Chapter 9

"And now don't you go home to-night, stay all night and I'll talk to father," planned Mrs. West, briskly; "as Marjorie would say, Giant Despair will get Diffidence his wife to bed and they will talk the matter over. She doesn't read _Pilgrim's Progress_ as much as she used to, but she calls you Mercy yet. And you are a mercy to us."

With the tears rolling down her cheeks the mother stooped over and kissed the lover of her girls.

"Mr. Holmes is coming to see Marjorie to-night, he hasn't called since her accident, and to talk to father, he likes to argue with him, and it will be pleasanter to have you here. And Will Rheid is home from a voyage, and he'll be running in. It must be lonesome for you over there on the Point. It used to be for me when I was a girl."

"But I'm not a girl," smiled Miss Prudence.

"You'll pass for one any day. And you can play and make it lively. I am not urging you with disinterested motives."

"I can see through you; and I _am_ anxious to know how Mr. West will receive my proposal."

"He will see through my eyes in the end, but he always likes to argue a while first. I want you to taste Linnet's cream biscuit, too. She made them on purpose for you. There's father, now, coming with African John, and there _is_ Will Rheid coming across lots. Well, I'm glad Linnet did make the biscuits."

Miss Prudence arose with a happy face, she did not go back to the girls at once, there was a nook to be quiet in at the foot of the kitchen garden, and she felt as if she must be alone awhile. Mrs. West, with her heart in a tremor that it had not known since Marjorie was born, tucked away her knitting behind the school-books on the dining-room table, tied on her blue checked apron, and went out to the kitchen to kindle the fire for tea, singing in her mellow voice, "Thus far the Lord hath led me on," suddenly stopping short as she crammed the stove with shavings to exclaim, "His name _was_ Holmes! And that's the school-master's name. And that's why he's in such a fume when the boys cheat at marbles. Well, did I _ever_!"

Linnet ran in to exchange her afternoon dress for a short, dark calico, and to put on her old shoes before she went into the barnyard to milk Bess and Brindle and Beauty. Will Rheid found her in time to persuade her to let him milk Brindle, for he was really afraid he would get his hand out, and it would never do to let his wife do all the milking when his father bequeathed him a fifth of his acres and two of his hardest-to-be-milked cows. Linnet laughed, gave him one of her pails, and found an other milking stool for him.

Marjorie wandered around disconsolate until she discovered Miss Prudence in the garden.

She was perplexed over a new difficulty which vented itself in the question propounded between tasting currants.

"Ought I--do you think I ought--talk to people--about--like the minister--about--"

"No, child!" and Miss Prudence laughed merrily. "You ought to talk to people like Marjorie West! Like a child and not like a minister."

IX.

JOHN HOLMES.

"Courage to endure and to obey."--_Tennyson._

It was vacation-time and yet John Holmes was at work. No one knew him to take a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever. The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call her husband "papa." And she would dart after him and box his ears and laugh her happy laugh and look as proud as a queen over every teasing word. He had told her that she grew prettier every hour as her day of fate drew nearer, and then had audaciously kissed her as he bade her good-by, for, in one week would she not be his sister, the only sister he had ever had? He stood at the gate watching her as she tripped up to her father's arm-chair on the piazza, and saw her bend her head down to his, and then he had gone off whistling and thinking that his brother certainly had a share of all of earth's good things position, a good name, money, and now this sweet woman for a wife. Well, the world was all before _him_ where to choose, and he would have money and a position some day and the very happiest home in the land.

The next time he saw Prudence she looked like one just risen out of a grave: pallid, with purple, speechless lips, and eyes whose anguish rent his soul. Her father had been suddenly prostrated with hemorrhage and he stayed through the night with her, and afterward he made arrangements for the funeral, and his mother and himself stood at the grave with her. And then there was a prison, and after that a delirious fever for himself, when for days he had not known his mother's face or Prudence's voice.

The other boys had gone back to college, but his spirit was crushed, he could not hold up his head among men. He had lost his "ambition," people said. Since that time he had taught in country schools and written articles for the papers and magazines; he had done one thing beside, he had purchased books and studied them. In the desk in his chamber there were laid away to-day four returned manuscripts, he was only waiting for leisure to exchange their addressee and send them forth into the world again to seek their fortunes. A rejection daunted him no more than a poor recitation in the schoolroom; where would be the zest in life if one had not the chance of trying again?

John Holmes was a hermit, but he was a hermit who loved boys; girls were too much like delicate bits of china, he was afraid of handling for fear of breaking. Girls grown up were not quite so much like bits of china, but he had no friend save one among womankind, his sister that was to have been, Prudence Pomeroy. He had not addressed her with the name his brother had given her since that last day in the garden; she was gravely Prudence to him, in her plain attire, her smooth hair and little unworldly ways, almost a veritable Puritan maiden.

As to her marrying--again (he always thought "again"), he had no more thought of it than she had. He had given to her every letter he had received from his brother, but they always avoided speaking his name; indeed Prudence, in her young reverence for his age and wisdom, had seldom named his Christian name to others or to himself, he was "Mr. Holmes" to her.

John Holmes was her junior by three years, yet he had constituted himself friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as though he were her father, beside.

"It's good to have all in one," she once replied, "for I can have you all with me at one time."

After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the "Point," urging her to spend her summer there. Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in the town on her way on a journey farther north.

This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing. This chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that served a purpose--a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was born, and books! There were books everywhere--in the long pine chest, on the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.

Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college that was waiting for him out there.

"I should have to come back to my den, I couldn't write anywhere else."

"And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the author of Butler's 'Analogy' once, I'll reply, as somebody replied: 'Not dead, but buried.'"

"That is what I want to be," he had replied. "Don't you want a copy of my little pocket dictionary? It just fits the vest pocket, you see. You don't know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one from his pocket one day!"

He opened his desk and handed her a copy; Marjorie looked at it and at him in open-eyed wonder. And dared she recite to a teacher who had made a book?

"When is your Speller coming out?"

"In the fall. I'm busy on my Reader now."

Prudence stepped to his desk and examined the sheets of upright penmanship; it could be read as easily as print.

"And the Arithmetic?"

"Oh, I haven't tackled that yet. That is for winter evenings, when my fire burns on the hearth and the wind blows and nobody in the world cares for me."

"Then it won't be _this_ winter," said Marjorie, lifting her eyes from the binding of the dictionary.

"Why not?" he questioned.

"Because somebody cares for you," she answered gravely.

He laughed and shoved his manuscript into the desk. He was thinking of her as he raised his head from the desk this afternoon and found the sun gone down; he thought of her and remembered that he had promised to call to see her to-night. Was it to take tea? He dreaded tea-parties, when everybody talked and nobody said anything. A dim remembrance of being summoned to supper a while ago flashed through his mind; but it hardly mattered--Mrs. Devoe would take her cup of tea alone and leave his fruit and bread and milk standing on the tea-table; it was better so, she would not pester him with questions while he was eating, ask him why he did not take more exercise, and if his room were not suffocating this hot day, and if he did not think a cup of good, strong tea would not be better for him than that bowl of milk!

Mrs. Devoe, a widow of sixty-five, and her cat, Dolly, aged nineteen, kept house and boarded the school-master. Her house was two miles nearer the shore than the school-building, but he preferred the walk in all weathers and he liked the view of the water. Mrs. Devoe had never kept a boarder before, her small income being amply sufficient for her small wants, but she liked the master, he split her wood and his own, locked the house up at night, made no trouble, paid his board, two dollars per week, regularly in advance, never went out at night, often read to her in the evening after her own eyes had given out, and would have been perfect if he had allowed her to pile away his books and sweep his chamber every Friday.

"But no man is perfect," she had sighed to Mrs. Rheid, "even my poor husband would keep dinner waiting."

After a long, absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea, where the waves were darkening in the twilight, he arose in haste, threw off his wrapper, a gray merino affair, trimmed with quilted crimson silk, that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago, and went to the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair. He did not study his features as Prudence had studied hers that morning; he knew so little about his own face that he could scarcely distinguish a good portrait of himself from a poor one; but Prudence knew it by heart. It was a thin, delicate face, marred with much thought, the features not large, and finely cut, with deep set eyes as black as midnight, and, when they were neither grave nor stern, as soft as a dove's eyes; cheeks and chin were closely shaven; his hair, a heavy black mass, was pushed back from a brow already lined with thought or care, and worn somewhat long behind the ears; there was no hardness in any line of the face, because there was no hardness in the heart, there was sin and sorrow in the world, but he believed that God is good.

The slight figure was not above medium height; he had a stoop in the shoulders that added to his general appearance of delicacy; he was scholarly from the crown of his black head to the very tip of his worn, velvet slipper; his slender hands, with their perfectly kept nails, and even the stain of ink on the forefinger of his right hand, had an air of scholarship about them. His black summer suit was a perfect fit, his boots were shining, the knot of his narrow black neck tie was a little towards one side, but that was the only evidence that he was careless about his personal appearance.

"I want my boys to be neat," he had said once apologetically to Mrs. Devoe, when requesting her to give away his old school suit preparatory to buying another.

All he needed to be perfect was congenial social life, Prudence believed, but that, alas, seemed never to enter his conception. He knew it never had since that long ago day when he had congratulated his brother upon his perfect share of this world's happiness. And, queerly enough, Prudence stood too greatly in awe of him to suggest that his life was too one-sided and solitary.

"Some people wonder if you were ever married," Mrs. Devoe said to him that afternoon when he went down to his late supper. Mrs. Devoe never stood in awe of anybody.

"Yes, I was married twenty years ago--to my work," he replied, gravely; "there isn't any John Holmes, there is only my work."

"There is something that is John Holmes to me," said the widow in her quick voice, "and there's a John Holmes to the boys and girls, and I guess the Lord thinks something of you beside your 'work,' as you call it."

Meditatively he walked along the grassy wayside towards the brown farmhouse:

"Perhaps there _is_ a John Holmes that I forget about," he said to himself.

X.

LINNET.

"Use me to serve and honor thee, And let the rest be as thou wilt"--_E.L.E._

Marjorie's laugh was refreshing to the schoolmaster after his hard day's work. She was standing behind her father, leaning over his shoulder, and looking at them both as they talked; some word had reminded Mr. Holmes of the subject of his writing that day and he had given them something of what he had been reading and writing on Egyptian slavery. Mr. Holmes was always "writing up" something, and one of Mr. West's usual questions was: "What have you to tell us about now?"

The subject was intensely interesting to Marjorie, she had but lately read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and her tears and indignation were ready to burst forth at any suggestion of injustice or cruelty. But the thing that she was laughing at was a quotation from one of the older versions of the Bible, Roger's Version Mr. Holmes told them when he quoted the passage: "And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe." She lifted her head from her father's shoulder and ran out into the little front yard to find her mother and the others that she might tell them about Joseph and ask Miss Prudence what "Roger's Version" meant. But her mother was busy in the milkroom and Linnet was coming towards the house walking slowly with her eyes on the ground. Will Rheid was walking as slowly toward his home as Linnet was toward hers.

Miss Prudence made a picture all by herself in her plain black dress, with no color or ornament save the red rose in her black crape scarf, as she sat upright in the rush-bottomed, straight-backed chair in the entry before the wide-open door. Her eyes were towards the two who had parted so reluctantly on the bridge over the brook. Marjorie danced away to find her mother, suddenly remembering to ask if she might share the spare chamber with Miss Prudence, that is--if Linnet did not want to very much.

Marjorie never wanted to do anything that Linnet wanted to very much.

Opening the gate Linnet came in slowly, with her eyes still on the ground, shut the gate, and stood looking off into space; then becoming aware of the still figure on the piazza hurried toward it.

Linnet's eyes were stirred with a deeper emotion than had ever moved her before; Miss Prudence did not remember her own face twenty years ago, but she remembered her own heart.

Will Rheid was a good young fellow, honest and true; Miss Prudence stifled her sigh and said, "Well, dear" as the young girl came and stood beside her chair.

"I was wishing--I was saying to Will, just now, that I wished there was a list of things in the Bible to pray about, and then we might be sure that we were asking right."

"And what did he say?"

"He said he'd ask anyhow, and if it came, it was all right, and if it didn't, he supposed that was all right, too."

"That was faith, certainly."

"Oh, he has faith," returned Linnet, earnestly. "Don't you know--oh, you don't remember--when the Evangelist--that always reminds me of Marjorie"--Linnet was a somewhat fragmentary talker like her mother--"but when Mr. Woodfern was here four of the Rheid boys joined the Church, all but Hollis, he was in New York, he went about that time. Mr. Woodfern was so interested in them all; I shall never forget how he used to pray at family worship: 'Lord, go through that Rheid family.' He prayed it every day, I really believe. And they all joined the Church at the first communion time, and every one of them spoke and prayed in the prayer meetings. They used to speak just as they did about anything, and people enjoyed it so; it was so genuine and hearty. I remember at a prayer meeting here that winter Will arose to speak 'I was talking to a man in town today and he said there was nothing _in_ religion. But, oh, my! I told him there was nothing _out_ of it.' I told him about that to-night and he said he hadn't found anything outside of it yet."

"He's a fine young fellow," said Miss Prudence. "Mr. Holmes says he has the 'right stuff' in him, and he means a great deal by that."

A pleasant thought curved Linnet's lips.

"But, Miss Prudence," sitting down on the step of the piazza, "I do wish for a list of things. I want to know if I may pray that mother may never look grave and anxious as she did at the supper table, and father may not always have a cough in winter time, and Will may never have another long voyage and frighten us all, and that Marjorie may have a chance to go to school, too, and--why, _ever_ so many things!"

A laugh from the disputants in the parlor brought the quick color to Miss Prudence's cheeks. No mere earthly thing quickened her pulses like John Holmes' laugh. And I do not think that was a mere earthly thing; there was so much grace in it.

"Doesn't St. Paul's 'everything' include your '_ever_ so many things?'" questioned Miss Prudence, as the laugh died away.

"I don't know," hesitatingly. "I thought it meant about people becoming Christians, and faith and patience and such good things."

"Perhaps your requests are good things, too. But I have thought of something that will do for a list of things; it is included in this promise: 'Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.' Desire _when_ ye pray! That's the point."

"Does the time when we desire make any difference?" asked Linnet, interestedly.

There were some kind of questions that Linnet liked to ask.

"Does it not make all the difference? Suppose we think of something we want while we are ease-loving, forgetful of duty, selfish, unforgiving, neither loving God or our neighbor, when we feel far from him, instead of near him, can we believe that we shall have such a heart's desire as that would be? Would your desire be according to his will, his unselfish, loving, forgiving will?"

"No, oh, no," said Linnet, earnestly. "But I do think about father and mother and Marjorie going to school and--when I am praying."

"Then ask for everything you desire while you are praying; don't be afraid."

"_Is_ mother troubled about something?"

"Not troubled, really; only perplexed a little over something we have been planning about; and she is very glad, too."

"I don't like to have her troubled, because her heart hurts her when she worries. Marjorie don't know that, but she told me. That's one reason--my strongest reason--for being sorry about going to Boston."

"But your father is with her and he will watch over her."

"But she depends on _me_," pleaded Linnet.

"Marjorie is growing up," said Miss Prudence, hopefully.

"Marjorie! It doesn't seem to me that she will ever grow up; she is such a little puss, always absent-minded, with a book in her hand. And she can't mend or sew or even make cake or clear up a room neatly. We spoil her, mother and I, as much as she spoils her kitten, Pusheen. Did you know that _pusheen_ is Irish for puss? Mr. Holmes told us. I do believe he knows everything."

"He comes nearer universal knowledge than the rest of us," said Miss Prudence, smiling at the girl's eagerness.

"But he's a book himself, a small volume, in fine print, printed in a language that none of us can read," said Linnet.

"To most people he is," granted Miss Prudence; "but when he was seven I was ten, I was a backward child and he used to read to me, so he is not a dead language to me."

Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought that shawl from Ireland a year ago.

"Miss Prudence, _do_ we have right desires, desires for things God likes, while we are praying?"

"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving heart, how can we desire anything selfish--for our own good only and not to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant; if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will, is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give us every time we go near to him?"

Linnet assented with a slight movement of her head. She understood many things that she could not translate into words.

"Yesterday I saw in the paper the death of an old friend." They had been silent for several minutes; Miss Prudence spoke in a musing voice. "She was a friend in the sense that I had tried to befriend her. She was unfortunate in her home surroundings, she was something of an invalid and very deaf beside. She had lost money and was partly dependent upon relatives. A few of us, Mr. Holmes was one of them, paid her board. She was not what you girls call 'real bright,' but she was bright enough to have a heartache every day. Reading her name among the deaths made me glad of a kindness I grudged her once."

"I don't believe you grudged it," interrupted Marjorie, who had come in time to lean over the tall back of the chair and rest her hand on Miss Prudence's shoulder while she listened to what promised to be a "story."