand at bedtime, waiting for her confidence; but unconscious Marjorie closed the piano, piled away the sheets of music, arranged the chairs, and then went out to the milkroom for a glass of milk.

"Good-night, mother," she called back. "Are you waiting for anything?"

"Did you set the sponge for the bread?"

"Oh, yes," in a laughing voice.

And then the mother went slowly and wonderingly up the stairs, muttering "Well! well! Of all things!"

Marjorie drew Aunt Prue's letter from her pocket to think it all over again by herself. Mr. Holmes was buried in manuscript. Prue was studying with her, beside studying French and German with the pastor's daughter in the village, and she herself was full of many things. They were coming home by and by to choose a home in America.

"When I was your age, Marjorie, and older, I used to fall asleep at night thinking over the doings of the day and finding my life in them; and in the morning when I awoke, my thought was, 'What shall I _do_ to-day?' And now when I awake--now, when my life is at its happiest and as full of doings as I can wish, I think, instead, of Christ, and find my joy in nearness to him, in doing all with his eye upon me. You have not come to this yet; but it is waiting for you. Your first thought to-morrow morning may be of some plan to go somewhere, of some one you expect to see, of something you have promised to-day; but, by and by, when you love him as you are praying to love him, your first thought will be that you are with him. You can imagine the mother awaking with joy at finding her child asleep beside her, or the wife awaking to another day with her husband; but blessed more than all is it to awake and find the Lord himself near enough for you to speak to."

Marjorie went to sleep with the thought in her heart, and awoke with it; and then she remembered that Hollis must be on his way to the train, and then that she and Linnet were to drive to Portland that day on a small shopping excursion and to find something for the birthday present of Morris' mother.

Several days afterward when the mail was brought in Mrs. West beckoned Marjorie aside in a mysterious manner and laid in her hand a letter from Hollis.

"Yes," said Marjorie.

"Did you expect it?"

"Oh, yes."

Mrs. West waited until Marjorie opened it, and felt in her pocket for her glasses. In the other time she had always read his letters. But Marjorie moved away with it, and only said afterward that there was no "news" in it.

It was not like the letters of the other time. He had learned to write as she had learned to talk. Her reply was as full of herself as it would have been to Morris. Hollis could never be a stranger again.

XXVIII.

THE LINNET.

"He who sends the storm steers the vessel."--_Rev. T. Adams_

August passed and September was almost through and not one word had been heard of the _Linnet_. Linnet lived through the days and through the nights, but she thought she would choke to death every night. Days before she had consented, her mother had gone to her and urged her with every argument at her command to lock up her house and come home until they heard. At first, she resented the very thought of it; but Annie Grey was busy in Middlefield, Marjorie was needed at home, and the hours of the days seemed never to pass away; at last, worn out with her anguish, she allowed Captain Rheid to lift her into his carriage and take her to her mother.

As the days went on Will's father neither ate nor slept; he drove into Portland every day, and returned at night more stern and more pale than he went away in the morning.

Linnet lay on her mother's bed and wept, and then slept from exhaustion, to awake with the cry, "Oh, why didn't I die in my sleep?"

One evening Mrs. Rheid appeared at the kitchen door; her cap and sunbonnet had fallen off, her gray hair was roughened over her forehead, her eyes were wild, her lips apart. Her husband had brought her, and sat outside in his wagon too stupefied to remember that he was leaving his old wife to stagger into the house alone.

Mrs. West turned from the table, where she was reading her evening chapter by candle light, and rising caught her before she fell into her arms. The two old mothers clung to each other and wept together; it seemed such a little time since they had washed up Linnet's dishes and set her house in order on the wedding day. Mrs. Rheid thrust a newspaper into her hand as she heard her husband's step, and went out to meet him as Mrs. West called Marjorie. Linnet was asleep upon her mother's bed.

"My baby, my poor baby!" cried her mother, falling on her knees beside the bed, "must you wake up to this?"

She awoke at midnight; but her mother lay quiet beside her, and she did not arouse her. In the early light she discerned something in her mother's face, and begged to know what she had to tell.

Taking her into her arms she told her all she knew. It was in the newspaper. A homeward-bound ship had brought the news. The _Linnet_ had been seen; wrecked, all her masts gone, deserted, not a soul on board--the captain supposed she went down that night; there was a storm, and he could not find her again in the morning. He had tried to keep near her, thinking it worth while to tow her in. Before she ended, the child was a dead weight in her arms. For an hour they all believed her dead. A long illness followed; it was Christmas before she crossed the chamber, and in April Captain Rheid brought her downstairs in his arms.

His wife said he loved Linnet as he would have loved an own daughter. His heart was more broken than hers.

"Poor father," she would say, stroking his grizzly beard with her thin fingers; "poor father."

"Cynthy," African John's wife, had a new suggestion every time she was allowed to see Linnet. Hadn't she waited, and didn't she know? Mightn't an East Indian have taken him off and carried him to Madras, or somewhere there, and wasn't he now working his passage home as she had once heard of a shipwrecked captain doing! Or, perhaps some ship was taking him around the Horn--it took time to go around that Horn, as everybody knew--or suppose a whaler had taken him off and carried him up north, could he expect to get back in a day, and did she want him to find her in such a plight?

So Linnet hoped and hoped. His mother put on mourning, and had a funeral sermon preached; and his father put up a grave-stone in the churchyard, with his name and age engraved on it, and underneath, "Lost at sea." There were, many such in that country churchyard.

It was two years before Linnet could be persuaded to put on her widow's mourning, and then she did it to please the two mothers. The color gradually came back to her cheeks and lips; she moved around with a grave step, but her hands were never idle. After two years she insisted upon going back to Will's home, where the shutters had been barred so long, and the only signs of life were the corn and rye growing in the fields about it.

Annie Grey was glad to be with her again. She worked at dressmaking; and spent every night at home with Linnet.

The next summer the travellers returned from abroad; Mr. Holmes, more perfectly his developed self; little Prue growing up and as charming a girl as ever papa and mamma had hoped for, prayed for, and worked for; and Mrs. Holmes, or "Miss Prudence" and "Aunt Prue," as she was called, a lady whose slight figure had become rounded and whose white hair shaded a fair face full of peace.

There was no resisting such persuasions as those of Mrs. Kemlo, the girls' mother, and the "girls" themselves; and almost before they had decided upon it they found themselves installed at Mrs. West's for the summer. Before the first snow, however, a house was rented in New York City, the old, homelike furniture removed to it, and they had but to believe it to feel themselves at home in the long parlor in Maple Street.

Linnet was taken from her lonely home by loving force, and kept all winter. She could be at rest with Miss Prudence; she could be at rest and enjoy and be busy. It was wonderful how many things she became busied about and deeply interested in. Her letters to Marjorie were as full of life as in her school days. She was Linnet, Mrs. Holmes wrote to her mother; but she was Linnet chastened and sanctified.

And all this time Hollis and Marjorie had written to each other, and had seen each other for two weeks every day each year.

During the winter Linnet spent in New York the firm for which he travelled became involved; the business was greatly decreased; changes were made: one of the partners left the firm; the remaining head had a nephew, whom he preferred to his partner's favorite, Hollis Rheid; and Hollis Rheid found himself with nothing to do but to look around for something to do.

"Come home," wrote his father. "I will build you a house, and give you fifty acres of good land."

With the letter in his pocket, he sought his friends, the Holmes'. He was not so averse to a farmer's life as he had been when he once spoke of it to Marjorie.

He found Prue practicing; papa was in the study, she said, and mamma and Linnet had gone to the train to meet Marjorie.

"Marjorie did not tell me that she was coming."

"It was to be your surprise, and now I've spoiled it."

"Nothing can spoil the pleasure of it," he returned.

Prue stationed herself at the window, as when she was a little girl, to watch for Marjorie. She was still the blue bird with the golden crest.

XXIX.

ONE NIGHT.

"We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians."--_Madame Swetchine_.

The evening before Marjorie started for New York she was sitting alone in her father's arm chair before the sitting-room fire. Her mother had left her to go up to Mrs. Kemlo's chamber for her usual evening chat. Mrs. Kemlo was not strong this winter, and on very cold days did not venture down-stairs to the sitting-room. Marjorie, her mother, and the young farmer who had charge of the farm, were often the only ones at the table, and the only occupants of the sitting-room during the long winter evenings. Marjorie sighed for Linnet, or she would have sighed for her, if she had been selfish; she remembered the evenings of studying with Morris, and the master's tread as he walked up and down and talked to her father.

Now she was alone in the dim light of two tallow candles. It was so cold that the small wood stove did not sufficiently heat the room, and she had wrapped the shawl about her that Linnet used to wear to school when Mr. Holmes taught. She hid herself in it, gathering her feet up under the skirt of her dress, in a position very comfortable and lazy, and very undignified for a maiden who would be twenty-five on her next birthday.

The last letter from Hollis had stated that he was seeking a position in the city. He thought he understood his business fairly, and the outlook was not discouraging. He had a little money well invested; his life was simple; and, beyond the having nothing to do, he was not anxious. He had thought of farming as a last resort; but there was rather a wide difference between tossing over laces and following the plow.

"Not that I dread hard work, but I do not love the _solitude_ of country life. 'A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone,' Swift writes; but I am not a wise man, nor a wild beast. I love men and the homes of men, the business of men, the opportunities that I find among men."

She had not replied to this letter; what a talk they would have over it! She had learned Hollis; she knew him by heart; she could talk to him now almost as easily as she could write. These years of writing had been a great deal to both of them. They had educated each other.

The last time Mrs. West had seen Hollis she had wondered how she had ever dared speak to him as she had spoken that morning in the kitchen. Had she effected anything? She was not sure that they were engaged; she had "talked it over" with his mother, and that mother was equally in the dark.