THE ACADEMY GIRL’S THANKSGIVING AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
Marion never knew that shortly after she fell asleep a tall, gaunt woman with a gray-and-white blanket over her shoulders stole softly into her room, holding her candle high above her bed, and standing over, peered down at her.
As she gazed, a half-smile crept into her rugged face. “Pretty creatur!” she said aloud; then, with deft and careful fingers she tucked the bed-clothes close around the sleeping girl, smiled broadly, and crept out.
The next morning when Marion waked, through the odd little oriel window the late winter light was struggling fitfully in. At first she could not tell where she was: the rafters over her head, the bare white walls that surrounded her, the blue-and-white homespun quilt that covered her, were unlike any thing she had ever seen before.
She was on her feet in a moment, half frightened at the dim light. Had another night come? Had she slept over Thanksgiving?
When she went to the kitchen, Aunt Betty was 151 there busy over the cooking-stove. She was about making an apology for her lateness, but she was interrupted by,—
“’Taint never too late to pray; you may read the Bible.” She pointed without another word to the old family Bible. Marion took it, opened it slowly, waiting to be told where to read.
“Thanksgiving,” said Aunt Betty briefly.
“It’s all Thanksgiving my father says. He thinks the Bible was given us to make us happy.”
“Thirty-fourth Psalm, then,” and a quiet look came into the old seamed face.
When Marion had read it, her aunt rose from her chair, stepped behind it, tilted it on its front legs, and folding her hands on its top began to pray.
Like the grace at table, it was the same old prayer that had gone up from that same old kitchen for one hundred and twenty years. Its quaint simplicity was a marvel to the young girl who listened, but a breath of its devotion reached and touched her heart.
Then followed breakfast. Marion wondered, as they two sat at the table alone, how the old aunt could have borne the loneliness for so many long years.
To her, on her first Thanksgiving away from her cheerful home, there was something positively uncanny in the silence which settled down over the house; even the old yellow dog, with his nose between his front paws, slept soundly, and the great red rooster that had lighted upon the forked stick that before the back door had held the farm milk-pails for more 152 than a century, instead of calling for his Thanksgiving breakfast, as orthodox New England roosters are expected to do, just flapped his wings lazily, and turned a much becombed head imploringly toward the kitchen window.
What was to be done with the long, dull festival day? Marion may be forgiven if she cast many longing thoughts back to the academy, to the pleasant bustle that filled the long corridors, the merry laughs of the girls, the endless chatter, the coming and the going that seemed to her never to cease. She was homesick to see Miss Ashton, her room-mates, and Helen, over whose daily life she had already installed herself as responsible for its comforts and its pleasures, and who, homeless and poor, remained almost by herself in the great empty building.
She was not, however, left long in doubt as to the day’s occupations. Hardly had the breakfast dishes been put away, when Aunt Betty said,—
“Meetin’ begins at ten. We hain’t got no bell, and we’ll start in season. You can put on your things.”
The clock said nine; meeting began at ten. Five minutes were all she needed for preparation. Here was time for a few lines at least of that Greek tragedy. She had read one line, when the door opened, and there stood Aunt Betty.
“Listen, Aunt Betty!” she said. “Hear how soft these words are.” Then she rattled off line after line of the chorus. This is Greek, she said, 153 pausing to take breath. “Listen! I will translate for you.”
She carried her book to the oriel window, so the light would fall more clearly on its page, and began,—
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“Before the mirror’s golden round, Curious my braided hair I bound, Adjusted for the night; And now, disrobed, for rest prepared, Sudden tumultuous cries are heard, And shrieks of wild affright. Grecians to Grecians shouting call, ‘Now let the haughty city fall; In dust her towers, her rampiers lay, And bear triumphant her rich spoils away.’” |
“Doesn’t that roll along sublimely? Can’t you hear the cries and the shouts of the Grecian host?”
“I can hear Marion Parke making a fool of herself. Be you, or be you not, goin’ to meetin’ with me?”
“Meeting? Why, of course I am. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I’ll be ready in half a minute. Will you?”
Aunt Betty, in her short black skirt, her old gray sack, and her heavy shoes, did not make much of a holiday appearance. Something of this crept slowly into her brain as she looked down, so she turned quickly, and went away without another word.
Marion gave some girl-like twists to her brown hair, pinned a gay scarlet bow to the neck of her sack, and, looking fresh and pretty as a rosebud, went to the kitchen, where she had to wait some time before Aunt Betty made her appearance. 154
Cousin Abijah had brought the old horse and sleigh round to the back door. Here a long slanting roof ran down to the lintel of the door, and up to the plain cornice snow-drifts lay piled. What a winter scene it was! Marion, never having seen the like before, gazed at it in wondering admiration.
When Aunt Betty and Marion started for the village meeting-house, the thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero.
Aunt Betty took a rein in each hand, and as soon as the snow-banks bordering the narrow path to the road were safely passed, began a series of jerks at the horse’s mouth, which Dan perfectly well understood, too well, indeed, to allow himself to be hurried in the least.
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“One foot up, and one foot down, That’s the way to Lunnon town,” |
laughed Marion when they had gone a few rods.
“Klick! Klick!” with more decisive tugs from Dan’s mistress; but the “Klicks,” as well as the tugs, were of no avail, and Marion, afraid to venture another comment, turned her eyes from the horse to the scenery around her.
Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the ride to the little meeting-house Marion will never forget. When she left the farmhouse it seemed to her a short walk would bring her to the foot of the snow-clad mountains; but, to her surprise, when they reached the church they were towering up above the small village 155 like huge sentinels, so still, so grand, that, hardly conscious she was speaking aloud, Marion said,—
“I never knew before what it meant in the Bible where it says, ‘The strength of the hills is his also.’ Wonderful! wonderful!”
“Eh?” asked Aunt Betty, only a dim comprehension of what Marion meant having crept in beneath the big red hood that covered her head.
Marion repeated the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it with, “‘Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.’” Not a word did she offer in explanation; she only twitched the horse’s head more emphatically, and did not speak again until she reached the meeting-house door.
What a desolate-looking audience-room it was! Up in one corner roared a big iron stove, which, do its best, failed to warm but a few feet of the spaces around it. A gray-bearded minister in his overcoat was reading from the pulpit a hymn, as they went in, and a dozen people, most of them men, were scattered round in the bare pews.
They all looked pleased to see an addition to their number, and some nodded to Aunt Betty; all stared at the new-comer.
There was no sermon, but a short address, which Marion strove to remember, that she might repeat it to her father, as having come from the old pulpit before which he had worshipped as a boy; but, 156 do her best to be attentive and decorous, her teeth chattered, and the “Amen” was to her the most interesting part of the services.
The ride home was even colder than the one to the meeting; for a brisk north-east wind had risen, and came howling down from the mountains in strong, long gusts that betokened a coming storm.
Dan obstinately refused to move one foot faster than he chose, and before they reached home they were thoroughly and, indeed, dangerously benumbed with the cold.
Little thought had they of Thanksgiving, as they clung to the warm stove and listened to the rising of the wind. It was Marion who first remembered the day, and looked about for some way of keeping it. Poor, pinched, half-frozen Aunt Betty had entirely forgotten it.
Now Marion made herself perfectly at home. She found old-fashioned china that would have been held precious in many houses, decorating with it the table in a deft and tasteful way that warmed lonely Aunt Betty’s heart, as she watched her, more than the blazing fire could; and while she worked, she talked, or sang little snatches of college songs learned at school, which rippled out in her rich voice with a melody never heard in the old farmhouse before.
It was not long before Aunt Betty came to her help, and such a bountiful dinner as she had prepared made Marion wish over and over again that Helen, alone in that large academy building, could have been there to share it with her. 157
“Thanksgiving night!” Marion kept saying this to herself over and over again, as she sat alone with Aunt Betty over the kitchen stove.
A little oblong light stand was drawn up between them, holding a small kerosene lamp. Not a book but the Bible, and a copy of the Farmer’s Almanac suspended by a string from the corner of the mantel, was to be seen. Marion, having heard so much of the intelligence of the New Hampshire farmers, supposed of course there would be a library in the house, and had brought only her Greek Tragedy with her. This she did not dare open again, so there she sat, Aunt Betty, not having yet entirely recovered from the effects of her cold ride, alternately nodding and rousing herself to a vain effort to keep her eyes open. And all the time the storm was increasing, the wind rocking the house with its rough blasts, until it seemed to utter loud groans, and the sharp cold snapping and cracking the shaking timbers with short volleys of sound like gun-shots. Frightened mice scurried about in the low roof over the kitchen; and rats, lonely rats, seeking company, came to the top of the cellar stairs, pushing the door open with their pointed noses, and blinking in beseechingly with their big round eyes.
Marion, who had never heard anything of the kind before, was really frightened.
“O Aunt Betty,” she said piteously, “do, please, wake up and tell me if there are ghosts here!”
Aunt Betty just stared at her; she was wide awake now. 158
“There are such dreadful noises, and such mice, and—and rats!”
“Nonsense!” said Aunt Betty, listening. “Don’t be a coward! It’s only the storm.”
“It’s fearful! What can we do?”
“Pop corn!”
Marion could not help laughing at the inconsequent answer; but anything was better than the noisy stillness of the last hour, and bringing a large brass warming-pan and some corn, they were soon busy popping the corn.
It would have been difficult to say which of the two enjoyed the sport the most. It carried Marion home, where the family were all gathered together before the brisk fire in the cheerful sitting-room. Aunt Betty was young again. Nat and Sam, Bertha and Molly, and little Ruth filled the big, empty kitchen, laughed merrily over the crackling corn, held out small hands to catch it as the cover swung back, pelted each other with it till the spotless floor crunched beneath their dancing feet. It had been long years since they had come home to her before on Thanksgiving night, but here they were now, all evoked by Marion’s glad youth.
The moment the old clock struck nine, warming-pan, corn, and dishes vanished from sight.
A long tallow-dip Aunt Betty held out to Marion, and pointed up-stairs.
Marion obeyed; and though all night long the wind howled, the mice and the rats held high carnival, 159 Marion slept soundly, and never knew that Aunt Betty, with her candle held high above her head, made another visit to her bedside, and there, bending her old knees, offered up her simple prayer, asking in much faith and love God’s blessing on this new-found niece.