Chapter Twelve

by Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss
Edited by Amber Moeller

Those whom marriage or other circumstances bring to a great city often complain that every body lets them alone. They come, perhaps, from a community where they have been known to all about them, persons, of importance in their sphere, and are chilled and surprised to find themselves quite lost and unnoticed in the crowd they now enter. The truth is, there are any number of people in it just as good, just as nice, just as agreeable as themselves and unless they put on some badge that shall distinguish them from the rest, they will live unknown and die unlamented save by some very limited circle of their own. Now, is there such a badge? Yes, if you who feel lonely, unknown, isolated will go about labeled ready for hard work, work will come to you, and with it congenial friends and co-workers. With no design save that of doing good, Maggie was entering warmly into the interest of the church to which Horace had brought her; she was always at the prayer meeting, always at the sewing circle, always at the mission school, always on hand when special cases demanded special work. She talked little and did much; her early training fitted her for all sorts of practical duty, and her habits of industry enabled her to accomplish wonders; and though she had no money to give, she was becoming very necessary and very much beloved in a rich church, where, at first blush, one would say there was no lack of service. It takes all sorts of stones, however small, misshapen, or ordinary they may be.

So, what with loving her husband and making a bright, happy home for him, her class at mission school, her little girls at the industrial school, her sick child across the way, and many a deed done by her right hand that her left hand never knew anything about, "our Maggie" was one of the busiest and one of the happiest little creatures to be found anywhere. You could not tell why, when she opened the door and came into a room the atmosphere at once grew sweet and fragrant; why, whenever you thought of her, you wanted to take her into your arms and kiss her; nor why, if you were in trouble, you wanted to run and tell her all about it. And those who only knew her as she was now would have found it hard to believe that it was not the hand of nature, but the hand of grace that had given her these subtle charms.

Yet all the sunshine that warmed you, and the love that satisfied you, and the sympathy that soothed you were the reflection of His goodness and love and tenderness, with whom Maggie lived and walked. She was with Him so constantly, talked with Him so intimately, was so conscious of being at peace with Him that her happiness flowed over its bounds and ran to encircle and gladden you.

Quarter day had come and gone. At the very last moment Horace had been able to pay his rent, and that care was off of his mind. But work was coming in upon him that made it necessary to give up most of his evenings to it, and this was hard for him and hard for Maggie, who, after longing for him all day, dreaded to see books and papers brought out to exclude her at night. But they were so happy in each other that they needed this discipline and that of their poverty, and, unconsciously to themselves, they profited by it.

One Monday morning Maggie had been unusually busy about her household tasks, and had not had time to put off her working dress when a carriage drove up to the door, and Miss Fitzsimmons "that was," drawing her skirts daintily away from her dirty street, was announced, in an awe-stricken voice, by Mary. For an instant Maggie's heart beat and her cheek flushed. Horace had honorably told her of his episode with that young lady, and she knew there was no point at which they should sympathize; and then her dress! It never occurred to her that she could go upstairs, deliberately take down her hair and rearrange it, put on another dress, a couple of bracelets, an extra bow or two, & c., after the manner of not a few of her sex who think your precious time of no value provided they get themselves up in style. She went into the parlor, therefore, simply and frankly, met her aristocratic guest with true hospitality rather than furbelows, and was so perfectly at ease that Miss Shoddy could neither put her down nor out of countenance.

"I have long been intending to call on you, Mrs. Wheeler, but my numerous engagements have hitherto prevented. I hope you will waive all ceremony and come to us on Friday evening; just a select party; a mere little society visit."

"We make very few visits," Maggie replied. "Mr. Wheeler can rarely spare an evening now; he brings his work home, however, and that makes it a little less lonely for me."

"I shall depend on you for Friday night, however. Tell Mr. Wheeler he must not forget his old friends. Though you are perhaps not aware on what intimate terms we were? Yes? Well, really I feel highly honored to find he had spoken of me to you. Good morning; remember me to him; Friday evening, at eight o'clock."

And then she swept out of the little parlor, and Maggie stood spell-bound for an instant, and then broke forth into a gay laugh that would have greatly scandalized the departed guest, had she heard it."

"I do hope Horace won't make me go," thought she. "I shouldn't like to say what I think of her. How dare such creatures call to see creatures like me?" And then she laughed again, and frisked back to her unfinished work more gaily than ever. Was this the laugh of contempt? By no means. It was the song of a bird that had soared high, and lingered long in an atmosphere far above this world.

"We shall have to go," said Horace, when Maggie told him of the invitation. "But she will soon drop us, never fear."

"But why must we go? We have no interest in common with such people. Why, all I can talk about is what we shall have for dinner when dinner is to be got without money, and what my mission children are to wear, and what I am to teach them, and what they said to me last Sunday."

"Don't be absurd, child," said Horace, looking at her flushed, pretty face with pride. "It will do them good to hear something from a world they never entered. What have you got to wear?"

"Will my black silk do?"

"No, indeed."

"She said it was to be a very social little party."

"Yes, that's the stereotyped word, but it means nothing at all. I remember my first entrance into fashionable life. The invitation was for seven o'clock, and the words very socially were underscored. Aunt Jane, who never goes to large parties, was deceived, as well as I, as she chose to have me escort her, we reached the house not long after the appointed hour. Aunt Jane was very plainly dressed, and so were the very few guests we found there; but our hostess was all ablaze with diamonds, and threw everybody into the shade till two mortal hours had passed, when lo! a host of birds of Paradise came flocking in, till the large rooms were crowded almost to suffocation. We got no supper till half-past eleven, by which time we were ready to sink with fatigue, and Aunt Jane took a vow never to make another ‘social' visit during her natural life."

"And why can't we do the same?"

"Well, we are not elderly widows, and people would think it odd."

"Then let them think so. What do we care what they think?"

"But in this case we must go. Mrs. -----, what's her name?"

"Mrs. Read."

"Mrs. Read will fancy you are afraid to trust me in her charming presence, if we decline to go."

Maggie laughed heartily.

"Then suppose you go without me? I don't really think I've got anything that is fit for a regular party dress."

"Wear what you wore to Mrs. White's the evening we dined there. You looked so lovely then, Maggie."

"But I should have to get a pair of new gloves; and oh, Horace! we should not be able to walk, and if we took a carriage--"

"It would cost money. Yes, I know that, but just this once won't ruin us."

"No, but it will not end at this once, if we begin to go to large parties."

"What a nuisance it is to have to count every penny so!" said Horace.

"You really want to go, then?"

"I cannot say that exactly. But I must own that I should like to let that set of people see my little wife."

"If that is all, I will not go," said Maggie, decidedly. "Dear Horace, why can't we take a position of our own? We don't care for the world, and it doesn't care for us; and we can't afford to keep up with it either."

"Oh, to all intents and purposes, I have done with the world," replied Horace; "but I rather thought we ought to look into it now and then, if only to make sure there is nothing in it we want, and that we have nothing to give it. But if you say so, we'll cut loose from it, and make a new one for ourselves."

"Not for ourselves, but for everybody we can help or comfort. Now that miserable rent is paid, I'll tell you what I want to do."

"Well, my little woman, speak on, and speak fast, for I've hard work before me tonight."

"I'll speak as slowly as I can," said Maggie, who could be mischievous when she chose. "I want to get up a nice little supper next Sunday night, and have your Mission boys to tea."

"They wouldn't come."

"Leave that to me. I'll get round them. We'll have them to tea; then we'll read a chapter; oh, we'll read round, boys always like that, and have prayers, and sing a little, and then I'll go down and read to Mary in the kitchen, and you can talk to them, and get at them as you can't do at school. Then on the Sunday after I'll have my girls."

"And shall I have to go and stay with Mary?"asked Horace, demurely.

"No. After prayers you shall go and spend one hour with Aunt Jane. She misses the Sunday evening visits you used to make her after you were wounded, and I don't think you ought to give them up. I do not see how an own mother could have done more for you than she has done."

"If ever a man let himself be pulled about by the nose, I am that man," said Horace. "Well, get up your little suppers, and whatever else you like. Only now I really must attend to these papers. Kiss me, and let me go."

Which she did, but he wouldn't go. This little wife charmed him, he knew not why, and he did not feel like work after his long day at the office.

"I don't know," he said, untying at last the red tape that secured a roll of papers, " whether I most like or most love you."

"Was that remark addressed to those papers or to me?" asked Maggie, in a way that provoked the tossing of them all on the table where they spent the rest of the evening untouched.

"I'll have stewed prunes for one thing," said Maggie, "and buns for another. Boys always like buns. And doughnuts. I wish we could afford to give them some oysters."

"We might, just for once," said Horace.

"But it isn't going to be for once; it is going to be ever so many times. Well, I know what I'll have. There are plenty of good things that don't cost much, only they are not genteel. But we don't set up to be genteel."

The next Sunday Maggie scared every boy in Horace's class with a tiny little note in which she called him "Dear Bob", or Dear Jim", as the case might be, told him what she was going to have for supper, and coaxed him to bring his Bible, and surely come.

"Are you a-going, Bob?" quoth Jim.

"No, I ain't got anything to wear."

"I ain't either. What do you suppose she wants of us?"

"To convert us, I guess." Whereupon seven separate grins on as many separate faces.

"Cold suppers is prime," suggested Bill Rooney.

"I'm a-going. She knowed I'd come looking like sixty. She saw me last Sunday, and she seen me this."

"If you're a-going, I am," said Bob.

"Let's all go," squealed little Tim Weaver, who never remembered having all he wanted to eat at any one time in his life. "What's this at the end? Your ‘aff.' friend. I say, what kind of a friend is that?"

"It means that she'll be affronted if we don't go," said Jim. "And the Cap'n says he wants us."

The thing ended in this wise. The doorbell rang at six o'clock, and the seven boys stamped into the house looking like seven prisoners about to be sentenced. There was a scuffle in the hall as to who should go into the parlor first, which was summarily ended by Jim's aiding little Tim's entrance by the skillful application of his foot to the small of his back, sending that young man into the august presence of "the Cap'n" and Maggie, with a jerk that took away his breath.

Seven hard faces looked up into Maggie's, and seven hard fists were clasped by her loving hand; and then they got awkwardly into seven chairs, and looked as if they would like to run away. Bob had got on his elder brother's jacket, lent for the occasion, and was nearly buried alive in it. Jim had outgrown his jacket, which came only a little way below his arms, and girt him about like a belt. Little Tim could hardly walk, for he wore his mother's shoes, which fell off at every step, and even when he sat in the chair with his young legs dangling in the air; he blushed, and put them on, and they fell off, and were put on again, in spite of his loudly whispered admonition, "I say, you old shoes you, you'd better stay on, if you know what's good for you."

But now tea was ready, and Maggie got them around her little table somehow.

"Now, boys," she said, pleasantly, "we always shut our eyes and fold our hands, and ask God to bless our food before we taste it, and you'll do just as we do, I'm sure."

The seven pairs of eyes shut themselves together like a vice, and the rough hands were folded as in a mortal grip. Only little Tim couldn't help "peeking," as he afterwards confessed, to see whether all the promised things were on the table. Maggie had provided as she would have done for her own brothers, if she had seven of them, and was greatly surprised and disappointed to find how little these boys ate in proportion. There were various reason for this. In the first place they were frightened half out of their wits. Then they had none of them the vigorous health of boys born of pure and healthy parents, nor had they been accustomed to the full meals to which the children of plenty are invited thrice every day. Still they had a certain pleasure in sitting at a well-ordered table, and in drinking tea with "the Cap'n"and his dear little wife; and little Tim did full justice to all of the good things, if the others did not. Indeed, he never heard the last of his feats on this occasion, as each of his comrades made an exact inventory of all the consumed, and never forgot one of its items. The "reading round" at prayers proved an excruciating task to those who read and to those who listened. Not one of the boys read slowly or distinctly, or with a particle of life and spirit; still, a chapter was got through, somehow, and then they all knelt down together while Horace prayed for them as he had never done before. After this came the singing, and it was pleasant to hear the seven young voices reiterating. "Yes Jesus loves me!" over and over, till it did seem that they must truly believe what they sang. Ah, how little it was to Him what sort of uncouth, ill-clad bodies held the souls He loved! Perhaps there was not in all the city a group over which His heart yearned more tenderly than over this.

Maggie skipped away after the singing, as she had said she should, that Horace might talk freely to his boys, and went down into the kitchen, but Mary had gone to bed. So she sat by the fire there, silently praying for each boy by name, and that Horace might touch and gain their hearts, and lead each one to Christ. At last she heard them go shuffling out, and ran gladly upstairs right into two arms that were waiting for her there.

"They have enjoyed it, I am sure they have," said Horace, "and I don't know when I have had such a pleasant evening. How happy we are, Maggie!"

"Yes, indeed," she cried. "No one on earth could be more so."

The next Sunday evening went off still better. The girls were not so shy as the boys had been; the true woman slumbered in each of them, and told them to sit at the table as Maggie did, not a foot from it; and after Horace had gone away, they clustered around their teacher with hugs and kisses and admiring glances, and let her talk to them as she pleased.

They were all clamorous to come again, and Maddie promised they should, for her heart yearned over them with love and pity.

Meanwhile, Horace was giving Aunt Jane an animated account of the evening with his boys, making her smile at one moment and filling her eyes with tears the next.

"You are forming just such a Christian home as I hoped you would," she said. "And you may depend upon it, that in blessing others you will find the richest blessing life can bring."

"It is all Maggie's doing," returned Horace. "I should never have thought of such a thing myself. Much less should I have believed that it would be such a fountain of pure joy."

"But it is not every man who would at once have yielded to his Maggie's wishes," said Aunt Jane. "I particularly like it in you, Horace, because you naturally like to lead."

"Oh, I lead now," he said, quickly. "Maggie never sets up her will against mine."

Aunt Jane smiled. She could see the silken cord of love by which Maggie was drawing him along, and rejoiced in it.

"I wanted to see you alone," she went on, "to tell you how very glad I am that you have conquered your reluctance to pray at our evening meetings."

"That was Maggie's doing, too," he replied. "I know I am not gifted in that line-"

"What is being gifted?" she interrupted.

"Why, one can't exactly define it, but surely we all know what it means."

"It it means being far-fetched, and original and striking, then I will allow that you are not. But if it means really speaking to the Lord Jesus like one used to it, in the language of simple love and faith, without rhetoric or flourish or parade, then, dear Horace, you are so far gifted that it is your duty to lead us in our prayers whenever you are asked."

"Thank you, Aunt Jane, you have taken a perfect load off my mind."

"But I want to take a mother's privilege and suggest one thing, that it would not be amiss to do to every young man who prays in public. You all repeat the name of God too often, and if no friend has courage to tell you of it at the outset, the habit becomes fixed. I know it is a very delicate matter to criticize a prayer, but I do it in tenderest love, I might say pride. For when I think of what you were aiming at a few years ago, and what you love and are aiming at now, I could cry for joy."

"And so could I!" he said, while his eyes grew moist with grateful tears. "When I think of those days, days of perfect health and comparative freedom from care, for I had only myself to think of then, and these days when I suffer the inconvenience and privation of one limb less than I was born with, and the constant restriction of limited means, I am astonished at the superficial views of life that made me count getting into society a gain when it was only a sad, irreparable loss."

"God has been very good to you," she said, musingly.

"Yes. And what He has given me in Maggie, no tongue can tell. Why He should create and then give her to me, I cannot imagine. You don't know what she is."

"As I have not been married to her five months, perhaps I do not," she answered, with a smile. "But I have know her a great many years, and her happiness in you and yours in her does my old heart good. And now, before you go, let us kneel down and thank God for all He has given us, especially that he has given us Himself."

Well, it was not a "gifted prayer" that went up from his lips that night as Horace knelt side by side with his almost mother, but it told a story of love and faith that brought them very near to Christ and to each other, and sent him home a very happy man.

And there he found Maggie waiting to tell him all about her evening, with all sorts of amusing things mixed up with the graver ones, and so ended a day that had had in it, and that had given to many others, some of the gladdest sunshine of life. Let those who do not believe it try it for themselves.

To be continued ...

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