VII.
UNDER THE APPLE-TREE.
"Never the little seed stops in its growing."—Mrs. Osgood.
Linnet moved hither and thither, after the dinner dishes were done, all through the house, up stairs and down, to see that everything was in perfect order before she might dress and enjoy the afternoon. Linnet was pre-eminently a housekeeper, to her mother's great delight, for her younger daughter was not developing according to her mind in housewifely arts.
"That will come in time," encouraged Marjorie's father when her mother spoke faultfindingly of some delinquency in the kitchen.
"I should like to know what time!" was the sharp reply.
It was queer about Marjorie's mother, she was as sharp as she was good-humored.
"Linnet has no decided tastes about anything but housekeeping and fancy-work, and Marjorie has some other things to be growing in," said her father.
"I wish she would grow to some purpose then," was the energetic reply.
"As the farmer said about his seed before it was time for it to sprout," laughed the children's father.
This father and mother could not talk confidentially together five minutes without bringing the "children" in.
Their own future was every day; but the children had not begun to live in theirs yet; their golden future, which was to be all the more golden because of their parents' experiences.
This mother was so very old-fashioned that she believed that there was no career open to a girl beside marriage; the dreadful alternative was solitary old-maidenhood. She was a good mother, in many respects a wise mother; but she would not have slept that night had she believed that either of her daughters would attain to thirty years unmarried. This may have been owing to a defect of education, or it may have been that she was so happily married to a husband six years her junior—whom she could manage. And she was nearly thirty when she was married herself and had really begun to believe that she should never be married at all. She believed marriage to be so honorable in all, that the absence of it, as in Miss Prudence's case, was nearly dishonorable. She was almost a Jewish mother in her reverence for marriage and joyfulness for the blessing of children. This may have been the result of her absorbed study of the Old Testament Scriptures. Marjorie had wondered why her mother in addressing the Lord had cried, "O, Lord God of Israel," and instead of any other name nearer New Testament Christians, she would speak of him as "The Holy One of Israel." Sometimes I have thought that Marjorie's mother began her religious life as a Jew, and that instead of being a Gentile Christian she was in reality a converted Jew, something like what Elizabeth would have been if she had been more like Marjorie's mother and Graham West's wife. This type of womanhood is rare in this nineteenth century; for aught I know, she is not a representative woman, at all; she is the only one I ever knew, and perhaps you never saw any one like her. She has no heresies, she can prove every assertion from the Bible, her principles are as firm as adamant and her heart as tender as a mother's. Still, marriage and motherhood have been her education; if the Connecticut, school-teacher had not realized her worth, she might have become what she dreaded her own daughters becoming—an old maid with uncheerful views of life. In planning their future she looked into her own heart instead of into theirs.
The children were lovely blossomings of the seed in the hearts of both parents; of seeds, that in them had not borne abundant fruitage.
"How did two such cranky old things ever have such happy children!" she exclaimed one day to her husband.
"Perhaps they will become what we stopped short of being," he replied.
Graham West was something of a philosopher; rather too much of a philosopher for his wife's peace of mind. To her sorrow she had learned that he had no "business tact," he could not even scrape a comfortable living off his scrubby little farm.
But I began with Linnet and fell to discoursing about her mother; it was Linnet, as she appeared in her grayish brown dress with a knot of crimson at her throat, running down the stairway, that suggested her mother's thought to me.
"Linnet is almost growing up," she had said to herself as she removed her cap for her customary afternoon nap. This afternoon nap refreshed her countenance and kept her from looking six years older than her husband. Mrs. West was not a worldly woman, but she did not like to look six years older than her husband.
Linnet searched through parlor and hall, then out on the piazza, then looked through the front yard, and, finally, having explored the garden, found Marjorie and her friend in camp-chairs on the soft green turf under the low hanging boughs of an apple-tree behind the house. There were two or three books in Marjorie's lap, and Miss Prudence was turning the leaves of Marjorie's Bible. She was answering one of Marjorie's questions Linnet supposed and wondered if Marjorie would be satisfied with the answer; she was not always satisfied, as the elder sister knew to her grievance. For instance: Marjorie had said to her yesterday, with that serious look in her eyes: "Linnet, father says when Christ was on earth people didn't have wheat ground into fine flour as we do;—now when it is so much nicer, why do you suppose he didn't tell them about grinding it fine?"
"Perhaps he didn't think of it," she replied, giving the first thought that occurred to her.
"That isn't the reason," returned Marjorie, "for he could think of everything he wanted to."
"Then—for the same reason why didn't he tell them about chloroform and printing and telegraphing and a thousand other inventions?" questioned Linnet in her turn.
"That's what I want to know," said Marjorie.
Linnet settled herself on the turf and drew her work from her pocket; she was making a collar of tatting for her mother's birthday and working at it at every spare moment. It was the clover leaf pattern, that she had learned but a few weeks ago; the thread was very fine and she was doing it exquisitely. She had shown it to Hollis because he was in the lace business, and he had said it was a fine specimen of "real lace." To make real lace was one of Linnet's ambitions. The lace around Marjorie's neck was a piece that their mother had made towards her own wedding outfit. Marjorie's mother sighed and feared that Marjorie would never care to make lace for her wedding outfit.
Linnet frowned over her clover leaf and Marjorie watched Miss Prudence as she turned the leaves. Marjorie did not care for the clover leaf, only as she was interested in everything that Linnet's fingers touched, but Linnet did care for the answer to Marjorie's question. She thought perhaps it was about the wheat.
The Bible leaves were still, after a second Miss Prudence read:
"'For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"
That was not the answer, Linnet thought.
"What does that mean to you, Marjorie?" asked Miss Prudence.
"Why—it can't mean anything different from what it says. Paul was so sorry about the people he was writing about that he wept as he told them—he was so sorry they were enemies of the cross of Christ."
"Yes, he told them even weeping. But I knew an old gentleman who read the Bible unceasingly—I saw one New Testament that he had read through fifteen times—and he told me once that some people were so grieved because they were the enemies of the cross of Christ that they were enemies even weeping. I asked 'Why did they continue enemies, then?' and he said most ingenuously that he supposed they could not help it. Then I remembered this passage, and found it, and read it to him as I read it to you just now. He was simply astounded. He put on his spectacles and read it for himself. And then he said nothing. He had simply put the comma in the wrong place. He had read it in this way: 'For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you, even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"
"Oh," cried Marjorie, drawing an astonished long breath, "what a difference it does make."
"Now I know, it's punctuation you're talking about," exclaimed Linnet. "Marjorie told me all about the people in the stage-coach. O, Miss Prudence, I don't love to study; I want to go away to school, of course, but I can't see the use of so many studies. Marjorie loves to study and I don't; perhaps I would if I could see some use beside 'being like other people.' Being like other people doesn't seem to me to be a real enough reason."
Linnet had forgotten her clover leaf, she was looking at Miss Prudence with eyes as grave and earnest as Marjorie's ever were. She did not love to study and it was one of the wrong doings that she had confessed in her prayers many a time.
"Well, don't you see the reason now for studying punctuation?"
"Yes, I do," she answered heartily. "But we don't like dates, either of us."
"Did you ever hear about Pompeii, the city buried long ago underground?"
Linnet thought that had nothing to do with her question.
"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "we have read about it. 'The Last Days of Pompeii' is in the school library. I read it, but Linnet didn't care for it."
"Do you know when it was buried?"
"No," said Linnet, brightening.
"Have you any idea?"
"A thousand years ago?" guessed Marjorie.
"Then you do not know how long after the Crucifixion?"
"No," they replied together.
"You know when the Crucifixion was, of course?"
"Why—yes," admitted Linnet, hesitatingly.
"Christ was thirty-three years old," said Marjorie, "so it must have been in the year 33, or the beginning of 34."
"Of course I know Anno Domini," said Linnet; "but I don't always know what happened before and after."
"Suppose we were walking in one of the excavated streets of Pompeii and I should say, 'O, girls! Look at that wall!' and you should see a rude cross carved on it, what would you think?"
"I should think they knew about Christ," answered Linnet.
The clover leaf tatting had fallen into her lap and the shuttle was on the grass.
"Yes, and is that all?"
"Why, yes," she acknowledged.
"Pompeii wasn't so far, so very far from Jerusalem and—they could hear," said Marjorie.
"And you two would pass on to a grand house with a wonderful mosaic floor and think no more about the cross."
"I suppose we would," said Linnet "Wouldn't you?"
"But I should think about the cross. I should think that the city was destroyed in 79 and be rejoiced that the inhabitants had heard of the Cross and knew its story before swift destruction overtook them. It was destroyed about forty-five years after the Crucifixion."
"I like to know that," said Marjorie. "Perhaps some of the people in it had seen St. Paul and heard him tell about the Cross."
"I see some use in that date," said Linnet, picking up her shuttle.
"Suppose I should tell you that once on a time a laborer would have to work fifteen years to earn enough to buy a Bible and then the Bible must be in Latin, wouldn't you like to know when it was."
"I don't know when the Bible was printed in English," confessed Marjorie.
"If you did know and knew several other things that happened about that time you would be greatly interested. Suppose I should tell you about something that happened in England, you would care very much more if you knew about something that was linked with it in France, and in Germany. If I say 1517 I do not arouse your enthusiasm; you don't know what was happening in Germany then; and 1492 doesn't remind you of anything—"
"Yes, it does," laughed Marjorie, "and so does 1620."
"Down the bay on an island stand the ruins of a church, and an old lady told me it was built in 1604. I did not contradict her, but I laughed all to myself."
"I know enough to laugh at that," said Linnet.
"But I have seen in America the spot where Jamestown stood and that dates almost as far back. Suppose I tell you that Martin Luther read Pilgrims Progress with great delight, do you know whether I am making fun or not? If I say that Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cleopatra, do you know whether I mean it or not? And if I say that Richard the Third was baptized by St. Augustine, can you contradict it? And Hannah More wrote a sympathetic letter to Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette danced with Charlemagne, and George Washington was congratulated on becoming President by Mary Queen of Scots."
The girls could laugh at this for they had an idea that the Queen of Scots died some time before the first president of the United States was born; but over the other names and incidents they looked at each other gravely.
"Life is a kind of conglomeration without dates," said Linnet.
"I wonder if you know how long ago the flood was!" suggested Miss Prudence, "or if Mahomet lived before the flood or after," she added, seriously.
Marjorie smiled, but Linnet was serious.
"You confuse me so," said Linnet. "I believe I don't know when anything was. I don't know how long since Adam was made. Do you, Marjorie?"
"No," in the tone of one dreadfully ashamed.
"And now I'll tell you a lovely thought out of the Bible that came through dates. I did not discover it myself, of course."
"I don't see why 'of course,'" Marjorie said in a resentful tone. "You do discover things."
"I discover little girls once in a while," returned Miss Prudence with a rare softening of lips and eyes.
If it had not been for a few such discoveries the lines about Miss
Prudence's lips might have been hard lines.
"Of course you both remember the story of faithful old Abraham, how he longed and longed for a son and hoped against hope, and, after waiting so long, Isaac was born at last. He had the sure promise of God that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Do you know how many nations Abraham knew about? Did he know about France and England and America, the Empire of Russia and populous China?"
Linnet looked puzzled; Marjorie was very grave.
"Did he know that the North American Indians would be blessed in him? Did he know they would learn that the Great Spirit had a Son, Jesus Christ? And that Jesus Christ was descended from him?"
"I—don't—know," said Marjorie, doubtfully. "I get all mixed up."
"It was because all the world would be blessed that he was so anxious to have a son. And, then, after Isaac was born and married for years and years the promise did not seem to come true, for he had no child. Must the faithful, hopeful old father die with his hope deferred? We read that Abraham died in a good old age, an old man, full of years, and Isaac and Ishmael buried him, and farther on in the same chapter we find that the twin boys are born, Jacob and Esau. But their old grandfather was dead. He knew now how true God is to his promises, because he was in Heaven, but we can't help wishing he had seen those two strong boys from one of whom the Saviour of the whole world was to descend. But if we look at Abraham's age when he died, and comparing it with Isaac's when the twins were born, we find that the old man, truly, had to wait twenty years before they were born, but that he really lived to see them seventeen or eighteen years of age. He lived to tell them with his own lips about that wonderful promise of God."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Marjorie, enthusiastically.
"He had another long time to wait, too," said Linnet.
"Yes, he had hard times all along," almost sighed Miss Prudence.
Forty years old did not mean to her that her hard times were all over.
"But he had such a good time with the boys," said Marjorie, who never could see the dark side of anything. "Just to think of dates telling us such a beautiful thing."
"That's all you hate, dates and punctuation," Linnet declared; "but I can't see the use of ever so many other things."
"If God thought it worth while to make the earth and people it and furnish it and govern it with laws, don't you think it worth your poor little while to learn what he has done?" queried Miss Prudence, gently.
"Oh!" exclaimed Linnet, "is that it?"
"Just it," said Miss Prudence, smiling, "and some day I will go over with you each study by itself and show you how it will educate you and help you the better to do something he asks you to do."
"Oh, how splendid!" cried Linnet. "Before I go to school, so the books won't seem hard and dry?"
"Yes, any day that you will come to me. Marjorie may come too, even though she loves to study."
"I wonder if you can find any good in Natural Philosophy," muttered Linnet, "and in doing the examples in it. And in remembering the signs of the Zodiac! Mr. Holmes makes us learn everything; he won't let us skip."
"He is a fine teacher, and you might have had, if you had been so minded, a good preparation for your city school."
"I haven't," said Linnet. "If it were not for seeing the girls and learning how to be like city girls, I would rather stay home."
"Perhaps that knowledge would not improve you. What then?"
"Why, Miss Prudence!" exclaimed Marjorie, "don't you think we country girls are away behind the age?"
"In the matter of dates! But you need not be. With such a teacher as you have you ought to do as well as any city girl of your age. And there's always a course of reading by yourself."
"It isn't always," laughed Linnet, "it is only for the studiously disposed."
"I was a country girl, and when I went to the city to school I did not fail in my examination."
"Oh, you!" cried Linnet.
"I see no reason why you, in your happy, refined, Christian home, with all the sweet influences of your healthful, hardy lives, should not be as perfectly the lady as any girl I know."
Marjorie clapped her hands. Oh, if Hollis might only hear this! And Miss
Prudence knew.
"I thought I had to go to a city school, else I couldn't be refined and lady-like," said Linnet.
"That does not follow. All city girls are not refined and lady-like; they may have a style that you haven't, but that style is not always to their advantage. It is true that I do not find many young ladies in your little village that I wish you to take as models, but the fault is in them, as well as in some of their surroundings. You have music, you have books, you have perfection of beauty in shore and sea, you have the Holy Spirit, the Educator of mankind."
The girls were awed and silent.
"I have been shocked at the rudeness of city girls, and I have been charmed with the tact and courtesy of more than one country maiden. Nowadays education and the truest culture may be had everywhere."
"Even in Middlefield," laughed Marjorie her heart brimming over with the thought that, after all, she might be as truly a lady as Helen Rheid.
If Linnet had been as excited as Marjorie was, at that moment, she would have given a bound into the grass and danced all around. But Marjorie only sat still trembling with a flush in eyes and cheeks.
"I think I'll keep a list of the books I read," decided Marjorie after a quiet moment.
"That's a good plan. I'll show you a list I made in my girlhood, some day. But you mustn't read as many as an Englishman read,—Thomas Henry Buckle,—his library comprised twenty-two thousand."
"He didn't read them all," cried Linnet.
"He read parts of all, and some attentively, I dare say. He was a rapid reader and had the rare faculty of being able to seize on what he needed to use. He often read three volumes a day. But I don't advise you to copy him. I want you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. He could absorb, but, we'll take it for granted that you must plod on steadily, step by step. He read through Johnson's Dictionary to enlarge his vocabulary."
"Vocabulary!" repeated Linnet.
"His stock of words," exclaimed Marjorie. "Miss Prudence!" with a new energy in her voice, "I'm going to read Webster through."
"Well," smiled Miss Prudence.
"Don't you believe I can?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then I will. I'll be like Buckle in one thing. I'll plan to read so many pages a day. We've got a splendid one; mother got it by getting subscriptions to some paper. Mother will do anything to help us on, Miss Prudence."
"I have learned that. I have a plan to propose to her by and by."
"Oh, can't you tell us?" entreated Linnet, forgetting her work.
"Not yet."
"Does it concern us?" asked Marjorie.
"Yes, both of you."
Two hours since it had "concerned" only Marjorie, but in this hour under the apple-tree Miss Prudence had been moved to include Linnet, also. Linnet was not Marjorie, she had mentally reasoned, but she was Linnet and had her own niche in the world. Was she not also one of her little sisters that were in the world and not of it?
"When may we know?" questioned Linnet
"That depends. Before I leave your grandfather's, I hope."
"I know it is something good and wonderful, because you thought of it," said Marjorie. "Perhaps it is as good as one of our day-dreams coming true."
"It may be something very like one of them, but the time may not be yet. It will not do you any harm to know there's something pleasant ahead, if it can be arranged."
"I do like to know things that are going to happen to us," Linnet confessed. "I used to wish I could dream and have the dreams come true."
"Like the wicked ancients who used to wrap themselves in skins of beasts and stay among the graves and monuments to sleep and dream—and in the temples of the idols, thinking the departed or the idols would foretell to them in dreams. Isaiah reproves the Jews for doing this. And Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to 'The Lady of the Lake,' tells us something about a similar superstition among the Scotch."
"I like to know about superstitions," said Linnet, "but I'd be afraid to do that."
"Miss Prudence, I haven't read 'The Lady of the Lake'!" exclaimed
Marjorie.
"No, imitator of Buckle, you haven't. But I'll send it to you when I go home."
"What did Buckle do with all his learning?" inquired Marjorie.
"I haven't told you about half of his learning. He wrote a work of great learning, that startled the world somewhat, called 'The History of Civilization,' in which he attempted to prove that the differences between nations and peoples were almost solely to be attributed to physical causes that food had more to do with the character of a nation than faith."
"Didn't the Israelites live on the same food that the Philistines did?" asked Marjorie, "and didn't—"
"Are you getting ready to refute him? The Jews could not eat pork, you remember."
"And because they didn't eat pork they believed in one true God!" exclaimed Marjorie, indignantly. "I don't like his book, Miss Prudence."
"Neither do I. And we need not read it, even if he did study twenty-two thousand books and Johnson's Dictionary to help him write it."
"Why didn't he study Webster?" asked Linnet.
"Can't you think and tell me?"
"No."
"Can you not, Marjorie?"
"Because he was English, I suppose, and Johnson wrote the English
Dictionary and Webster the American."
"An Irish lady told me the other day that Webster was no authority. I wish I could tell you all about Johnson; I love him, admire him, and pity him."
Marjorie laughed and squeezed Miss Prudence's hand. "Don't you wish you could tell us about every body and every thing, Miss Prudence?"
"And then help you use the knowledge. I am glad of your question, Marjorie, 'What did Mr. Buckle do with his knowledge?' If I should learn a new thing this week and not use it next week I should feel guilty."
"I don't know how to use knowledge," said Linnet.
"You are putting your knowledge of tatting to very good service."
"Miss Prudence, will you use your things on me?" inquired Marjorie, soberly.
"That is just what I am hoping to do."
"Hillo! Hillo! Hillo!" sounded a voice behind the woodshed. After a moment a tall figure emerged around a corner, arrayed in coarse working clothes, with a saw over his shoulders.
"Hillo! gals, I can't find your father. Tell him I left my saw here for him to file."
"I will," Linnet called back.
"That's African John," explained Linnet as the figure disappeared around the corner of the woodshed. "I wish I had asked him to stay and tell you some of his adventures."
"African John. He is not an African;" said Miss Prudence.
"No, oh no; he's Captain Rheid's cousin. People call him that because he was three years in Africa. He was left on the coast. It happened this way. He was only a sailor and he went ashore with another sailor and they got lost in a jungle or something like it and when they came back to the shore they saw the sails of their ship in the distance and knew it had gone off and left them. The man with him fell down dead on the sand and he had to stay three years before a ship came. He's an old man now and that happened years and years ago. Captain Rheid can't tell anything more frightful than that. Mother had a brother lost at sea, they supposed so, for he never came back; if I ever have anybody go and not come back I'll never, never, never give him up."
"Never, never, never give him up," echoed Miss Prudence in her heart.
"They thought Will Rheid was lost once, but he came back! Linnet didn't give him up, and his father and mother almost did."
"I'd never give him up," said Linnet again, emphatically.
"Will Rheid," teased Marjorie, "or anybody?"
"Anybody," replied Linnet, but she twitched at her work and broke her thread.
"Now, girls, I'm going in to talk to your mother awhile, and then perhaps
Linnet will walk part of the way home with me," said Miss Prudence.
"To talk about that," cried Marjorie.
"I'll tell you by and by."