 | My third book |  |
The Cottage on the Hill.
An old woman, in an old farm-house, sitting in an old high-backed
chair, and knitting by the fire, is made so, probably. There is
scarcely a boy in the barn-yard or a girl in the kitchen who suspects
for a moment she was ever any thing else than an old woman knitting
in a high-backed chair. * * * * The table on which you write
was part of a tree once. Heavens! how merrily it swung in the
great March winds, in the wild December storms! How it bloomed
in May and reddened in October, and was as sensitive and responsive
to the touch of light and breeze as a girl's cheek to her lover's look
and whisper! Would you believe it? Steady old table! it holds
your dinner, your books, your coffin, but it tells no tales.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (Trumps).
I WISH I were an artist, that I might preface my
story with a vignette. It should be a little brown
cottage, with low, sloping eaves, and the moss thick
and gray upon its shingled roof. There should be
trees in front, and a rambling, carelessly-built stone
wall, overgrown with sweet-brier and woodbine, shutting
it off from the highway. On the eastern side I
would paint a garden—not a great, well-kept garden,
full of gay flowers and thrifty vegetables, such as you
often see beside a substantial country farm-house, but
one with a few blossoms, and herbs, and berries, such
as a woman's hand could keep in order. In front of
the garden I would draw the same rambling-looking
wall, only, instead of sweet-brier and woodbine, gooseberry
and currant bushes should grow thick and green
behind it, and, in their midst, you should see, as I did
one July morning, years ago, old Mother Margery, as
the villagers called her, busily gathering the ripe red
currants, and dropping them, sprig by sprig, into her
tin basin.
I was going to school with a companion, a bold,
black-eyed girl a year or two older than myself. The
highway was white with the summer dust. The locust
blossoms, which we were not tall enough to reach,
drooped downward over head, tantalizing us with their
fragrance. It was so warm the birds had ceased to
over the wall, there was something very inviting in
the ripe currants and dewy roses under the shade-trees
of the little garden.
“I do think the old woman is so mean,” said Jane
Anderson as we walked along. “She never gives us
so much as a hollyhock; and that caraway would be
real good this hot morning, to say nothing of the currants.
Hey, Mother Margery!” she exclaimed, in a
louder tone, as we drew near, “you're picking currants,
I s'pose, for your husband and children, and
haven't any to spare?”
Mother Margery lifted her gray eyes and gazed full
upon her. There was an angry gleam in them, chased
away, in an instant, by an expression of wounded feeling,
but she made no reply.
I pitied her, and pulled Jane's arm to draw her away.
“Hush!” I said; “you shall not say any thing to
pain her. She is old, and she is alone. What if you
should be, some day?”
I thought there was a look of grateful surprise in
the old woman's face, but she did not speak, and we
passed along.
For the next two or three days, as we went by to
school, we did not see Mother Margery. But at last,
one morning, as I was passing alone, she came out and
spoke to me.
“Won't you come in?” she said, in a voice which,
though cracked and unmusical, was still friendly.
“You are a good child, and I'd like to give you some
of the roses I see you looking at. I am old, as you
said, and all alone. I have more flowers and fruit
than I can use myself.”
I thanked her warmly. I had never entered the
little garden before, and, like all prohibited places, it
seemed a sort of Paradise. The roses, of which she
gave me a large bunch, were redder and sweeter than
any which grew in other gardens, and the currants and
caraway were enjoyed with a keener zest.
After that I went frequently to see her, for I thought
it gave her pleasure, and to visit one of whom the
world knew so little, seemed to me a rare treat. Often
I helped her in her tasks, and read to her the favorite
hymns and verses of Holy Writ, which were no
longer legible to her dimming sight. She was always
kind, but never communicative, though she listened
with pleasure to the little incidents of my own life, and
it grew, at length, into a habit to confide in her.
At fifteen came my first love-dream. The star
which rose then set soon after, or, rather, I discovered
it to have been a rush-light after all, and a breath blew
it out. But at the time my feelings seemed very real,
and I carried them, at once, to my customary confessor.
“Do you love this young man then so much?” asked
Mother Margery, rather sadly, when I had concluded
my recital.
“Oh yes,” I answered fervently, “there never was,
and there never will be, another like him.”
“Beware, child, of giving all your heart up to a human
idol. God never blesses such a love. I will tell
you my story. It will not hurt me to call back the
long past now, when the blood flows still and sluggish
in my veins, and my steps are so near the shadow of
death; and, perhaps, it will do you good to listen.
“You can not see in my wrinkled face and dim eyes
and fresh, and blithesome once, though I was never
very pretty. Such as I was, Harry Pierson loved me,
and at seventeen I promised to be his wife. Oh, how
I loved him! I was an orphan, and he was all I had.
I could not see God in those days, because of His creature
of whom I had made an idol. Harry was ambitious,
but he was poor. At twenty-one he resolved to
go to college. College learning wasn't so common a
thing then as it is now, and his friends looked upon it
as a great, nay, an impossible undertaking. I only encouraged
him. We had been engaged two years then.
All that time I had been working at my trade as a tailoress.
I went from house to house, with my goose
and my thimble, and earned thus a great deal more
than was sufficient for my simple wants.
“How well I remember telling him so, one summer
evening, as we walked beneath the orchard trees, and
talked of his going to college. I had a proposal to
make, on which I ventured timidly, for Harry was very
proud. Looking up after I had told him how much
money I could earn, I said—I tried to say it in a quiet,
matter-of-fact way—
“`So you see, Harry, I can help you a little. Besides
my clothes, I shall have, every year, more than
a hundred dollars that I shan't know what to do with.
You shall take that, and pay it back to me in gowns
and bonnets by-and-by.'
“He drew me to his heart. Old woman as I am, I
thank God that once in my life I have been infolded
in a clasp of such strong tenderness. He looked in
my eyes, and the tears his manly pride would not let
him shed gathered heavily in his own.
“`You are a good girl,' he said—`a good girl, Margery—too
good for me, but you must never say this to
me again. True heart, pure heart! much as I had loved
you, it needed this to help me sound the depths of your
nature. Thank you that you have said it; but, as you
love me, you must never say it again. Food that your
poor little earnings bought would choke me. I would
saw wood from door to door before I would use money
for which your weak, woman's hands had toiled.
But I know how well you love me now, and that will
be the best help of all. God bless you, Margery.'
“I saw how determined he was, and that it was of
no use for me to try to help him in that way, but I resolved
then and there what I would do with my money.
It doesn't take much to buy a little cottage and
a patch of garden ground in the country, and there rose
up, for my comfort, a mental picture of the snug home
which should await him when he came from college—
which I would earn for my marriage dowry. I had
four years to do it in.
“During the next three years Harry's life was a
great deal harder than mine. I saw him only once in
a year, during the shortest vacations. In the others
he taught school. In term-time, besides keeping at the
head of his class, he toiled perseveringly in every possible
opening for his support. He was literally a hewer
of wood and a drawer of water. Every time I saw
him the change from his fresh youth startled me more
and more. But he laughed at my fears. He was only
tired, he said—a little overworked. When he was
through college he should get rested and be well again,
and I tried to believe him. At the end of the third
year he seemed more than ever weak and exhausted,
too severe. At that time we settled it that as soon
as he graduated we should be married, and he should
open a select school, which he had been encouraged to
think would succeed in our native village. I remember
when we parted, though we had been discussing
these things hopefully and cheerfully, there was a great
weight at my heart—a shadow of coming sorrow. He
looked so frail, so spiritual, with the gleaming light in
his eyes and the glow on his transparent forehead.
But I tried to cast aside my fears.
“I was in high health then myself. My three years
had been passed so quietly—my toil had been brightened
by such blessed hopes. From day to day and
week to week I had gone steadily on, laying up my
earnings, until now I had nearly four hundred dollars;
enough to purchase this little house and garden patch,
for the house was not new or fashionable even then,
and land was not so high in Ryefield as it is now. The
next year I should earn enough to furnish it simply
and humbly, in accordance with our modest wants.
“Harry's college life closed in July, and, by the
spring before, I had the little brown cottage all arranged
to my mind. I hired a neighbor to help me
make the garden. We set out gooseberry and currant
bushes; we transplanted roses and flower roots; and,
when all was done, it seemed the fairest of homes to
my love and my fancy. My needle flew very nimbly
in those days, for my heart was glad, and quickest
fingers could scarcely keep time to its joyous beatings.
Sundays I used to go to my little cottage—our home
that was to be—to watch the flowers springing up in
the garden, or stand at the door of the tiny parlor and
at the open window, and drawing in life and strength
from the outside summer of bird, and flower, and
breeze.
“Perhaps into those weeks of joyful anticipation
was compressed happiness enough for my lifetime.
Of Harry's truth I had never a single doubt. Well-meaning
persons suggested to me sometimes, in mistaken
kindness, that I must not depend on him too
much; that he was getting an education which would
place him far above me, and perhaps he might find
some one who would suit him better. Thank God,
these shafts fell powerless.
“Just about a week before I was expecting to see
him in Ryefield, a letter came to me in a strange hand.
I broke the seal with tremulous fingers. A mist swam
before my eyes, so that I could hardly read its contents.
With difficulty I comprehended the truth.
Harry was prepared to graduate with the highest honors
of his class, when, just one week before examination,
his strength had given way, and now he lay there,
feeble and helpless, praying for me to come to him
before he died. There were no railroads then, but I
reached him in twenty-four hours, traveling day and
night by stage.
“When I stood by his bedside I lost my self-command—though
I had resolved to be very brave—and
the tears rolled down my cheeks. I had not been prepared
to see him looking so pale and attenuated, so
much like a spirit. The soul in his eyes beamed
brighter than ever, but the bodily life seemed utterly
wasted away. He was dying of exhaustion.
“The next few hours were full, in the midst of our
I remember their every utterance, but no third person
can share them; they must die with me. We were
married the next morning. He objected at first. He
said he would not burden me with his weakness and
his suffering—that I should not take his hand to go
down with him into the night. Then I showed him
my heart, and he knew that all my life was in his love
—that it would be best for us both. We were married,
and I took my husband home. The doctor said
the change could not hurt him, and I had great hopes
that native air, and the tender care of one who loved
him so, would give back the strength to his failing
limbs.
“He was so weak and helpless that he depended on
me like a little child. He had never even asked where
I would take him. We were five days making the
journey, in an old-fashioned chaise which I had hired
for the purpose. The afternoon of the fifth day we
wound slowly up the hill toward the little cottage.
Harry's head lay upon my breast.
“`Look up,' I said, rousing him, `here is home.
That little house is yours and mine, love; I earned it
in these last four years for us to live in.'
“He said nothing, but he lifted up his head and
looked at it eagerly, with the color coming and going
very fast in his wan cheek. Then he sank back again,
closer, closer against my heart, and drew my hand silently
over his wet eyes. It needed no words to tell
me how fully my husband blessed me in that moment,
though words were not wanting afterward, of wonder
at my self-denial and perseverance—of praise and passionate
love.
“I supported him from the gate up to the house
door. I led him in, and made him rest on the lounge
in the comfortable parlor, and, seeing him there, despite
sickness and sorrow I was happy.
“That was the golden summer of my life. Harry
did not suffer much pain. He was not very sick, only
weak. He loved to sit, as I had fancied he would, at
the open window, drinking in the sights and sounds
of the beautiful nature outside. I was always near
him at my sewing. The neighbors were very kind.
They gave me all the work I could do, so that we
wanted for nothing which could help to make Harry
comfortable. I felt sure, all the while, that he would
recover. He was so cheerful, entering into all my
plans, and never saying any thing that could dishearten
me. He was my idol, but I did not think God
would take him from me.
“The summer passed away at last. The apples
grew ripe upon the trees, and the grape-vines hung
heavy with their purple clusters. But the bracing
winds brought no strength to my patient sufferer, and
when the leaves fell the light of his life went out. Oh,
I can not talk about it. I loved him too well to tell
you, calmly, how he died. My arms were round him.
His last kiss, his last prayer, his last blessing were for
his `true wife—Margery;' his last breath came faintly
against my clinging lips. Oh, I had not thought he
could have died and the life-blood still coursed through
my veins—I, who loved him so—who was one flesh
with him. But he has slept for forty years come next
28th of October in the village church-yard, and I am
here still.
“I have lived in this house ever since. I could not
brought me here to keep cold and hunger away from
my dwelling, and I asked nothing more. He was
gone, and with him earthly hope died, and all of life
was memory. Perhaps, I can not say, if I had loved
him less, God would not have taken him from me.
But the long grief is over now. You said once that
I was alone, but that word, which seemed so terrible
to you, has no sting for me. Other love could never
be to me in place of the dead, and I thank God calmly,
at every sunset, that I am one day nearer the time
when Harry Pierson shall dwell with me forever in a
mansion not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
I went away sorrowfully and in silence, for I recognized
in my own love no counterpart to this long-enduring
devotion, which time and poverty could not
chill, and death had only power to make immortal.
Mother Margery is dead long ago. I heard the bell
toll for her seventy-two years of life, but it sounded to
me like marriage chimes, for I knew she was old and
gray no longer, in heaven, and in the spring-time of
her immortal youth she was standing once more beside
the lover of her girlhood.
A stately mansion rises now on the hill which the
little brown cottage crowned in years gone by, but no
flowers in its well-kept garden are half so sweet as
Mother Margery's roses, and all that art and wealth
can do for its embellishment fades into insignificance
before the simple tale of that true woman's love.
| My third book | |