Miss Prudence Part 29

"YOUR SISTER LINNET.

"P. S. Hollis said he would not write this week and wants you to tell his mother all about it."

The next letter is dated in the early part of the following month.

"_In my Den, Dec_. 10, 18--,

"MY FRIEND PRUDENCE:

"My heart was with you, as you well know, all those days and nights in that sick chamber that proved to be the entrance to Heaven. She smiled and spoke, lay quiet for awhile with her eyes closed, and awoke in the presence of the Lord. May you and I depart as easily, as fearlessly. I cannot grieve as you do; how much she is saved! To-night I have been thinking over your life, and a woman's lot seems hard. To love so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot be like you. Marjorie and Morris were busy at the dining-room table when I left them, with their heads together over my old Euclid. We are giving them a lift up into the suns.h.i.+ne and that is something. What do you want to send Marjorie to school for? What can school do for her when I give her up to you? Give yourself to her and keep her out of school. The child is not always happy. Last communion Sunday she sat next to me; she was crying softly all the time. You could have said something, but, manlike, I held my peace. I wonder whether I don't know what to say, or don't know how to say it. I seem to know what to say to you, but, truly Prudence, I don't know how to say it. I have been wanting to tell you something, fourteen, yes, fourteen years, and have not dared and do not dare to night.

Sometimes I am sure I have a right, a precious right, a sacred right, and then something bids me forbear, and I forbear. I am forbearing now as I sit up here in my chamber alone, crowded in among my books and the wind is wild upon the water. I am gloomy to-night and discouraged. My book, the book I have lost myself in so long, has been refused the fourth time.

Had it not been for your hand upon my arm awhile ago it would be now shrivelled and curling among the ashes on my hearth.

"Who was it that stood on London Bridge and did not throw his ma.n.u.script over? Listen! Do you hear that grand child of yours asking who it was that sat by his hearth and did not toss his ma.n.u.script into the fire?

Didn't somebody in the Bible toss a roll into the fire on the hearth? I want you to come to talk to me. I want some one not wise or learned, except learned and wise in such fas.h.i.+on as you are, to sit here beside me, and look into the fire with me, and listen to the wind with me, and talk to me or be silent with me. If my book had been accepted, and all the world were wagging their tongues about it, I should want that unwise, unlearned somebody. That friend of mine over the water, sitting in his lonely bungalow tonight studying Hindoostanee wants somebody, too. Why did you not go with him, Prudence? Shall you never go with any one; shall you and I, so near to each other, with so much to keep us together, go always uncomforted. But you _are_ comforted. You loved Helen, you love Linnet and Marjorie and a host of others; you do not need me to bid you be brave. You are a brave woman. I am not a brave man. I am not brave to-night, with that four-times-rejected ma.n.u.script within reach of my hand. Shall I publish it myself? I want some one to think well enough of it to take the risk.

"Prudence, I have asked G.o.d for something, but he gives me an answer that I cannot understand. Write to me and tell me how that is.

"Yours to-day and to-morrow."

"J. H."

"_New York, Dec_. 20, 18--.

"MY DEAR JOHN:

"I have time but for one word to-night, and even that cannot be at length. Linnet and I are just in from a lecture on Miss Mitford! There were tears running down over my heart all the time that I was listening.

You call me brave; she was brave. Think of her pillowed up in bed writing her last book, none to be kind to her except those to whom she paid money. Linnet was delighted and intends to 'write a composition' about her. Just let me keep my hand on your arm (will you?) when evil impulses are about. You do not quite know how to interpret the circ.u.mstances that seem to be in answer to your prayer? It is as if you spoke to G.o.d in English and the answer comes in Sanscrit. I think I have received such answers myself. And if we were brutes, with no capacity of increasing our understanding, I should think it very queer. Sometimes it is hard work to pray until we get an answer and then it is harder still to find out its meaning. I imagine that Linnet and Marjorie, even Will Rheid, would not understand that; but you and I are not led along in the easiest way. It must be because the answer is worth the hard work: his Word and Spirit can interpret all his involved and mystical answers. Think with a clear head, not with any pre-formed judgment, with a heart emptied of all but a willingness to read his meaning aright, be that meaning to shatter your hopes or to give bountifully your desire--with a sincere and abiding determination to take it, come what may, and you will understand as plainly as you are understanding me. Try it and see. I have tried and I know. There may be a wound for you somewhere, but oh, the joy of the touch of his healing hand. And after that comes obedience. Do you remember one a long time ago who had half an answer, only a glimmer of light on a dark way? He took the answer and went on as far as he understood, not daring to disobey, but he went on--something like you, too--in 'bitterness,' in the heat of his spirit, he says; he went on as far as he could and stayed there. That was obedience. He stayed there 'astonished' seven days. Perhaps you are in his frame of mind. Nothing happened until the end of the seven days, then he had another word. So I would advise you to stay astonished and wait for the end of your seven days. In our bitterness and the heat of our spirit we are apt to think that G.o.d is rather slow about our business. Ezekiel could have been busy all that seven days instead of doing nothing at all, but it was the time for him to do nothing and the time for G.o.d to be busy within him. You have inquired of the Lord, that was your busy time, now keep still and let G.o.d answer as slowly as he will, this is his busy time. Now Linnet and I must eat a cracker and then say good-night to all the world, yourself, dear John, included.

"Yours,

"PRUDENCE"

"_Was.h.i.+ngton, Dec._ 21, 18--.

"DEAR MARJORIE:

"Aunt Helen sent me your letter; it came an hour ago. I am full of business that I like. I have no time for sight-seeing. I wish I had!

Was.h.i.+ngton is the place for Young America to come to. But Young America has to come on business this time. Perhaps I will come here on my wedding trip, when there is no business to interfere. I am not ashamed to say that if I had been a girl I would have cried over your letter. Helen was _something_ to everybody; she used to laugh and then look grave when she read your letters about her and the good she was to you. There will never be another Helen. There is one who has a heartache about her and no one knows it except himself and me. She refused him a few days before she was taken ill. He stood a long time and looked at her in her coffin, as if he forgot that any one was looking at him. I told him it was of no use to ask her, but he persisted. She had told me several times that he was disagreeable to her. Her mother wonders who will take her place to us all, and we all say no one ever can. I thank G.o.d that she lived so long for my sake. You and she are like sisters to me. You do me good, too. I should miss your letters very much, for I hear from home so seldom. You are my good little friend, and I am grateful to you. Give my best love to every one at home and tell mother I like my business. Mother's photograph and yours and Helen's are in my breast pocket. If I should die to-night would I be as safe as Helen is?

"Your true friend,

"HOLLIS RHEID."

"_The Homestead, Jan_. 4, 18--.

"DEAR FRIEND HOLLIS:

"Thank you for your letter from Was.h.i.+ngton. I took it over to your mother and read it to her and your father, all excepting about the young man who stood and looked at Helen in her coffin. I thought, perhaps, that was in confidence. Your father said: 'Tell Hollis when he is tired of tramping around to come home and settle down near the old folks,' and your mother followed me to the door and whispered: 'Tell him I cannot feel that he is safe until I know that he has repented and been forgiven.' And now, being through all this part, my conscience is eased and I can tell you everything else I want to.

"Look in and see us in a snow-storm. Mother is reading for the one hundred and twenty-second and a half time somebody's complete works on the New Testament, and father and Mr. Holmes are talking about--let me see if I know--ah, yes, Mr. Holmes is saying, 'Diversity of origin,' so you know all about it.

"Sometimes I listen instead of studying. I would listen to this if your letter were not due for the mail to-morrow. Father sits and smiles, and Mr. Holmes walks up and down with his arms behind him as he used to do during recitation in school. Perhaps he does it now, only you and I are not there to see. I wish you were here to listen to him; father speaks now and then, but the dialogue soon develops into a monologue and the master entertains and instructs us all. If you do not receive this letter on time know that it is because I am learning about the Jew; how he is everywhere proving the truth of prophecy by becoming a resident of every country. And yet while he is a Jew he has faces of all colors. In the plains of the Ganges, he is black; in Syria, lighter and yet dusky; in Poland his complexion is ruddy and his hair as light as yours. There was a little Jewess boarding around here last summer as olive as I imagine Rebekah and Sarah, and another as fair and rosy as a Dane. But have you enough of this? Don't you care for what Livingstone says or Humboldt?

Don't you want to know the four proofs in support of unity of origin?

I do, and if I write them I shall remember them; 1. Bodily Structure. 2.

Language. 3. Tradition. 4. Mental Endowment. Now he is telling about the bodily structure and I do want to listen.--And I _have_ listened and the minute hand of the clock has been travelling on and my pen has been still. But don't you want to know the ten conclusions that have been established--I know you do. And if I forget, I'll nudge Morris and ask him. Oh, I see (by looking over his shoulder) he has copied them all in one of his exercise books.

"You may skip them if you want to, but I know you want to see if your experience in your extensive travels correspond with the master's authority. Now observe and see if the people in Was.h.i.+ngton--all have the same number of teeth, and of additional bones in their body. As that may take some time, and seriously interfere with your 'business' and theirs, perhaps you had better not try it. And, secondly, they all shed their teeth in the same way (that will take time also, so, perhaps, you may better defer it until your wedding trip, when you have nothing else to do); and, thirdly, they all have the upright position, they walk and look upward; and, fourthly, their head is set in every variety in the same way; fifthly, they all have two hands; sixthly, they all have smooth bodies with hair on the head; seventhly, every muscle and every nerve in every variety are the same; eighthly, they all speak and laugh; ninthly, they eat different kind of food, and live in all climates; and, _lastly_, they are more helpless and grow more slowly than other animals. Now don't you like to know that? And now he has begun to talk about language and I _must_ listen, even if this letter is never finished, because language is one of my hobbies. The longer the study of language is pursued the more strongly the Bible is confirmed, he is saying. You ought to see Morris listen. His face is all soul when he is learning a new thing. I believe he has the most expressive face in the world. He has decided to be a sailor missionary. He says he will take the Gospel to every port in the whole world. Will takes Bibles and tracts always. Morris reads every word of _The Sailors Magazine_ and finds delightful things in it. I have almost caught his enthusiasm. But if I were a man I would be professor of languages somewhere and teach that every word has a soul, and a history because it has a soul. Wouldn't you like to know how many languages there are? It is _wonderful_. Somebody says--Adelung (I don't know who he is)--three thousand and sixty-four distinct languages, Balbi (Mr. Holmes always remembers names) eight hundred languages and five thousand dialects, and Max Muller says there are nine hundred known languages. Mr.

Holmes can write a letter in five languages and I reverence him, but what is that where there are, according to Max Muller, eight hundred and ninety-five that he does not know a word of? Mr. Holmes stands still and puts his hands in front of him (where they were meant to be), and says he will tell us about Tradition to-morrow night, as he must go up to his den and write letters. But he does say Pandora's box is the story of the temptation and the fall. You know she opened her box out of curiosity, and diseases and wars leaped out to curse mankind. That is a Greek story.

The Greek myths all seem to mean something. Father says: 'Thank you for a pleasant evening,' as Mr. Holmes takes his lamp to leave us, and _he_ says: 'You forget what I have to thank you all for.'

"My heart _bursts_ with grat.i.tude to him, sometimes; I have his books and I have him; he is always ready so gently and wisely to teach and explain and never thinks my questions silly, and Morris says he has been and is his continual inspiration. And we are only two out of the many whom he stimulates. He says we are his recreation. Dull scholars are his hard work. Morris is never dull, but I can't do anything with geometry; he outstripped me long ago. He teaches me and I do the best I can. He has written on his slate, 'Will you play crambo?' Crambo was known in the time of Addison, so you must know that it is a very distinguished game.

Just as I am about to say 'I will as soon as this page is finished,'

father yawns and looks up at the clock. Mother remarks: 'It is time for wors.h.i.+p, one of the children will read, father.' So while father goes to the door to look out to see what kind of a night it is and predict to-morrow and while mother closes her book with a lingering, loving sigh, and Morris pushes his books away and opens the Bible, I'll finish my last page. And, lo, it is finished and you are glad that stupidity and dullness do sometime come to an abrupt end.

"FRIEND MARJORIE."

"_In the Schoolroom, Jan_. 23, 18--.

"MY BLESSED MOTHER:

"Your last note is in my breast pocket with all the other best things from you. What would boys do without a breast pocket, I wonder. There is a feeling of study in the very air, the algebra cla.s.s are 'up' and doing finely. The boy in my seat is writing a note to a girl just across from us, and the next thing he will put it in a book and ask, with an unconcerned face, 'Mr. Holmes, may I hand my arithmetic to somebody?' And Mr. Holmes, having been a fifteen-year-old boy himself, will wink at any previous knowledge of such connivings, and say 'Yes,' as innocently! It isn't against the rules to do it, for Mr. Holmes, never, for a moment, supposes such a rule a necessity. But I never do it. Because Marjorie doesn't come to school. And a pencil is slow for all I want to say to her. She is my talisman. I am a big, awkward fellow, and she is a zephyr that is content to blow about me out of sheer good will to all human kind. But, in school, I write notes to another girl, to my mother. And I write them when I have nothing to say but that I am well and strong and happy, content with the present, hopeful for the future, looking forward to the day when you will see me captain of as fine a s.h.i.+p as ever sailed the seas. And won't I bring you good things from every country in the world, just because you are such a blessed mother to

"Your unworthy boy,

"M.K."

"_New York, Jan. 30, 18--._

"MY MARJORIE:

"Your long letter has been read and re-read, and then read aloud to Linnet. She laughed over it, and brushed her eyes over it; and then it was laid away in my archives for future reference. It is a perfect afternoon, the sun is s.h.i.+ning, and the pavements are as dry as in May.

Linnet endeavored to coax me out, as it is her holiday afternoon, and Broadway will be alive with handsome dresses and handsome faces, and there are some new paintings to be seen. But I was proof against her coaxing as this unwritten letter pressed on my heart, so she has contented herself with Helen's younger sister, Nannie, and they will have a good time together and bring their good time home to me, for Nannie is to come home to dinner with her. Linnet looked like a veritable linnet in her brown suit with the crimson plume in her brown hat; I believe the girl affects grays and brown with a dash of crimson, because they remind her of a linnet, and she _is_ like a linnet in her low, sweet voice, not strong, but clear. She will be a lovely, symmetrical woman when she comes out of the fire purified. How do I know she will ever be put in any furnace? Because all G.o.d's children must suffer at some times, and then they know they are his children. And she loves Will so vehemently, so idolatrously, that I fear the sorrow may be sent through him; not in any withdrawing of his love, he is too thoroughly true for that, not in any great wickedness he may commit, he is too humble and too reliant upon the keeping power of G.o.d to be allowed to fall into that, but--she may not have him always, and then, I fear, her heart would really break.

"She reminds me of my own young vehemence and trust. But the taking away will be the least sorrow of all. Why! How sorrowfully I am writing to-day: no, how truly I am writing of life to-day: of the life you and she are entering--are already entered upon. But G.o.d is good, G.o.d is good, hold to that, whatever happens. Some day, when you are quite an old woman and I am really an old woman, I will tell you about my young days.