Chapter Eighteen

by Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss
Edited by Amber Moeller

We have come to the autumn of 1866. Horace and Maggie have been buffeting the waves and breathing the fragrant gales of three years of married life.

"How shall we celebrate our wedding day?" Maggie is asking Horace. "Shall we have Tom and Annie and the baby to dinner, or go to Aunt Jane's?"

"Has she invited us?"

"Yes; here is her dear little note. I fancy her poor old hand is growing a little tremulous."

"We'll go there, then; that is, if you say so."

"But it is Annie's wedding day, too, you know. However, Aunt Jane has invited her, of course."

"Perhaps we had better go there. It certainly is a good thing to break in on the routine of one's life occasionally."

"Is ours a life of routine?" asked Maggie, surprised at his tone.

"I will not answer for yours, but mine certainly is. I go to the office at just such and hour, drone through a certain amount of work, step out for my lunch, go to work again, come home--ah, the routine stops there, I will own. You always contrive to have something pleasant for me, if it is nothing more than running to bid me welcome."

"Still, it is plain you feel the monotony of your life to be painful. Well, sometimes I feel mine to be. To get up every morning and go through a series of forms preparatory to making one's self presentable, thinking how short a day will intervene before these forms will have to be gone through with again in the reverse way, is sometimes a little oppressive. But is there not a story of a wedded pair who changed places with each other one day because of this sort of discontent? The man staid in the house and cooked the dinner, and rocked the cradle and mended the stockings; the woman went into the field and ploughed, and fed and watered the cattle and the like. And that day's experiment sufficed for a lifetime."

"I think I can get started for the day on that story," he said. "I feel no drawings toward cooking of dinners or mending of stockings. As to rocking the cradle, ah, Maggie, perhaps we should quarrel over that if we had one."

"Yes, I can fancy that you would take to that sort of work, you are so fond of your little niece. But if God does not give us children, knowing as He does how thankful we should be for them, it is surely because He has some good reason for it. Perhaps there are now in the world some fatherless and motherless ones that He is saving for us till we can afford to take them in."

After he had gone, Maggie stood for some moments just where he had left her, lost in thought, and with a shadow on her face. He had touched on a very sore spot when he had hinted that this childless home was a disappointment to him.

For if it was such to him, what was it to her? She had never known until her marriage what it was like to live without the sweet self-denials that are born of the helplessness of childhood; she missed the sound of little feet, the caresses of little arms. Home-life was pre-eminently the life she loved best; it was her instinct to hide in retired nooks, and if she reigned anywhere, to reign in a small, unobtrusive domain. But now she had health and leisure, and rather than be idle in God's vineyard she would work in more conspicuous, less congenial ways. Only there was Annie, so bright, so free from the shyness that makes outside duty painful, so fitted to adorn almost any sphere, tied down to a baby who would have loved some other mother just as well, and whom she, Maggie, would have been so much gladder to possess. For Annie disliked babies in general, while, of course, loving her own in particular; and the details of the nursery were as distasteful to her as they were an enthusiasm to the heroine of the doll-dressing witnessed years ago to Horace.

Yes, there was a shadow on Maggie's face, and there were tears in her eyes; Horace would always have to find his happiness chiefly in his home, walking was so irksome and painful to him, and what is a home without children? She had felt often before, and she felt now for his sake, like uttering the passionate cry:

"Give me children, or else I die!"

She crept away to her own room in this strangely stirred mood, and told her story to Him to whom she always told everything that perplexed, or pain or gladdened her. And then she said He should give or withhold, just as He pleased; that she would not plan or choose for herself; that she loved Him and believed in Him, an was satisfied and happy in Him. She might well say that, for the sweet throwing away her own will that she might take up and bear His, brought with it a peace and a joy that all the united treasures on earth could not have bought. Horace saw it in her face when he came home to take her to Aunt Jane's, and loved her for it, without knowing at exactly what spring she had been drinking.

And Aunt Jane saw it too, and felt it in the unusually fond caress with which Maggie greeted her.

"Who would think of your breaking all one's bones in that way," she said, who loved so to have her bones broken.

"I had to break somebody's!" was Maggie's answer, "I am so happy."

At the dinner table Aunt Jane proposed to go into the form of pairing Tom and Maggie, Horace and Annie together, but Horace said he should sit by his wife on his wedding day, and Annie, after upbraiding him for his want of chivalry to her, enchanted Tom by declaring that he alone should be at her side. She was in great spirits tonight, and felt it within her that she could entertain them all the whole evening if she chose to give herself the reins. But she was trying to keep a little check on her reckless tongue, and this gave the others a chance to speak, and to feel that a vivifying glow from Maggie was warming and cheering the whole circle.

"What has got into you, Maggie?" she whispered, in the course of the evening. "Have you heard some good news?"

"Why, I am just as usual," was the reply.

The mark on her forehead, the divine mark, was growing deeper, but she whist it not.

"I am coming to have a frolic with baby tomorrow," she added.

"Have you decided what to call her?" asked Aunt Jane.

"No, we haven't. Tom calls her Blanche, for a little sister he had once; think what an odd combination, Blanche White! And I call her Mag. I suppose she'll get one or the other of these names; probably the first."

"Annie do be sober for one minute," cried Maggie, laughing. "You really never meant to have her called 'Mag?'"

"Why not? It's a nice name, an I have nice associations with it."

You'll never let her do such a foolish thing, I know, Tom," said Maggie.

Tom smiled and looked wise. He knew what he was going to do when the last moment came, and he wish it had come. After dinner the two gentlemen withdrew from the society of the ladies, after the manner of men, and the three ladies got close together, after the manner of women thus slighted. Maggie had stumbled on a very interesting family connected with the mission, and had a long story to tell about them, which she knew would result in a raid on Aunt Jane's store-closet next day.

"I wish I had time to run after poor folks as you do," said Annie, "for you really seem to enjoy it. And Horace has beaten it into my old Tom's head that for the mere pleasure of it, letting the question of duty go, it is good to live for other people rather than for yourself."

"As if you had not heard that lesson via baby!" said Aunt Jane.

"Via baby and mamma White," said Annie. "Yes, I really think I know a few little things I did not know when I was married. As for Tom, you never saw a man so changed. I wish you could see the letter he writes to his mission boys; I m sure they are enough to melt hearts of stone. I cried over them myself. And the other night, just as he had come home all tired out, depending on a half-hour with baby before she went to bed, a message came that one of those boys was badly scalded, and off he went without his dinner, without me, and without baby."

"Was the boy so seriously injured?" asked Aunt Jane.

"Yes, his life was in danger. Tom talked and prayed with him--think of it, my Tom getting down on his knees in a tenement house! And it was rather embarrassing for him, for there were neighbors all standing around, and one of the little children was dusting him all the time with a wisp-broom!"

"I don't know which pleases me most, his visiting and praying with his sick boys, or your loving sympathy with him in it," said Aunt Jane.

"Nor I," said Maggie. "It seems to me that God hasn't left me a single thing to wish. He has given me everything I want." The young men now drew near, and conversation became general, and Annie made some gay allusions to past times, when they had all gathered around this same fireside, playing at cross-purposes with each other. Horace, who had suffered of late with intolerable sleepiness in the evening, and who had hardly been able to keep his eyes open since dinner, now roused up and answered her back, and they had an encounter of wits that greatly amused the rest of the company. When it was time for Annie to go, on account of that punctual and exacting little maiden at home, they all protested against her breaking in upon the evening so early. For while to a looker-on they might have seemed a very quiet little company, they had been spending very happy hours together; one love and one hope drew them to each other; they were fellow travellers, all going the same way, and before long at the longest, they were all meet where they need not separate to go to different homes.

"We always have such a nice time when we come here!" said Annie, as she kissed Aunt Jane good night. "Are you sure that you are not really our very own aunty?"

"I am sure I am very own aunty to all four of you," she said, looking lovingly upon them.

"What, and are you my aunt, too?" cried Tom. "How very delightful!"

"It is good to go out, if only to find how good it is to be at home again," said Horace, as he and Maggie hovered over their own little fire half an hour later. "Ah, Maggie, how many such homes as ours there might be if there was only a little more common sense in the world."

"Suppose we turn into apostles an go about preaching that doctrine," said Maggie, laughing at his earnestness.

"I wish we could. Perhaps, when our heads get as grey as Aunt Jane's, people will begin to attach some weight to what we say, and we can then preach our sermons."

"I am not going to wait for that. In fact, we are preaching now. Everybody must see that we are as happy and contented as people can be in this world. I, for one, am growing stout on it."

"You are growing sleepy--growing stout on want of exercise," replied Maggie. "But that horse will come; he will come, I am sure, and renew your youth. It did me good to hear you and Annie banter with each other so this evening, for you have been growing heavy and silent of late; something so unnatural in you."

"Yes; the visit really did me good. I shall be all right when your magic horse comes to give me my shaking up."

So they helped each other over the fact that their evenings were getting to be mortifying to Horace because he could not keep awake, disappointing to Maggie because she thus lost his society.

And while they were thus engaged Aunt Jane was writing a kind little note to Tom to tell him how she rejoiced over and sympathized in the Christian work to which he was giving himself. She had long since formed the habit of finding it good to scatter little pleasures along the pathway of life when no opportunity for greater deeds presented itself, and so these words to Tom. She was astonished, when his answer came to her, at the surprise and delight it had given him. Her eyes moistened as she read his grateful, affectionate words, and she thanked God that her old, lonely life had still power to send a ray of golden light into other lives.

But a few days later Tom came to her, and said in his simple, honest way, "Aunt Jane, your note had puffed me up so, that I almost wish you had not written it."

She smiled a little, then she said: "We have all read of the wand of a certain king that turned to pure gold every object it touched. Now, every Christian has a wand which works just such, nay, greater, miracles. Fenelon prayed that the successes of Louis XIV might make him as humble as a great humiliation could. Now you and I, when we feel ourselves unduly exalted by flattery, or even by innocent, loving words, have only to say, ‘Lord, turn this temptation into benediction; let the words that strive to make me abound, become, in thine hands, but a new abasement,' and there will be no ‘puffing up,' you may depend upon it."

"It made me very happy. But then I caught myself thinking, ‘Tom, there must be something uncommon about you if people can write to you in that way!' And then I felt mean that I had thought anything about it." He looked in her face an ingenuous, very good boy, and she said:

"I don't see but you'll have to pray that you may get back to thinking yourself common again. We have all of us a great deal to learn on these points, but we must learn to bear praise and blame with equal equanimity. We shall, in this world, get most of the latter, but we need to shrink from neither as long as both drive us to Christ."

"Now, I'm glad you sent me that note, and glad I've had this talk with you, Aunt Jane. My mother has often said she wished you could get hold of me, and now you have."

"I shall keep hold, you may depend," she answered. "I am an old woman, and might be a very sorrowful one; but I am resolved not to be that while there is a single human heart in the world that mine can warm."

"You are warming a good many," he said. "It is really wonderful how you make us young folks love you."

"It is not I whom you love!" she answered. "It is the presence within in me of your and my Friend. Let him leave me for one moment, and all you would see left would be a weak, sinful, ignorant old woman."

He only half caught her thought, and yet it held him all the way down town, and came back to him later with singular power.

"Well, Mag," said Annie, the next time they met, "Tom has made up his mind to give your name to baby, and says he always meant to do it. Only he is for sentimentalizing over her, and calling her ‘Pearl' and Pearlie.' For my part I shall call her Mag. Sha'n't I, my little Daisy, my Queen Margaret, my wee Maggie, my white Pearl, my own old Mag!" she cried, snatching her baby from Maggie's arms to cover it with kisses.

"You've got to pray for this baby as long as you live," she added, her bright face growing softer, more tender. "She's got a poor old stick for a mother, and you must be her saint; I'm afraid I never shall. I never did like to hold one of these squirming little things."

Maggie stretched out her motherly arms, and gathered her little namesake to her heart of hearts. And while she half sang, half whispered to it of the great world of tenderness she had to give it, Annie, with nimble and skillful fingers, manufactured for herself a bonnet that she knew Tom would say became her wondrously, and so it did.

"I am not running up milliner's bills for grandma White," she said. "Now, isn't that lovely? Well, guess what it cost. You won't? Well, it cost four cents."

"You absurd child!" cried Maggie.

"Are you talking to me or to the baby? You see now how lucky it was that I brought home so many odds an ends from Paris. I can go on making bonnets indefinitely for nothing at all. Maggie dear, you need not think my head runs on nothing better."

"I don't think so. I know it runs on Tom and the baby and on yet better things."

"Yes, it does. But I know I am not all taken up with those better things as you are. What is the reason? I want to be good. Do you know what a trial I am to Tom's mother?"

"A trial? What, when you make Tom so happy, and have given her this sweet baby to love?"

"Well, I am a trial for all that. She has set you up for her standard and wants me to be just like you. Now I'll leave it to you if nature did not make us entirely different?"

"I can testify that she did," said Maggie, absorbed in the baby. And then, rousing herself, for she was trying to carry her unselfishness into very little things, she added,--

"Somebody has said that we ought to learn to love our friends for what they are, rather than for what we wish them to be. I think so too. But I must say that I never had to learn that in regard to you. You are lovable in yourself, and you know it, you naughty little thing you, with your mock-humility speeches."

"So is everybody," objected Annie, "if you can only get at the lovable part. The trouble is they keep their hearts locked up as they do their cash, and you only know they have any by seeing the boxes."

Maggie laughed, "But do not you and Tom's mother get on well together?"

"Oh, we get on; that's just the phrase to describe it! You know, in the first place, she's weak and nervous."

"And you are strong and well. So you can inspirit and cheer her."

"Well, I do. In the second place, she thinks she knows how to manage baby ten times as well as I do. She wants her bathed in hot water, and I bathe her in cold. She thinks she ought to have everything she cares for, an I think she shouldn't have one. She gives her great lumps of sugar, too, just think of that!"

"Still you have the chief control of baby, and always these little differences occur when there are grandmas on hand. It is not peculiar to you."

"You would not like it. You are as independent and as positive as I am, every bit of it."

"No, I should not like it. But I don't expect to find anything in this world exactly to my mind. I expect to plague people and expect them to plague me. But I would not make myself unhappy about such trifles if I had such a baby as this."

"Would you really like to have the baby and let grandma be thrown in."

"Would I?" cried Maggie. "Oh, Annie!"

"I had no idea you felt so," said Annie, greatly moved by Maggie's look and tone, an the clasp of her arms around the little one. "I don't see, then, why God does not give you children, if you want them so much."

"Hush, dear, it hurts me to hear you so much as hint that He is not giving me all that is best I should have, for He is."

"Dear old Mag! I wish I loved Him as you do! And I wish I could learn to mind little frictions less. But it will take me a long, long time to get back to where I was when worldly prosperity turned my giddy head. Tom is really better than I am; it quite frightens me to see the lovely note Aunt Jane wrote him. Let me think, where is it? Oh, here it is; read it, Maggie."

"Do you think I may?"

"Certainly. It is only some of those kind encouraging words she loves to put on paper."

Maggie read the note with a keen appreciation of the Christian love that prompted it, that could only be felt by a kindred soul.

"It is beautiful," she said, "and just like Aunt Jane. She lives for everybody except herself. Now we are always going to her with all our little troubles, yet she never speaks of hers? But, of course, she must have them as well as her great sorrows."

"I cannot associate the idea of trouble and sorrow with Aunt Jane," said Annie. "I never saw a cloud on her face."

"But she has them on her heart. Only shallow people are always at ease there. But she is cheerful because she will be cheerful. She is a constant lesson to me."

"To you! What is she then to me with all my little frets and cares?"

"A nice book to study!" replied Maggie. "I believe I shall take this baby home with me. You wouldn't care much!"

"Shouldn't I? Come here, little Mag, and tell your Aunt Mag some of your and my nice wee secrets."

How pretty she looked, this bright rosy young mother, as she caught her child and whispered some loving nonsense in its ear! At least Maggie thought so as she walked home with a warm sisterly glow in her heart.

"Annie is going to make a splendid woman," she said to herself. "The worst of her is over, she will grow less and less selfish, more and more loving, every day. That baby will bring her out, I know it will."

Dear Maggie, it is you who will bring her out. But you will never know it. Walking down a fashionable avenue towards her obscure little home in a dress that befitted her poverty, but was out of keeping with that of the gay crowd about her, she had thoughts in her heart that made a "thousand liveried angels lacquey her," for they were thoughts such as angels have.

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