Читать книгу Marjorie's Canadian Winter -- A Story of the Northern Lights - Agnes Maule Machar - Страница 3

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Marjorie Fleming sat curled up in a large chair by the window of the dim fire-lighted room, looking out into the misty grayness of the rainy November evening, with wistful, watchful eyes that yet seemed scarcely to see what was before them.

The train that generally brought her father from the city was not quite due, but on this dull rainy day the dusk had fallen very early, and Marjorie, always a dreamer, loved to sit quiet in the “gloaming,” as her father used to call the twilight, and give full sway to the fancies and air-castles that haunted her brain. The fitful light of the low fire in the grate scarcely interfered with the view of the outer world, such as it was: of the evergreens, heavy with crystal raindrops, the bare boughs of the other trees, and, beyond that, the street-lights, faintly outlining the houses and gardens on the other side. Marjorie, as she sat there, with one hand on the head of her little terrier Robin, scarcely looked her age, which was thirteen—a delightful age for a little girl; full of opening possibilities of life, and thoughts, of which, only a year or two ago, she had scarcely dreamed; an age not yet shorn of the privileges of childhood, and yet beginning to taste of the privileges of “grown-up people;” for now her father and his friends would not mind occasionally taking her into their thoughtful talks, which, to her, seemed so delightful and so profound.

As Marjorie waited, absorbed in a reverie, her mind had been roaming amid the fair scenes of last summer’s holiday among the hills, with her father and her dear Aunt Millie; and latterly with the stranger who had appeared on the scene so unexpectedly to her, and had eventually carried off her beloved auntie to a Southern land of whose “orange and myrtle” Marjorie had been dreaming ever since. The bustle and novelty of a wedding in the house were very fresh in her mind, and she still felt the great blank left by the departure of the bride, whose loss to her father Marjorie had made such strong resolves to supply by her own devotion to his care and comfort. These resolves had been fulfilled as well, perhaps, as could be expected from a girl of thirteen, whose natural affinities were more with books and study than with housewifely cares; but their faithful maid Rebecca, trained so carefully by “Miss Millie,” regarded the somewhat superfluous efforts of her young mistress with something of the same good-humored disapprobation with which the experienced beaver is said to view the crude attempts of the young beginners at dam-building. So household cares had not weighed heavily on Marjorie yet, and the quiet life alone with her father had been much pleasanter and less lonely than she could have believed. For, though he was all day absent at the office in the city, Marjorie had her school and her books, and the walks in the bright October days with school friends. And then there were the long cosey evenings with her father, when Marjorie learned her lessons at his writing-table, while he sat over his books and papers; yet not too much absorbed for an occasional talk with Marjorie, over a difficult passage in her French or German, or an allusion in a book which she did not understand. Sometimes, too, he would read to her a manuscript poem or sketch, to see how she liked it; for Mr. Fleming was engaged in editorial work in connection with a New York periodical, and often brought manuscripts home from the office to examine at leisure. These were great treats to Marjorie. It seemed to her charming to hear a story or a poem fresh from the author’s hand, before it had even gone to the printer; and she looked with a curious feeling of reverence at the sheets covered with written characters, that seemed about to fly on invisible wings to all parts of the land. As for her father, Marjorie thought that there was no one in all the world so clever and so good; and his verdict she took as a finality on every possible subject. Only one person stood yet higher in her thought: and that was the dear mother who now seemed to her like a lovely angel vision, as she imagined her in fragile delicacy and gentle sweetness, and knew, too, how her father had mourned her, and how he revered her memory as that of one far better than himself. All that that memory had been to him Marjorie could as yet only very faintly appreciate, but she knew or divined enough to give a loving but profound veneration to the feeling with which she looked at the picture over the mantel-piece, or the still sweeter smaller one that stood on her father’s dressing-table. Marjorie had learned by heart Cowper’s beautiful lines to his mother’s picture, and she sometimes said them over softly to herself as she sat alone, looking at the picture by the firelight.

She was recalled now from the mazy labyrinth of rambling thoughts by Robin’s sharp little bark and whine, as an umbrella with a waterproof coat under it swiftly approached the gate and turned in. It was a race between the dog and Marjorie, which of them should be at the door first. Robin was, but had to wait till Marjorie opened the door for his wild rush upon his master, while she threw her arms about him, wet as he was, for the greeting kiss.

“Oh! how wet you are, father dear,” she exclaimed. “Such an evening!”

“Yes; it makes me glad to be back to home and you, Pet Marjorie,” he said, looking down at her with bright dark eyes very like her own, while she tugged away at the wet coat, in her eagerness to relieve him of it. He shivered slightly as he sat down in the easy-chair which Marjorie pulled in front of the fire, while she broke up the coal till the bright glow of the firelight filled the cosey apartment—half-study, half-sitting-room—where a small table was laid for a tete-a-tete dinner. Marjorie looked at him a little anxiously.

“Ah! now you’ve taken cold again,” she said.

“I’ve taken a slight chill,” he said, a little wearily. “It’s scarcely possible to help it in this weather—but we shall be all right when we’ve had our dinner, eh, Robin?” as the little dog, not meaning to be overlooked, jumped up and licked his hands.

“But you look so tired, papa,” said Marjorie again, using the pet name by which she did not usually call him.

“I’ve been out a good deal in the rain, and among saddening scenes, dear,” he said.

“Oh! why did you go out so much to-day?”

“I had made an appointment with an English friend to show him how some of our poor people live, and, Marjorie dear, it made me heart-sick to see the misery and wretchedness, the dingy, squalid, crowded rooms—the half-starved women and children. It makes me feel as if it were wrong to be so comfortable,” he added, looking round the room with its books and pictures. “And then, to pass those great luxurious mansions, where they don’t know what to do with their overflowing wealth, and where they waste on utter superfluities enough to feed all those poor starving babies. Ah! it’s pitiful. It makes me wonder whether this is a Christian country.”

Marjorie looked perplexed. “But don’t those rich people go to church?” she asked. “And, surely, if they knew people were starving, they would give them bread?”

“It’s a queer world, Pet Marjorie,” he said. “I suspect a good many of us are half-heathen yet.”

Marjorie said nothing, but looked more puzzled still. She had heard a great deal about the heathen in foreign countries, but how there should be heathen, or even half-heathen people in a city like New York, and especially among the rich and educated portion of it, was not so clear. No doubt they were not all as charitable as they should be—but how did that make them “half-heathen”? But she was accustomed to hear her father say a good many things that did not seem very clear at first, and she liked to try and think out their meaning for herself.

“I saw an angel to-day,” Mr. Fleming went on half-musingly, then, smiling at Marjorie’s surprised look, he added: “But I mustn’t begin to talk about it now, or we’ll keep dinner waiting, and I see Rebecca is bringing it in. I’ll tell you about it in our ‘holiday half-hour,’ by and by. It’ll be a conundrum till then.”

It was rather a “way” Mr. Fleming had, to mystify a little his “Pet Marjorie,” as he liked to call her, after the wonderful little girl who was such a pet of Sir Walter Scott, as Dr. John Brown has so prettily told us. And it had the effect of making her wonderfully interested in the explanation, when it was not possible for her to think this out for herself. And the “holiday half-hour” was the last half-hour before Marjorie’s bedtime, when Mr. Fleming was wont to make a break in his busy evening, and give himself up to a rambling talk with Marjorie on matters great or small, as the case might be. For this half-hour Marjorie used to save up all the problems and difficulties that came into her busy mind during the day; and then, too, he would read to her little things that he thought she would like—generally from his office papers. It was no wonder that she looked forward to it as the pleasantest bit of the day, and that it left happy and peaceful thoughts to go to sleep with.

They had their quiet dinner together, while the rather dignified and matronly Rebecca waited on both, with a kind of maternal care. Then the table was cleared and drawn nearer the fire, while Mr. Fleming sorted out on it his books and papers. Among them were two or three new books for review. Marjorie looked at the titles, and dipped into the contents a little, but finally decided that they “were not as nice as they looked.” Then, instead of producing grammars and exercise books as usual, she opened her little workbox, and unfolded, with an air of some importance, a large bundle of flannel.

“Nettie Lane and I were at the Dorcas Meeting to-day,” she explained, in reply to her father’s surprised and inquiring glance. “Nettie said I ought to take more interest in doing good to poor people, as Miss Chauncey always tells us we should. So she took me, because her mother is president, and she wants to ‘enlist the interest of all the little girls,’” quoted Marjorie with satisfaction to herself. “And I took this home to make up before Christmas Day.”

“All right, my child,” said her father, smiling. “Only try to do whatever you undertake. If it should turn out as my Christmas slippers did last Christmas, I’m afraid the poor people will have to wait a while, unless Rebecca takes pity on you.”

“O, papa! But then there was so much work on them, and you didn’t need them then—just exactly. And I’m sure they look very nice now,” she added, surveying with pride the slippered feet, adorned with two brown dogs’ heads, which rested on the fender, while her father looked through the evening papers.

“Yes, dear, they do, and I’m very proud of them,” he said, leaning over to stroke her soft dark hair with a loving hand; “all the more that I know you are no Penelope.”

“Oh! poor Penelope had nothing better to do,” said Marjorie. “I don’t suppose she had French or German to learn, or any new books to read.”

“Happy woman!” sighed Mr. Fleming. “Of making many books there is no end.” And he looked at the pile of books and MSS. he had just laid on the table.

“O, father! have you any stories to read to me to-night?” asked Marjorie.

“I’ll see by and by. I noticed one that I thought looked as if you would like it. It’s called ‘The Story of the Northern Lights.’ But now I’m going to work till our half-hour comes, and then I’ll give myself a rest—and you a reading.”

“Well, then, father dear, I think I’ll put my sewing away, and do my lessons for to-morrow. When you are ready to read I can work while I listen.”

Mr. Fleming smiled a little, but said nothing. The flannel was folded up with a rather suspicious alacrity, grammars and exercises were brought out, and perfect silence reigned, broken only by the turning of leaves or the scratching of pens; for Marjorie knew that when her father said he was going to work, he did not wish to be disturbed by any desultory remarks, and thus she had learned a lesson often difficult for women to learn—that there is “a time to keep silence.”

“Is your exercise very difficult to-night, Marjorie?” asked Mr. Fleming, after a long interval, during which he had occasionally noticed long pauses of Marjorie’s pen, with what seemed to be periods of deep abstraction in her task.

Marjorie colored deeply. “Oh! I haven’t begun my exercise yet. This is my translation,” she said.

“And do you find it so difficult to make out?”

“O, no! not difficult to translate; only I thought I would like to do it, you see it’s poetry, and so”—

“You wanted to translate it into verse?” he continued.

“Yes; I’ve got the first verse done.”

“Well, let me see how you’re getting on.”

He took the sheet of paper which Marjorie handed him with a mingling of pride and nervousness, and read aloud:

—“Know’st thou the land where the citron-trees grow,

Through the dark leaves the bright oranges glow;

A gentle breeze blows from the soft blue sky,

The mild myrtle is there, and the laurel high;

Say, dost thou know it?

There, oh there—

Let me go with thee, Oh, my beloved, there.”

“Well, it’s not a bad translation for a little girl to make, Pet Marjorie,” he said, kissing the flushed cheek. “But you know ‘there’s a time for everything.’ Your work just now is to learn German, not to play at translating it—half by guess. You should keep such things for your playtime—not waste your lesson time on them. I don’t in the least object to your trying what you can do in this way at proper times and seasons, but you know I don’t want you to get into a desultory way of working. It is a besetting sin of temperaments like yours—and mine,” he added with a sigh.

“Yours, father?” said Marjorie, in astonishment.

“Yes, dear; it has been very much in my way, and I want you to get the mastery of it earlier in life than I did. And it is what makes half our women so superficial.”

Marjorie did not clearly understand what this word “superficial” meant; but she knew it had a good deal of connection with grammatical accuracy and mistakes in her sums and exercises.

“Well, father dear,” she said resolutely, “I’ll try not to be ‘superficial’ and ‘desultory.’ And so I’ll just write it out in prose, and do my exercises.”

“Yes, only try to finish your poetical one another time, since you have begun it. Though you are rather young yet to try to translate Goethe. But I don’t wonder that Mignon’s song attracted you.”

The exercises were finished and put away, and the bundle of flannel ostentatiously taken out, before Mr. Fleming at last pushed away his papers, with a wearier look than was often to be seen on his expressive face.

“There! I won’t work any more to-night,” he said. “I don’t feel up to it. That cold damp air seems in my throat still—and those wretched places—I can’t call them homes”—

“But the angel?” asked Marjorie expectantly, settling herself on her favorite low chair, close to her father, with her work on her lap.

“Oh! the angel? well, perhaps most people wouldn’t have seen the angel, as I did. They might only have seen a pale young woman, in a rather worn gray gown, soothing a cross baby and two or three restless children, while the poor sick mother, to whom she was acting as sick nurse, was trying to get some rest and sleep. There wasn’t any golden hair, and I didn’t see any wings, so my angel wouldn’t have made much show in a picture. And she does coarse, plain sewing for a living—so she would hardly do for a poem either. Yes, Hood could put her into one. But if ever I saw the face of an angel on any mortal creature—and I have seen it before,” he said reverently, with a momentary pause, which Marjorie understood—“it was there, so calm, so sweet, so pure, so happy—in such contrast to the wretched surroundings. It put me in mind of words I learned long ago”—

“‘The light shineth in darkness.’”

“Is the angel very poor, then?” asked Marjorie.

“Poor? Yes, I suppose most people would call her poor. To me she seemed rich in things no gold could buy—the ‘peace that passeth understanding,’ the love that ‘seeketh not her own,’ the ‘faith that worketh by love.’”

“Was she taking care of the poor woman who was ill, then?” asked Marjorie.

“Yes. She earns her living by making coarse garments for a mere pittance. But she was giving up her time, and her money too, I suspect, to acting as an angel of mercy to this poor suffering woman and her family. O, Marjorie! how much more real heroines there often are in the poorest, humblest life, than any of your love-lorn heroines of romance. Some one says so truly:

“‘Few save the poor feel for the poor;

They little know how hard

It is to be of needful food

And needful rest debarred.’”

Marjorie’s eyes were wet with tears as the picture rose before her mind. Presently she said softly, putting her hand in her father’s: “I wish I could send the angel something, father dear. Couldn’t I put my gold half-eagle into an envelope, and you could address it to her, and she would never know where it came from?”

“But you were saving it up for”—

“Oh! never mind, papa dear. I’d so much rather give it to her.”

“I’m afraid it’s one of your romantic fancies, Pet Marjorie,” he replied, smiling down at her. “You must think it well over. It is best not to follow an impulse too hastily, lest you have to repent at leisure. Wait a little, and count the cost, and then, if you still wish it, you shall put it up and address it yourself.”

“And we’ll write inside the envelope, ‘The light shineth in darkness.’ Won’t that be nice?”

Mr. Fleming smiled as he bent down to kiss his little girl’s eager face. He thought it was like what her mother would have done, and the thought brought a suspicious moisture to his eye.

“But my angel won’t have the least idea of your meaning in making the quotation,” he said. “She hasn’t the least idea that she is doing anything angelic. She will think that it is the kindness of an unknown friend that is the ‘light shining in darkness.’” And then he commented inwardly: “Why don’t such kindnesses oftener occur to people who could do them so easily?”

“I don’t know that I should have thought of those words myself just then, if I had not been reading this little story before I went out. It is by a young author, I think, as I don’t know the name at all, and it sounds like a young writer. And it bears the motto: ‘Lux Lucet in Tenebris.’ You know enough Latin to translate that, don’t you?”

“Why, it’s on your little match-box, father dear. I learned it there long ago.”

“Well, now for the story,” he said, as he took up the manuscript.

THE STORY OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS.

The great King of Light sat in his palace, radiant with an intensity intolerable to any mortal eye. About him were gathered the various Light spirits who were to proceed on their life-giving mission, each one to her allotted task. There were the rich, warm sunbeams, who were to proceed in ordered files of myriads, each at her post, making the wintry air soft and balmy, sending the quickened sap through the budding boughs, waking the tiny blossoms from their winter sleep, drawing up the young blades of grain, swelling the ears day by day till they reached autumn ripeness, molding and coloring flowers and fruit, to gladden man’s heart, and make earth seem for the time a paradise. To them was given the glad task of sparkling in the crystal drops of dew, gleaming on the shining green leaves, sending showers of golden arrows into the shady recesses of the solemn pines, and glowing in the rich hues of dawn and sunset.

Next in beauty and brightness came the spirits of the silvery moonbeams, and they too received their appointed task. To them it was given to replace the departed glory of the sunbeams, by a softer and more restful luster, spreading a solemn and ethereal beauty over woodland and lea—shedding a broad, quivering stream of silver across the restless waves, guiding the navigator to his desired haven, and the belated traveler to home and rest. They too went to discharge their mission in ordered ranks, and made for the night a second glory, as beautiful, though not as bright, as the glory of the day.

At last there was left only one spirit who had not received her charge. She was the most subtle and ethereal of all the Light spirits, and unlike those of the sunbeams and moonbeams, her immediate parentage was veiled in mystery. Her light was not golden, like that of the sunbeams, nor silvery like that of the moonlight spirits, but of a pure, white, intense radiance, so pure that even its intensity was scarcely dazzling, but only luminous. But she was a shy and sensitive spirit, fond of sheltering herself in obscurity, and becoming invisible. She stood in the background, nearly hidden by a dark cloudy veil, till all the rest had received their commission, and departed to fulfill it. Then the king called her and said:

“For thee, too, my child, there is a mission, and the most precious mission of all. Thou art to be a light to shine in the darkness.”

Then he told her that she was to be sent to a remote region, dark and cold, where, for weeks and months the sun shines not, and where stern winter’s reign is almost unchecked. And there she was to carry her pure white radiance, to gleam brightly out from the blackness of the wintry sky, to lighten with her soft brilliancy the long, dark, moonless nights, to show to the traveler in his sledge the way over the trackless snow, and cheer the icy desolation with the hope of returning sunshine and warmth which should at last disperse the darkness, and cheer the dreary waste with light and life.

The timid spirit trembled at the task before her, and begged that she might have an easier, less solitary mission. But the king said:

“For thee, my purest and strongest child, I have reserved this noblest task—to go where light is most needed. Fear not, but depend on me for the power to fulfill thy mission. When thou feelest thyself weakest and most afraid, I will strengthen thee and make thee brightest. Not in thyself shall be thy light, but in constant communication with me.”

The spirit bowed her head and departed to the cold and dreary northern regions, where for months the sun never rises. And there she spread out her luminous banners and streamers of light, till the blackness of the winter night seemed to throb with pulsations of quivering brightness, seen amidst the darkness and the brighter for the contrast with it. And when the loneliness, and the power of the surrounding darkness which she could not entirely overcome threatened to overpower her, and her light trembled and grew faint, the promised power from the great king came to her aid. In the hour of weakness came her strength, and at such times her brilliancy fairly flashed and coruscated across the sky; and golden and rosy tints, that seemed borrowed from the dawn itself, flushed through the pure, pearly radiance of her unwearied light. And grateful men, watching the glory and beauty of this “light shining in darkness” have called her the Aurora Borealis—the rosy-fingered dawn of the Northern sky.

As Mr. Fleming laid down the paper, he looked at Marjorie, who sat lost in thought, her work lying neglected in her lap. “Well, Marjorie,” he said, “what do you think of the story?”

“It’s very pretty,” she replied. “But I don’t think I quite understand it. I suppose it’s a parable.”

“Yes; it has a very deep meaning, to my mind; but I could scarcely expect you to see all its meaning yet; or until you have thought and felt a great deal more than you have had time to do yet.”

“You said it made you think of the angel you saw to-day; or that she made you think of it, as she did of the ‘light that shineth in darkness.’”

“Yes; it’s a type of the Light that is always at present ‘shining in darkness’; of the light as it shines in our own hearts amid so much of surrounding darkness. It made me think of brave Gordon, shut up there in Khartoum, like a man holding up a solitary torch in that great gloomy desert; and of many a missionary light-bearer, at home and abroad, each carrying a lonely ray of light into the darkness about him; and, most of all, of Him who is still the ‘Light that shineth in darkness,’ and the darkness, even yet, comprehendeth it not. You don’t know yet half of what that means, Pet Marjorie, but you’ll know more of it by and by—especially if you should be a light-bearer yourself.”

Marjorie looked very grave. “I’m afraid, father dear, I would rather be one of the sunbeams. It must be so much nicer to shine where everything else is warm and bright and sunny too.”

“Yes, ever so much ‘nicer,’” he replied with a smile; “and there are a great many good people of your way of thinking. But it is hardly so useful or so noble, or so Christlike as it is to shine in the darkness, even though you may be uncomprehended or misunderstood. But now it is getting late, and I don’t intend to sit up much longer myself to-night, for I still feel that chill hanging about me. So we’ll read about that Light shining in darkness, and then say good-night.”

Mr. Fleming usually read aloud a few verses from the Bible before Marjorie and he parted for the night. This evening he read the first half of the first chapter of St John’s Gospel. Marjorie had often read it before, and knew it almost by heart. But she had never before attached any definite meaning to the words: “The Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” But to-night the image of the bright Aurora, shining amidst the darkness which still remained darkness, opposed and uncomprehending, seemed to throw a new light on the old familiar words. When she fell asleep, the same vision seemed to be floating through her brain. She dreamed that she was walking alone over a wide trackless waste of ice and snow, through a dark moonless night, not knowing whither she was going, or how to choose her path, when suddenly a shaft of pure white light shot up amidst the darkness. It grew and grew, until it seemed to wear the semblance of a great shining angel beckoning her onward. And presently, more lights appeared in the sky, till all the night about her seemed to be filled with an angelic host, and she heard sweet strains of music, such as she had often heard in church, bearing to her ear the old familiar words of the Christmas song: “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace and goodwill to men.”