Aunt Ruth watched them far down the road, then she went into the house with a slow step and a heavy heart. She wiped away the tears as she gathered up Marian's woody treasures that she had forgotten—lichens, moss twigs, and purple berries. The house was empty and dull. The bright young creature who had filled it with an atmosphere of warmth and gladness was gone. How grim and desolate it seemed!
For two months Aunt Ruth had lived a charmed life. Marian, the daughter of her favorite niece, whom she loved as her own child, had come from her far city home for a brief visit—to honor one whom her mother prized so highly. Her stay was protracted far beyond what duty required, though. The girl enjoyed the free, unconventional life, the novel experiences, and the almost idolatrous love bestowed upon her.
It was hard to say which was most delighted with the other. The younger one painted scenes of the gay, busy world, that seemed to the elder, hard-worked woman like the tales of Aladdin. Then she, in turn, in quaint speech, seasoned with wit, poured into the young ears the privations and romances of frontier life, as well as the love tales of long ago, which were far more delightful than one could find in a book, because they had been lived out before Aunt Ruth's eyes. She knew whether the fine gold of the marriage day had become dim; what they did, and how they lived, and so on to the very last chapter. With graphic words she made them live again for her eager listener—a long line of ancestors—sketching her characters with no mean skill, her charitable nature hiding their faults behind their graces, so that they were most fascinating as heroes and heroines. In short, Aunt Ruth was to Marion a delightful old book, full of wisdom and strong sweetness. And while Marian was to her aunt a revelation of grace and loveliness, she was besides gifted with an active brain, and was the very soul of truth and candor, so that she seemed to the New England woman like a breath of air fresh from the old Massachusetts hills. Aunt Ruth always disparaged the East in contrast with the West when she re-visited it, and yet she loved its rocky hills with all her heart. At the same time, anything or anybody of Eastern make or birth, was held up to Western people as a model of all excellence.
"She is just wonderful," the old lady would declare, in confidential chats with Uncle Eli. "There she has been brought up in a great city, her folks are rich, and she has everything she wants, and yet she isn't spoiled a mite. You might have thought she would have brought a trunk full of novels to this out of the way place, and only us two old folks here, but not a bit of it! She's devouring the old yellow books in the bookcase as if her life depended on it. The other morning she got down the 'History of the Reformation,' and there she sat the whole forenoon, never stirred or looked up as I went in and out—so deep in her book. In the afternoon, when I sat down to my mending, we had a great visit over Luther. She told me things that I forgot years ago. His reasons for getting a wife tickled her wonderfully. Forgot them, have you? I had, too. They were: 'That he might please his father, spite the Pope, and vex the devil.' Said she, 'I should have wanted him to have one more reason, Auntie, if I had been his Katy—the only reason—because he loved me.' She looked so sweet and pretty, I spoke right out before I thought, and I said, 'Of course he would. How could anybody help loving you, dearie?' You ought to 'a' seen her pretty blush, then; exactly like my tea-rose in the window there. She's reading 'Paradise Lost,' now. She knows the Catechism from beginning to end, and she is up in the doctrines, and knows about missions. She's a regular old-fashioned girl. Sarah Brewster wrote me that they didn't raise such girls around Boston any more. She said they spent the whole time dressing and going, and reading novels and embroidering, and that they couldn't stand a June frost, physically or morally, that they hadn't any piety nor anything else—nothing but pretty faces. Now, there's Marian, she can walk three miles, and she took hold and helped me with the baking and churning, and swept the whole house. Besides all that, she's truly pious. She isn't going to make one of the strong-minded kind, either—stiff, and hard, and high-stepping, and homely as a hedge fence. She's as sweet as a rose, and as humble as a chipping-bird. I never thought I should set such store by her, when I looked out of the window that day she came, and saw her coming up the walk, sort o' dancing along, with her big hat on, and her curls blowing about her eyes. I said to myself, 'Yes, there she comes! A fine Boston lady, and she will mince about and make fun of us with her saucy airs, and then take herself off in two days, and I shall not be sorry, even if she is my great-niece.' But here she has been, week after week, and don't want to go home yet."
The first fifty miles of Marian's journey was unmarked by anything of special interest. This brought her to the junction where she was to change cars for the main line. But there, to her dismay, she discovered that the train with which she was supposed to connect had been gone for an hour, her own train being late. There was nothing to be done but to wait at a forlorn little hotel for the next one, which would not be until noon of the next day. It was of no use to feel provoked, or to fret, so Marian set herself to bear it patiently. She walked about the small village, and on into the country, made the acquaintance of children gathering Christmas greens, and returned with her hands full of evergreen and bitter-sweet berries.
The time did not hang so heavily as she had anticipated, although she was heartily glad when the long train glided in, and she was once more seated in the car, and on her homeward way. As it was to be a long journey, she was not a little interested in her surroundings. So she began to scrutinize her fellow-passengers, to measure, and classify, and determine, by those few swift glances, their standing—mental, social and moral—and whether they were agreeable, or selfish and ill-natured. She reached her conclusions—unjust ones in some instances, perhaps; and yet the intuitions of some fine natures are a little short of divine. When she wearied of that, she brought out pencil and paper, and scribbled a voluminous letter to Aunt Ruth. Having a talent for sketching, she embellished her sheet here and there with portraits of her fellow-travellers, "to cheer up Auntie," she told herself, albeit the artist seemed to enjoy her work immensely, and to put a deal of painstaking into it. There was a scornful big woman with a pug-nosed dog, a laughing baby, a great pompous man asleep with his mouth open, the sweet face of an old lady biding away under a deep bonnet, and at last, with careful touches, the profile of a young man who sat just ahead of her; a fine scholarly face, bent over a book.
That letter made two old people happy for more than one evening. What if our cheery words went oftener to brighten lonely homes!
Stuart Lynde, a young lawyer returning from a business trip, who sat just below, across the aisle, was not in the least interested in those about him. They were simply a number of strangers with whom he had no possible concern. He had not raised so much as an eyelid to discover who sat before or behind him. He was absorbed in a book, and would have been amazed had he known that an excellent portrait of himself had just been executed and was about to travel back over the road he had come. That which first attracted him from the fascinating pages was a ray of golden light falling across his book; then he put it aside and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the sunset, which was unusually fine. Marian made a mental note of the fact that few watched the glorious picture hung in the sky: three or four only besides herself; the old lady, the young man, a tired-looking mother, and a plain farmer with a "gospel face." As for the lap-dog woman, and the pompous man, they never saw a sunset. "Eyes have they, but they see not," applies to more than heathen idols. It is always so: God's best things are for the few; the many do not throng into the inner temple; hearts are stony, ears are dull, and "their eyes they have closed."
Those who did watch the first red bars steal into the blue of the evening sky, and the blue change to the vast golden sea, with soft violet clouds sailing over it, could scarcely repress exclamations of delight. It was to some of them as if the end of their journey was near—the end of all journeyings—and that rushing train was speeding on straight to the golden glory shining before them, where they should meet the King in his beauty at the gate of his temple, and be welcomed in, to go no more out forever. The old lady and the tired mother and the farmer wished from their souls it was. But Marian Chester and Stuart Lynde, if the thought had occurred to them, would have said, "No, no! Not yet. We want to test the world ourselves, even though you old people say it is a rough and thorny road. We will find the roses. We are not afraid."
It was not strange that as Marian watched the fading light she unconsciously and softly sang,—