Kabanata Kabanata 25 · ROSES OF JOY

. ROSES OF JOY

ROSES OF JOY

The day before Rebecca started for the South with Miss Maxwell she was

in the library with Emma Jane and Huldah, consulting dictionaries and

encyclopaedias. As they were leaving they passed the locked cases

containing the library of fiction, open to the teachers and

townspeople, but forbidden to the students.

They looked longingly through the glass, getting some little comfort

from the titles of the volumes, as hungry children imbibe emotional

nourishment from the pies and tarts inside a confectioner's window.

Rebecca's eyes fell upon a new book in the corner, and she read the

name aloud with delight: "_The Rose of Joy_. Listen, girls; isn't that

lovely? _The Rose of Joy_. It looks beautiful, and it sounds beautiful.

What does it mean, I wonder?"

"I guess everybody has a different rose," said Huldah shrewdly. "I know

what mine would be, and I'm not ashamed to own it. I'd like a year in a

city, with just as much money as I wanted to spend, horses and splendid

clothes and amusements every minute of the day; and I'd like above

everything to live with people that wear low necks." (Poor Huldah never

took off her dress without bewailing the fact that her lot was cast in

Riverboro, where her pretty white shoulders could never be seen.)

"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma Jane remarked. "But

wouldn't that be pleasure more than joy? Oh, I've got an idea!"

"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah. "I thought it was a mouse."

"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma Jane,--"ideas, I mean;

this one shook me like a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, couldn't it be

success?"

"That's good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that success would be a joy,

but it doesn't seem to me like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it

could be love?"

"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It must be perfectly

elergant!" said Emma Jane. "But now you say it is love, I think that's

the best guess yet."

All day long the four words haunted and possessed Rebecca; she said

them over to herself continually. Even the prosaic Emma Jane was

affected by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't expect you to

believe it, but I have another idea,--that's two in one day; I had it

while I was putting cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be

helpfulness."

"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear little heart, you

darlingest, kind Emmie, taking such good care of your troublesome

Becky!"

"Don't dare to call yourself troublesome! You're--you're--you're my

rose of joy, that's what you are!" And the two girls hugged each other

affectionately.

In the middle of the night Rebecca touched Emma Jane on the shoulder

softly. "Are you very fast asleep, Emmie?" she whispered.

"Not so very," answered Emma Jane drowsily.

"I've thought of something new. If you sang or painted or wrote,--not a

little, but beautifully, you know,--wouldn't the doing of it, just as

much as you wanted, give you the rose of joy?"

"It might if it was a real talent," answered Emma Jane, "though I don't

like it so well as love. If you have another thought, Becky, keep it

till morning."

"I did have one more inspiration," said Rebecca when they were dressing

next morning, "but I didn't wake you. I wondered if the rose of joy

could be sacrifice? But I think sacrifice would be a lily, not a rose;

don't you?"

The journey southward, the first glimpse of the ocean, the strange new

scenes, the ease and delicious freedom, the intimacy with Miss Maxwell,

almost intoxicated Rebecca. In three days she was not only herself

again, she was another self, thrilling with delight, anticipation, and

realization. She had always had such eager hunger for knowledge, such

thirst for love, such passionate longing for the music, the beauty, the

poetry of existence! She had always been straining to make the outward

world conform to her inward dreams, and now life had grown all at once

rich and sweet, wide and full. She was using all her natural, God-given

outlets; and Emily Maxwell marveled daily at the inexhaustible way in

which the girl poured out and gathered in the treasures of thought and

experience that belonged to her. She was a lifegiver, altering the

whole scheme of any picture she made a part of, by contributing new

values. Have you never seen the dull blues and greens of a room

changed, transfigured by a burst of sunshine? That seemed to Miss

Maxwell the effect of Rebecca on the groups of people with whom they

now and then mingled; but they were commonly alone, reading to each

other and having quiet talks. The prize essay was very much on

Rebecca's mind. Secretly she thought she could never be happy unless

she won it. She cared nothing for the value of it, and in this case

almost nothing for the honor; she wanted to please Mr. Aladdin and

justify his belief in her.

"If I ever succeed in choosing a subject, I must ask if you think I can

write well on it; and then I suppose I must work in silence and secret,

never even reading the essay to you, nor talking about it."

Miss Maxwell and Rebecca were sitting by a little brook on a sunny

spring day. They had been in a stretch of wood by the sea since

breakfast, going every now and then for a bask on the warm white sand,

and returning to their shady solitude when tired of the sun's glare.

"The subject is very important," said Miss Maxwell, "but I do not dare

choose for you. Have you decided on anything yet?"

"No," Rebecca answered; "I plan a new essay every night. I've begun one

on What is Failure? and another on He and She. That would be a dialogue

between a boy and girl just as they were leaving school, and would tell

their ideals of life. Then do you remember you said to me one day,

'Follow your Saint'? I'd love to write about that. I didn't have a

single thought in Wareham, and now I have a new one every minute, so I

must try and write the essay here; think it out, at any rate, while I

am so happy and free and rested. Look at the pebbles in the bottom of

the pool, Miss Emily, so round and smooth and shining."

"Yes, but where did they get that beautiful polish, that satin skin,

that lovely shape, Rebecca? Not in the still pool lying on the sands.

It was never there that their angles were rubbed off and their rough

surfaces polished, but in the strife and warfare of running waters.

They have jostled against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks,

and now we look at them and call them beautiful."

"If Fate had not made somebody a teacher,

She might have been, oh! such a splendid preacher!"

rhymed Rebecca. "Oh! if I could only think and speak as you do!" she

sighed. "I am so afraid I shall never get education enough to make a

good writer."

"You could worry about plenty of other things to better advantage,"

said Miss Maxwell, a little scornfully. "Be afraid, for instance, that

you won't understand human nature; that you won't realize the beauty of

the outer world; that you may lack sympathy, and thus never be able to

read a heart; that your faculty of expression may not keep pace with

your ideas,--a thousand things, every one of them more important to the

writer than the knowledge that is found in books. AEsop was a Greek

slave who could not even write down his wonderful fables; yet all the

world reads them."

"I didn't know that," said Rebecca, with a half sob. "I didn't know

anything until I met you!"

"You will only have had a high school course, but the most famous

universities do not always succeed in making men and women. When I long

to go abroad and study, I always remember that there were three great

schools in Athens and two in Jerusalem, but the Teacher of all teachers

came out of Nazareth, a little village hidden away from the bigger,

busier world."

"Mr. Ladd says that you are almost wasted on Wareham," said Rebecca

thoughtfully.

"He is wrong; my talent is not a great one, but no talent is wholly

wasted unless its owner chooses to hide it in a napkin. Remember that

of your own gifts, Rebecca; they may not be praised of men, but they

may cheer, console, inspire, perhaps, when and where you least expect.

The brimming glass that overflows its own rim moistens the earth about

it."

"Did you ever hear of The Rose of Joy?" asked Rebecca, after a long

silence.

"Yes, of course; where did you see it?"

"On the outside of a book in the library."

"I saw it on the inside of a book in the library," smiled Miss Maxwell.

"It is from Emerson, but I'm afraid you haven't quite grown up to it,

Rebecca, and it is one of the things impossible to explain."

"Oh, try me, dear Miss Maxwell!" pleaded Rebecca. "Perhaps by thinking

hard I can guess a little bit what it means."

"'In the actual--this painful kingdom of time and chance--are Care,

Canker, and Sorrow; with thought, with the Ideal, is immortal

hilarity--the rose of Joy; round it all the Muses sing,'" quoted Miss

Maxwell.

Rebecca repeated it over and over again until she had learned it by

heart; then she said, "I don't want to be conceited, but I almost

believe I do understand it, Miss Maxwell. Not altogether, perhaps,

because it is puzzling and difficult; but a little, enough to go on

with. It's as if a splendid shape galloped past you on horseback; you

are so surprised and your eyes move so slowly you cannot half see it,

but you just catch a glimpse as it whisks by, and you know it is

beautiful. It's all settled. My essay is going to be called The Rose of

Joy. I've just decided. It hasn't any beginning, nor any middle, but

there will be a thrilling ending, something like this: let me see; joy,

boy, toy, ahoy, decoy, alloy:--

Then come what will of weal or woe

(Since all gold hath alloy),

Thou 'lt bloom unwithered in this heart,

My Rose of Joy!

Now I'm going to tuck you up in the shawl and give you the fir pillow,

and while you sleep I am going down on the shore and write a fairy

story for you. It's one of our 'supposing' kind; it flies far, far into

the future, and makes beautiful things happen that may never really all

come to pass; but some of them will,--you'll see! and then you'll take

out the little fairy story from your desk and remember Rebecca."

"I wonder why these young things always choose subjects that would tax

the powers of a great essayist!" thought Miss Maxwell, as she tried to

sleep. "Are they dazzled, captivated, taken possession of, by the

splendor of the theme, and do they fancy they can write up to it? Poor

little innocents, hitching their toy wagons to the stars! How pretty

this particular innocent looks under her new sunshade!"

Adam Ladd had been driving through Boston streets on a cold spring day

when nature and the fashion-mongers were holding out promises which

seemed far from performance. Suddenly his vision was assailed by the

sight of a rose-colored parasol gayly unfurled in a shop window,

signaling the passer-by and setting him to dream of summer sunshine. It

reminded Adam of a New England apple-tree in full bloom, the outer

covering of deep pink shining through the thin white lining, and a

fluffy, fringe-like edge of mingled rose and cream dropping over the

green handle. All at once he remembered one of Rebecca's early

confidences,--the little pink sunshade that had given her the only peep

into the gay world of fashion that her childhood had ever known; her

adoration of the flimsy bit of finery and its tragic and sacrificial

end. He entered the shop, bought the extravagant bauble, and expressed

it to Wareham at once, not a single doubt of its appropriateness

crossing the darkness of his masculine mind. He thought only of the joy

in Rebecca's eyes; of the poise of her head under the apple-blossom

canopy. It was a trifle embarrassing to return an hour later and buy a

blue parasol for Emma Jane Perkins, but it seemed increasingly

difficult, as the years went on, to remember her existence at all the

proper times and seasons.

This is Rebecca's fairy story, copied the next day and given to Emily

Maxwell just as she was going to her room for the night. She read it

with tears in her eyes and then sent it to Adam Ladd, thinking he had

earned a share in it, and that he deserved a glimpse of the girl's

budding imagination, as well as of her grateful young heart.

A FAIRY STORY

There was once a tired and rather poverty-stricken Princess who dwelt

in a cottage on the great highway between two cities. She was not as

unhappy as thousands of others; indeed, she had much to be grateful

for, but the life she lived and the work she did were full hard for one

who was fashioned slenderly.

Now the cottage stood by the edge of a great green forest where the

wind was always singing in the branches and the sunshine filtering

through the leaves.

And one day when the Princess was sitting by the wayside quite spent by

her labor in the fields, she saw a golden chariot rolling down the

King's Highway, and in it a person who could be none other than

somebody's Fairy Godmother on her way to the Court. The chariot halted

at her door, and though the Princess had read of such beneficent

personages, she never dreamed for an instant that one of them could

ever alight at her cottage.

"If you are tired, poor little Princess, why do you not go into the

cool green forest and rest?" asked the Fairy Godmother.

"Because I have no time," she answered. "I must go back to my plough."

"Is that your plough leaning by the tree, and is it not too heavy?"

"It is heavy," answered the Princess, "but I love to turn the hard

earth into soft furrows and know that I am making good soil wherein my

seeds may grow. When I feel the weight too much, I try to think of the

harvest."

The golden chariot passed on, and the two talked no more together that

day; nevertheless the King's messengers were busy, for they whispered

one word into the ear of the Fairy Godmother and another into the ear

of the Princess, though so faintly that neither of them realized that

the King had spoken.

The next morning a strong man knocked at the cottage door, and doffing

his hat to the Princess said: "A golden chariot passed me yesterday,

and one within it flung me a purse of ducats, saying: 'Go out into the

King's Highway and search until you find a cottage and a heavy plough

leaning against a tree near by. Enter and say to the Princess whom you

will find there: "I will guide the plough and you must go and rest, or

walk in the cool green forest; for this is the command of your Fairy

Godmother."'"

And the same thing happened every day, and every day the tired Princess

walked in the green wood. Many times she caught the glitter of the

chariot and ran into the Highway to give thanks to the Fairy Godmother;

but she was never fleet enough to reach the spot. She could only stand

with eager eyes and longing heart as the chariot passed by. Yet she

never failed to catch a smile, and sometimes a word or two floated back

to her, words that sounded like: "I would not be thanked. We are all

children of the same King, and I am only his messenger."

Now as the Princess walked daily in the green forest, hearing the wind

singing in the branches and seeing the sunlight filter through the

lattice-work of green leaves, there came unto her thoughts that had

lain asleep in the stifling air of the cottage and the weariness of

guiding the plough. And by and by she took a needle from her girdle and

pricked the thoughts on the leaves of the trees and sent them into the

air to float hither and thither. And it came to pass that people began

to pick them up, and holding them against the sun, to read what was

written on them, and this was because the simple little words on the

leaves were only, after all, a part of one of the King's messages, such

as the Fairy Godmother dropped continually from her golden chariot.

But the miracle of the story lies deeper than all this.

Whenever the Princess pricked the words upon the leaves she added a

thought of her Fairy Godmother, and folding it close within, sent the

leaf out on the breeze to float hither and thither and fall where it

would. And many other little Princesses felt the same impulse and did

the same thing. And as nothing is ever lost in the King's Dominion, so

these thoughts and wishes and hopes, being full of love and gratitude,

had no power to die, but took unto themselves other shapes and lived on

forever. They cannot be seen, our vision is too weak; nor heard, our

hearing is too dull; but they can sometimes be felt, and we know not

what force is stirring our hearts to nobler aims.

The end of the story is not come, but it may be that some day when the

Fairy Godmother has a message to deliver in person straight to the

King, he will say: "Your face I know; your voice, your thoughts, and

your heart. I have heard the rumble of your chariot wheels on the great

Highway, and I knew that you were on the King's business. Here in my

hand is a sheaf of messages from every quarter of my kingdom. They were

delivered by weary and footsore travelers, who said that they could

never have reached the gate in safety had it not been for your help and

inspiration. Read them, that you may know when and where and how you

sped the King's service."

And when the Fairy Godmother reads them, it may be that sweet odors

will rise from the pages, and half-forgotten memories will stir the

air; but in the gladness of the moment nothing will be half so lovely

as the voice of the King when he said: "Read, and know how you sped the

King's service."

Rebecca Rowena Randall