Miss Prudence Part 16

VI.

MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE.

"She was made for happy thoughts."--_Mary Howlet._

I wonder if there is anything, any little thing I should have said, that tries a woman more than the changes in her own face, a woman that has just attained two score and--an unmarried woman. Prudence Pomeroy was discovering these changes in her own face and, it may be undignified, it may be unchristian even, but she was tried. It was upon the morning of her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance.

It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim determination this birthday morning. It was a weakness, it may be, but we all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.

She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with her hand-gla.s.s held before her resolute face. It was something to go through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of birthdays past: but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang, locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time. But that was before the door was bolted. She gazed long at the reflection of the face that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but clearly defined--a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood, a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above her eyes--she had not discerned that, at first--there was a lack of fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there was a yellowness--she might as well give it boldly its right name--at the temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was the presence of age--her full forty years. And her hair! It was certainly not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably thinner; she was certainly slightly bald about the temples, and white hairs were straggling in one after another, not attempting to conceal themselves. A year ago she had selected them from the ma.s.s of black and cut them short, but now they were appearing too fast for the scissors. It was a sad face, almost a gloomy one, that she was gazing into: for the knowledge that her forty years had done their work in her face as surely, and perhaps not as sweetly as in her life had come to her with a shock. She was certainly growing older and the signs of it were in her face, nothing could hide it, even her increasing seriousness made it more apparent; not only growing older, but growing old, the girls would say. Twenty years ago, when she first began to write that birthday record, she had laughed at forty and called it "old" herself. As she laid the hand-gla.s.s aside with a half-checked sigh, her eyes fell upon her hand and wrist; it was certainly losing its shapeliness; the fingers were as tapering as ever and the palm as pink, but--there was a something that reminded her of that plate of old china. She might be like a bit of old china, but she was not ready to be laid upon the shelf, not even to be paid a price for and be admired! She was in the full rush of her working days. Awhile ago her friends had all addressed her as "Prudence," but now, she was not aware when it began or how, she was "Miss Prudence" to every one who was not within the nearest circle of intimacy. Not "Prudie" or "Prue" any more. She had not been "Prudie" since her father and mother died, and not "Prue" since she had lost that friend twenty years ago.

In ten short years she would be fifty years old, and fifty was half a century: old enough to be somebody's grandmother. Was she not the bosom friend of somebody's grandmother to-day? Laura Harrowgate, her friend and schoolmate, not one year her senior, was the grandmother of three-months-old Laura. Was it possible that she herself did not belong to "the present generation," but to a generation pa.s.sed away? She had no daughter to give place to, as Laura had, no husband to laugh at her wrinkles and gray hairs, as Laura had, and to say, "We're growing old together." If it were only "together" there would be no sadness in it.

But would she want it to be such a "together" as certain of her friends shared?

Laura Harrowgate was a grandmother, but still she would gush over that plate from Holland two centuries old, buy a bracket for it and exhibit it to her friends. A hand-gla.s.s did not make _her_ dolorous. A few years since she would have rebelled against what the hand-gla.s.s revealed; but, to-day, she could not rebel against G.o.d's will; a.s.suredly it _was_ his will for histories to be written in faces. Would she live a woman's life and adorn herself with a baby's face? Had not her face been moulded by her life? Had she stopped thinking and working ten years ago she might, to-day, have looked at the face she looked at ten years ago. No, she demurred, not a baby's face, but--then she laughed aloud at herself--was not her fate the common fate of all? Who, among her friends, at forty years of age, was ever taken, or mistaken, for twenty-five or thirty? And if _she_ were, what then? Would her work be worth more to the world?

Would the angels encamp about her more faithfully or more lovingly? And, then, was there not a face "marred"? Did he live his life upon the earth with no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken life hard. Another glance into the gla.s.s revealed another fact: her neck was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she _was_ coming to a hard place in her life. She had believed--oh, how much in vain!--that she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something. She remembered the remark of an old lady, who was friendless and poor: "The hardest time of my life was between forty and forty-five; I had to accept several bitter facts that after became easier to bear." Prudence Pomeroy looked at herself, then looked up to G.o.d and accepted, submissively, even cheerfully, his fact that she had begun to grow old, and then, she dressed herself for a walk and with her sun-umbrella and a volume of poems started out for her tramp along the road and through the fields to find her little friend Marjorie. The china plate and pathetic note last night had moved her strangely. Marjorie was in the beginning of things.

What was her life worth if not to help such as Marjorie live a worthier life than her own two score years had been?

A face flushed with the long walk looked in at the window upon Marjorie asleep. The child was sitting near the open window in a wooden rocker with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground sprinkled over with b.u.t.terflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling had abated but the discolored spot was plainly visible; her lips were slightly parted, her cheeks were rosy; if this were the "beginning of things" it was a very sweet and peaceful beginning.

Entering the parlor with a soft tread Miss Prudence divested herself of hat, gloves, duster and umbrella, and, taking a large palm leaf fan from the table, seated herself near the sleeper, gently waving the fan to and fro as a fly lighted on Marjorie's hands or face. On the window seat were placed a goblet half filled with lemonade, a small Bible, a book that had the outward appearance of being a Sunday-school library book, and a copy in blue and gold of the poems of Mrs. Hemans. Miss Prudence remembered her own time of loving Mrs. Hemans and had given this copy to Marjorie; later, she had laid her aside for Longfellow, as Marjorie would do by and by, and, in his turn, she had given up Longfellow for Tennyson and Mrs.

Browning, as, perhaps, Marjorie would never do. She had brought Jean Ingelow with her this morning to try "Brothers and a Sermon" and the "Songs of Seven" with Marjorie. Marjorie was a natural elocutionist; Miss Prudence was afraid of spoiling her by unwise criticism. The child must thoroughly appreciate a poem, forget herself, and then her rendering would be more than Miss Prudence with all her training could perfectly imitate.

"Don't teach her too much; she'll want to be an actress," remonstrated Marjorie's father after listening to Marjorie's reading one day.

Miss Prudence laughed and Marjorie looked perplexed.

"Marjorie is to comfort with her reading as some do by singing," she replied. "Wait till you are old and she reads the Bible to you!"

"She reads to me now," he said. "She read 'The Children of the Lord's Supper' to me last night."

Miss Prudence moved the fan backward and forward and studied the sleeping, innocent face. I had almost written "sweet" again; I can scarcely think of her face, as it was then, without writing sweet. It would be long, Miss Prudence mused, before lines and creases intruded here and there in that smooth forehead, and in the tinted cheeks that dimpled at the least provocation; but life would bring them in time, and they would add beauty if there were no bitterness nor hardness in them.

If the Holy Spirit dwelt in the temple of the body were not the lines upon the face his handwriting? She knew more than one old face that was growing more attractive with each year of life.

The door was pushed open and Mrs. West's broad shoulders and motherly face appeared. Miss Prudence smiled and laid her finger on her lips and, smiling, too, the mother moved away. Linnet, in her kitchen ap.r.o.n, and with the marks of the morning's baking on her fingers, next looked in, nodded and ran away. After awhile, the sleeping eyelids quivered and lifted themselves; a quick flush, a joyous exclamation and Marjorie sprang into her friend's arms.

"I _felt_ as if I were not alone! How long have you been here? Oh, why _didn't_ you speak to me or touch me?"

"I wanted to have the pleasure all on my side. I never saw you asleep before."

"I hope I didn't keep my mouth open and snore."

"Oh, no, your lips were gently apart and you breathed regularly as they would say in books!"

Marjorie laughed, released Miss Prudence from the tight clasp and went back to her chair.

"You received my note and the plate," she said anxiously.

"Both in perfect preservation. There was not one extra crack in the plate, it was several hours older than when it left your hands, but that only increases its value."

"And did you think I was dreadful not to confess before?" asked Marjorie, tremulously.

"I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of _to_ me."

"I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.

Did you miss it?"

"I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was."

"Will the plate do, do you think? Is it handsome enough?"

"It is old enough, that is all the question. Do you know all about Holland when that plate first came into existence?"

"No; I only know there _was_ a Holland."

"That plate will be a good point to begin with. You and I will study up Holland some day. I wonder what you know about it now."

"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland two hundred years ago?"

"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it.

But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover--not a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years ago."

"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie, seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that _you_ were building castles then."

"I had you and the pitcher for the foundation," said Miss Prudence, in a tone of mock humility.

"Don't you think--" Marjorie's face had a world of suggestion in it--"that 'The Swan's Nest' is bad influence for girls? Little Ellie sits alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is 'shod in silver, housed in azure' and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he says 'O, Love, I love but thee.'"

"But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan's nest among the reeds! And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds. That was the end of her fine castle!"

"'If she found the lover, ever, Sooth, I know not, but I know She could never show him, never, That swan's nest among the reeds,'"

quoted Marjorie. "So it did all come to nothing."

"As air-castles almost always do. But we'll hope she found something better."

"Do people?" questioned Marjorie.

"Hasn't G.o.d things laid up for us better than we can ask or think or build castles about?"

"I _hope_ so," said Marjorie; "but Hollis Rheid's mother told mother yesterday that her life was one long disappointment."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said 'Oh, Mrs. Rheid, it won't be if you get to Heaven, at last.'"