The idiosyncrasies of Tom Saxon were not interesting just then to Morton Elwell. Kate heard him draw his breath hard before he said: “Of course he’s in love with her. He’s been seeing her all summer, and he couldn’t help being. And she”—he paused for an instant before he added bitterly: “I understand it now. It’s knowing him that made her so willing to stay.”
“Oh, no it isn’t, Mort; indeed it isn’t,” said Kate, bringing him to a standstill with a compelling pressure on his arm. “If you knew everything, you wouldn’t say that. It was Aunt Katharine that made her stay. Oh, if you knew Aunt Katharine! She’s a dreadfully strong-minded woman, and she’s taken a terrible fancy to Esther. She’d like to make her feel just as she does about woman’s rights, and never marrying, and all that sort of thing. She’s the one, not Mr. Hadley at all, that has such an influence over Esther.”
“Nonsense!” said Morton Elwell; and he said it with a sharpness that for an instant made Kate almost afraid of him.
There was silence for a minute as they moved down the path. Then, with the sharpness gone out of his voice and the bitterness overflowing it again, he said: “I don’t wonder at it. He’s rich and agreeable,—you wrote that yourself, Kate. He’s all that’s delightful and cultivated,—she says so in the letter. He has everything and—and time to be with her,” he added, with a groan. “She can’t help caring for him. I know it as if I were there to see.”
They had reached the great horse-chestnut tree by the gate, and the moonlight came down through the half-leafless branches on the girl’s face lifted to his. “Oh, it won’t be the way you think, Mort,” she whispered passionately. “Esther can’t care for Mr. Hadley. I’m sure, I’m sure she can’t!”
“Why can’t she?” he asked, and his face looked pale and stern.
She caught her breath with a sob. “Because—oh, Mort—because you’re so much nicer!” she said, with an utter abandon. And then her head dropped, and a splash of tears fell on his coat-sleeve.
He stooped suddenly and kissed her; then, without even a good night, strode off down the road.
It lay before him straight and empty in the moonlight; and he followed it past the turn that led to his uncle’s house, on and on, taking no note of distance. This fear which had come to him so suddenly—it seemed already not a possibility but a certainty, and it stalked at his side, keeping even step with his. He had no vanity to whisper that there were other attractions besides those which fortune had bestowed so lavishly on Mr. Philip Hadley. He had been too busy all his life, and such gifts as he had were too inherently part of his nature for him to turn an observant eye upon them and mark their value. He seemed to himself a homely, humdrum fellow beside this other who had stepped so lightly into Esther Northmore’s life. There was envy enough in his heart, Heaven knew; but it somehow withheld the thought that wealth was accidental, culture acquired,—poor things at best beside that inner something which makes the man. They were good gifts. He hoped to prove it for himself by and by, and that other something—How if Mr. Philip Hadley were rich in that, too?
But was it fair, was it fair that he, to whom only a summer pleasuring had brought acquaintance with Esther Northmore, should steal her away from one who had loved her so long? His heart ran swiftly over the past, and a lump rose in his throat as memory brought back those early days. She was five years old, he seven, when he came to his uncle’s house, a lonesome, homesick boy. He remembered how she came across the fields with her mother, on that first afternoon, in her little red shoes and white apron, a dainty figure, with gentle ways and soft, loving eyes. He remembered how she had slid her hand into his and whispered she was sorry his mother was dead. And then they had played together, he drawing her about in his little cart; and before he knew it the long day was ending and a sense of being at home had stolen into his heart. That was the beginning, and what friends they had been through the childish years that followed! He remembered how he bought her a carnelian ring once at the county fair. The ring had broken next day, and she had wept scalding tears. Alas, there was no dime left to buy another, but he had promised that she should have a gold one sometime, with a shining stone at the top, and she had been comforted with this, and promised to wait.
Ah, one could not bear such memories as this. He thrust it down and swallowed fiercely at the lump in his throat, which seemed his heart itself swollen to bursting. But other pictures came: the growing girl, so willing to take his help, so quick to give her own, so proud of all his successes. They had gone through the district school side by side, he only a class ahead, though older, for his chance to begin had come later than hers. How many times he had worked her problems for her, how often he had gone over his boyish debates and speeches with her for listener, on the way to school, or in her father’s orchard when his chores were done, sure that he had made his pleading well when the tears sprang into her eyes, and the quick responsive color flushed and paled in her cheeks! What would any work he could do, or any triumph he could ever win, be worth to him if she had ceased to care?
There had been a difference in her,—he had marked it uneasily, slow as he was in the steadfast loyalty of his own thoughts to guess at change in hers,—but he had said to himself it was because they had been apart too much, she at boarding school, he at college. It would all be as it had been when they could see each other again in the old way. That they belonged to each other was a thing he had held so simply and of course that the fear of losing her had never till now really entered his heart.
And then, with a passionate protest, he felt himself writing to her, telling her of his love and calling her back; but swift chilling doubts overtook the impulse. If she had forgotten, slipped away from all this of the past, could any word of his, across the cruel distance, call her back? He had no art with his pen, and what would the poor meagre page be worth beside the living presence of this new, delightful friend?
The bitterness gathered like a flood in his heart, and all its waves and billows went over him. He knew nothing of the beauty of the night nor the way he was taking. He had no sense of outward things, when his name was called suddenly behind him.
“Mort Elwell! Well, upon my word! I thought ’twas you, and then I thought it couldn’t be. When did I ever catch up with you before, on a straight road, with you well in the start?”
The young man turned at the voice, and for a moment stared blankly at the speaker. It was the New Light preacher, his friend of many years, his comrade in the labors of the early summer. The long loose figure bent eagerly toward him, and the sallow face shone in the flooding moonlight. It was impossible, at any pass of melancholy, not to find a moment’s pleasure in so warm a greeting.
“I declare I didn’t hear you coming up,” said the young man. “I was taking my time to it, and wasn’t looking for company.”
“No, I reckon not,” said the preacher, smiling. “It’s toler’ble late, if you happen to know it, and you’re a little out of your own bailiwick, aren’t you?”
“Over in yours?” said Morton, noting for the first time how far he had gone. “Well, it’s rather late for you too, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the preacher; “but I’ve been over at old man Towner’s. He’s having one of his bad spells, and this time he won’t pull through. I reckon he’ll be done with living here in a few days more.”
“Well, it’s something to be through with,” said the young man. He had spoken more to fill the pause than for anything else, but there was a dreary note in his voice which fell strangely on the ear of the other.
“You, Mort!” he exclaimed, and his eyes searched the face of his companion for a moment curiously. It looked tired and worn. “Just through your work?” he asked. “When did you get in?”
“Finished my job yesterday,” said Morton, “and am here just long enough to pick up my things. Shall go to-morrow morning.”
“And start in for another stiff year’s work,” said the preacher. “Well, Mort, you’ve made a summer of it. I hope things’ll ease up for you sometime, and they will, they will.”
The young man lifted his head with an impatient movement. “I wish people wouldn’t pity me for having to work,” he said. “I don’t care how hard I work. It’s the easiest thing there is.”
Some fine wrinkles had gathered in the preacher’s forehead. “Yes,” he said, with his eyes still on Morton’s face. “It’s a good deal easier than wanting work and not getting it, for instance. Plenty of folks could tell you that.”
There was a touch of contempt mingled now with the impatience in Morton’s voice. “I never was a bit afraid but I could get all the work I wanted,” he said. “Give me my head and hands, and I’ll take care of that.”
“And not be so proud of yourself for doing it maybe, when you get to my age,” said the preacher. Then dropping into his bit of a drawl, he added: “But there are things that ain’t so easy to come by, eh, Mort? It’s a fact, man. But ‘Faint-heart never won fair lady,’ nor anything else worth having.”
A flush rose in Morton’s face and he sent a quick look at the preacher. The shrewd gray eyes were looking at him kindly.
“And Stout-heart doesn’t win them either, sometimes,” he said bitterly.
“Oh, it’s chance, it’s chance, the way things happen!”
The preacher laid his hand on the young fellow’s shoulder. “No, Mort,” he said with a peculiar gentleness in his voice, “Stout-heart doesn’t win them always. We fail of them sometimes with all our trying. God knows how I’ve wanted some things I’ve missed. But there’s one thing we needn’t miss,—the Lord himself stands to that,—courage to meet what comes, strength to go without, if we must, and not be broken by it.”
The young man stopped in his walk and faced the other. “Strength!” he cried, almost fiercely. “To do without the things that make everything else worth having! Where is one to get it? You could hunt for work—I’d take my chances on finding that—but this!”
He set his teeth hard, and the preacher felt the strong young figure grow tense under his hand. He drew himself up, and his eyes held the boy’s with a compelling earnestness.
“Where are you to get it, Mort?” he said solemnly. “From the One that gave you what strength you’ve got. Do you think He bankrupted Himself giving you and me the little sense, the little power that’s in us? I tell you there’s more; there’s enough for every soul of us. Cry to Him for it. Open your eyes and open your heart. It’s here, it’s there, it’s all around us. And it’s ours for the having.”
He stretched out his arms as he spoke with a wide reverent gesture, and his plain awkward face looked noble as he lifted it toward the sky.
They stood together for a long still minute without speaking. He had broken in upon an hour of solitary wrestling; the older man knew it, and he shrank back now from his intrusion. Suddenly he turned away. “It’s a little shorter for me across the fields, Mort, and I’ll leave you here,” he said. “Good night, and God bless you.”
It was past midnight when Morton Elwell opened the door of his uncle’s house. A light was burning in the sitting room; and his aunt rose as he entered, dropping from her lap the work with which she had been filling the time while she waited.
“What, were you sitting up for me, Aunt Jenny?” he said, as she met him.
“It’s a long time since I had a chance to sit up for you, Mort,” she said tenderly. And then she added, with a gentle reproach in her voice, “Don’t you think you ought to be taking a little more rest to-night, when you start so early to-morrow?”
“I’m going to bed right now,” he said. Then he put his arm around her neck in the old affectionate way, as he added, “A fellow has a deal to be thankful for that’s had such an auntie as you are to take care of him all these years.”
And with that manly word, and a little quiver at his lips, he mounted the stairs to his own room.
Meanwhile autumn was gliding away at the old farm. It was worth Esther Northmore’s while, as Aunt Katharine had suggested, to have seen October in her mother’s country. Even Old Timers, used to the glory that wrapped its hills in the shortening days, doubted gravely whether they had ever known a fall when the woods wore such gorgeous coloring as now, or kept their royal robes so long. All the world seemed flaming in crimson and gold, with fringes of purple at the roadsides, and Esther, walking joyously in the midst, felt her pulses beating to a rhythm she had never caught before in the swinging of the round old world. Her grandfather was no poet; but he liked to see the girl come in with her face glowing and her hands full of leaves, which always seemed to her more beautiful than any she had ever found before. Sometimes he was moved to remind her that this, too, was “vanity,” one of earth’s passing shows, but she protested against this, and told him it would never pass for her. She should keep it as long as she had life and memory.
Very often in these shining days came Mr. Philip Hadley; once to urge that pleasant invitation, then to make sure that his friends had returned from the trip in safety; once to bring her a book she had wanted, and at last to say good-by to Ruel Saxon. The Hadleys were about to leave their summer home. With the approach of November it was time to be back in the city. There had been an eager look in his eyes as he added, turning to Esther, “You will be going about the same time.” And he had kept her hand longer than usual at the door as he said, “It has been delightful to see you in this lovely old home, but we shall see each other much oftener in Boston, I hope. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are going to be there.”
“‘IT HAS BEEN DELIGHTFUL TO SEE YOU IN THIS LOVELY OLD HOME.’”
She had dropped her eyes, that easy color rising in her face as he spoke, and then he had said, “Good-by for a little while,” with a very earnest pressure of the hand in his, and ridden away.
It was late when he left, but she slipped out of the house immediately for a walk, and for once there were no leaves in her hand when she came back. “It looked like rain,” she said, when Tom remarked that she had stopped short of her favorite woods.
It did not look so much like rain but that Ruel Saxon went as usual to the prayer-meeting that night, and of course Esther went with him. It was one of the standing engagements for every week. Perhaps the girl could have spared it sometimes—there were few young people there—but she never declined to accompany her grandfather. As for him, it was a place he loved; a spot in which his own gifts shone conspicuous, and in which it must be confessed he sometimes appropriated more than his fair share of the time. Why Christian people did not all and always go to prayer-meeting was one of the things he could not understand, and it really seemed to him a surprising omission that there was not an explicit command in the Bible laying the duty upon them. However, he consoled himself with the admonition “not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is,” to which favorite quotation he frequently added that he should not forsake the assembling of himself together as long as he was able to be there.
There really was some doubt in Aunt Elsie’s mind to-night as to the last point. The old gentleman seemed to have all the premonitory symptoms of a cold, but he would have scorned to stay at home for a trifle of that sort, and started in good time on the long ride to the village. He bore his part in the meeting with unusual unction, and a number of the brothers and sisters took his hand at the close to thank him impressively for his beautiful remarks. It was a form of flattery which he dearly loved.
Then, as he jogged home behind Dobbin with Esther, he fell to talking, in reminiscent mood, of his own long services in the church, and this, making all due allowance for that cheerful vanity, which he had never been at pains to conceal, was a subject on which Ruel Saxon, if any man, had some right to grow eloquent. Ministers might come and ministers might go, but, as deacon of the church in Esterly, he had gone on, if not forever, at least so long that few could remember when he had not held and magnified the office. He had sat on councils to receive and dismiss, he had contended for the faith, he had poured oil on troubled waters; in short, in all the offices of peace and war, he had stood at his post, and none could name the day when he had shirked its duties.
“I’ve seen some strange doings in my time,” he said, after one of his pauses, “and I tell you there’s as much human nature among church members as there is among outsiders. Sometimes I’ve thought ’twas because they needed grace worse than most folks that the Lord elected some of ’em. I’ve been called on to settle quarrels among professors that would astonish you; and I’ve had a hand in their love affairs too, once or twice, when they got things so tangled up that they couldn’t straighten ’em out for themselves,” he added with a little chuckle.
“Love affairs!” repeated Esther, catching at the chance of a story. “Why, how was that? Do tell me one of them, grandfather.”
He clucked to Dobbin, drew his hand across his face in the meditative way that suggested a stroking of memory, and began slowly:—
“I guess the queerest one I ever had anything to do with, and the one that bothered me most in my own mind, was that affair between Jotham Radley and those two girls. You see they were both bound to have him; and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to settle on which one it should be.”
“They were bound to have him?” ejaculated Esther. She had heard of two lovers to one lady, but this sort of a case was new in her acquaintance.
“Well, I don’t know as I or’ to say they were,” said the old gentleman, correcting himself. “It was Huldy’s mother on one side, and ’twas Polly herself on the other. You see, Jotham had been keeping company a good while with Huldy, and folks gener’ly thought ’twas a match between them, but he got to carrying on with Polly Green ’bout the time he was building her father’s barn. I always thought she must have led him on. He was a wonderful easy man to be pulled round by women folks, and Polly was a smart girl, there’s no denying that.
“Well, it began to be common talk that they were engaged, and then Huldy’s folks spoke out and said ’twas no such thing; it was all settled between him and Huldy long ago, and her mother showed the linen she’d spun and the bed quilts she’d pieced for housekeeping. It got to be a good deal of a scandal, for Jotham was clerk of the church, and some folks, specially the women, thought it or’ to be stopped. So we deacons talked it over together, and then two of us went to see Jotham and asked him how it was about it. He didn’t say much, one way or t’other—acted sort o’ queer ’n’ shame-faced; but he agreed the talk or’ to be stopped, and said he’d have it settled in a week.
“I guess he found it harder to settle than he counted on, for Polly was a dreadful spirited girl, and Huldy’s mother was the kind that couldn’t be put off. Anyhow, instead of easing up, the talk kept getting louder, and Jotham didn’t show his face in the meeting-house for two Sundays. Well, the deacons felt that he was trifling with ’em, and that time we went in a body to deal with him.
“Deacon Simms did the bulk of the talking, and he told Jotham pretty straight what he thought about a man’s whiffling round between two girls as he did, and then he told him if he couldn’t settle the business for himself the church would have to settle it for him. At that Jotham spoke out like a man distracted, and said he wished to goodness we would. I asked him if he’d abide by our decision, and he said he’d abide by anything the girls would.
“I must say I didn’t much like the business, but we went the next day to see the girls. Polly cried, and took on, and according to her account Jotham had certainly said some wonderful pointed things for a man that didn’t know his own mind. As for Huldy, she looked sick and scared, and ’twas much as we could do to get a word out of her. Her mother was ready enough to talk, but Jotham warn’t engaged to her anyhow, and I stood to it that we couldn’t settle the thing by the way she looked at it. I always suspicioned that if Huldy’d spoke up and freed her mind, she might have made out the best case, but she wouldn’t do it.
“Seemed as if she didn’t want to commit him, and the other deacons thought ’twas a clear case he ought to marry Polly. It sort of ’peared to me that it or’ to be Huldy, but of course I couldn’t prove it, and anyway ’twas three to one. So I gave in to the rest, and to settle all the talk, we had Jotham and Polly published in church the next Sunday. They did say Jotham turned dreadful white when they told him how we’d settled it, but he married Polly at the set time, and as far as I know they always got along well together.”
“What become of Huldah?” queried Esther.
“Huldy?” said the deacon, reflecting. “Well, she stayed single till she must have been upward of thirty; then she married a widower, and everybody said ’twas a good match.”
There was silence for some time, then Esther said, with her eyes on the sky, over which the clouds were shifting uneasily, “Grandfather, do you think a person could have any doubt in his own mind as to which one of two people he cared for most, if—if he was really in love with either of them?”
“I ain’t sure but he might,” said the deacon, slowly. “It takes a good while to get acquainted with folks, and I don’t know but it’s about as hard sometimes to know your own mind, as ’tis to know anybody else’s—even if ’tis inside of you.” And then he added briskly, “But it stan’s to reason that a man or’ to have a care how far he goes before he gets things cleared up.”
She seemed not to hear the last remark. “But if you had known a person for a long, long time,” she said insistently, “there couldn’t be any doubt then, could there?”
Again, like the wise man he was, the deacon answered slowly, “Well, a body or’ to get his mind made up in a reasonable length of time,” he said. “There was Nathan Weyler went to see Patty Foster every Saturday night for thirty years before he asked her to marry him. I should call that slow! But there is such a thing as seeing so much of folks—being so close to ’em, you know—that you don’t really get as good a sight at ’em as you would if they were farther off. It’s getting your attention drawn somewhere else, and seeing what’s in other folks sometimes, that wakes you up to what there is in those you thought you knew best.”
Esther, whose eyes had been fixed on her grandfather’s face intently during this reply, looked suddenly back at the sky. She had thought there were no stars to-night, but she was aware, all at once, that there were four or five shining straight before her. Had they all come out in the last moment, or was it an illustration of what he had just been saying?
Her voice shook a little, and she did not look at her grandfather as she asked her next question. “But if it came to you that there was more in somebody than you had realized—if you saw more to admire than you ever did before—that wouldn’t be enough, would it? I mean, it wouldn’t be right to marry for anything but love, would it?” She broke suddenly off, then began again with a nervous, half-incoherent swiftness. “That man, for instance, that you were telling me about, and Huldah. If he had just felt sorry for her, and it kept coming to him all the time that he hated to leave her, because—because he had known her so long, and he knew it would be hard for her, and she was so good and true—all that wouldn’t be enough to make him marry her, would it?”
Strange that she should be so deeply stirred over that old story of so long ago! Her hands trembled so much that she had to press them together to hold them still when she had finished.
He was a keen-witted man, Ruel Saxon. Perhaps it may have crossed his mind at that moment that he was being called once more, at this late hour of his life, to lend a hand in straightening out some tangled skein of love, but if so he did not reveal it.
“No,” he said distinctly, “no; there’s nothing else but love will do. It’s all that’s strong enough to last, and it’s a long, long thing, giving your promise to marry.”
And then that shrewd reflective note crept into his voice again as he added: “But if it kept coming to a body the way you speak of, to be thinking of somebody else all the time, and be sorry for them, and all that, I should be a little mite doubtful if there wasn’t something after all besides pity at the bottom of it. A body wouldn’t keep on so very long being sorry for one person, if he was right down in love with another. He’d forget about that one before he knew it. It’s like Aaron’s rod, you see. Some things get swallowed up terrible quick when the one that’s bigger and more alive stretches itself out among ’em.”
She did not ask any more questions. She kept her eyes on the stars for a long time after that. And her grandfather spoke to Dobbin presently in a tone of impatience. “Get up; get up; it’s time we were home long ago.”
It was certainly later than usual when they drew up at the door. Aunt Elsie opened it, looking out rather anxiously when the wheels of the carriage stopped. “I guess we’ve been a little longer than common on the way, we’ve had so much to talk about,” said the old gentleman, cheerfully. Then, as he got down from the carriage, and left it in the hands of Tom, who stood ready with the lantern, he added, stretching himself, “I declare, I feel sort o’ chilly and stiff in the joints. Mebbe I’d better have a little sup of something warm before I get into bed.”
Esther had thought that would be the last time of going to prayer-meeting with her grandfather, and so it proved, but not because she had taken her flight before the next Wednesday evening came. Perhaps it was a cold settling upon him with the raw gray weather which November ushered in, but he was feverish next morning, and kept the house, complaining of draughts which no one else felt, and a little querulous, as he was apt to be when anything ailed that outer man in whose general soundness he took such pride.
For three days he sat by the fire, swallowing boneset tea in quantities and of a degree of bitterness which filled the household, especially Esther, with admiration; but he sternly rejected Aunt Elsie’s suggestion that he should send for a physician, being in practice disposed to the opinion that a man had no use for a doctor until he had reached the point where the chances were against a doctor or any one else being able to help him. He was in something of a strait, however, when Sunday came and he was clearly unable to attend church. To admit the gravity of his case by sending for a medical man was one thing, but to absent himself from the house of God, unless such state of gravity existed, was another; and between the two horns of the dilemma he tossed painfully all the morning. In the end Aunt Elsie settled it, and she was quite willing that he should take what grumbling comfort he could in representing himself as a martyr to feminine insistence when the doctor appeared.
Evidently the latter did not think he had been called too soon. He sent his patient promptly to bed, and now, having advertised himself as sick, the old gentleman obeyed orders with the meekness of a lamb. It would be only a few days, of course; but while it lasted he meant to make the most of his case, and take his full dues in the way of sympathy and attention.
That the minister would come promptly was certain, and there would be opportunity for testing the fidelity of his brother deacons to the duty of visiting the sick and afflicted. Undoubtedly there would be prayers sent up in his behalf from the pulpit and at the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, and—let us not judge the good man too severely! his own gift in prayer was of no common order—he really hoped the petitions would be well expressed. As for his own family, it went without saying that they would wait upon him with unfailing attention, while he lay, as he plaintively expressed it, on his “bed of pain and languishment”; and feminine attentions were dear to the soul of Ruel Saxon.
He did not have to suggest to Esther that she should delay her departure for Boston. Indeed, it is possible that he forgot her plans altogether, and she remembered them herself only to say quietly to Aunt Elsie, “I shall stay, of course, till he is better. I couldn’t think of leaving him now, and perhaps I can be some help to you in taking care of him.”
Aunt Elsie was not an effusive woman, but the tone in which she said, “It’ll be a real comfort to have you here,” made the girl look happy. She meant to slip across the fields later in the day and tell Aunt Katharine that her going had been postponed, but her grandfather grew restless as the day wore on, and seemed to feel neglected if some one were not constantly at his side.
“I really think Aunt Katharine ought to know it,” she said at supper, and Tom, who was sitting at the table, responded promptly, “I’ll go and tell her, if you want me to.”
“Will you?” she said eagerly. “Thank you, Tom. Tell her I’ll come down and see her myself as soon as grandfather gets a little better.”
“And don’t let her feel too much worried about him,” cautioned his mother. “He isn’t any worse than he was last week, only he’s in bed, and that makes him seem worse.”
“All right,” said Tom, “I’ll go as soon as I’m through milking.”
Esther thanked him again, though in her heart she would rather he had proposed to spend an hour in his grandfather’s room. It was several days since she had seen Aunt Katharine, and she would have liked a little chat in the pleasant living-room, where that big wood stove had been set up, and the windows were growing gay with old-fashioned chrysanthemums. They were the only flowers she ever kept in her windows, and she excused her partiality for these on a whimsical plea of pity.
“They count on being taken in,” she said one day, when Esther came upon her in the garden potting them for the winter. “They know they can’t do half their blossoming outdoors at this time o’ year, but that’s the way they time it every season. Look at those buds, thick as spatter, and they won’t half of ’em have a chance to show their color unless somebody goes to the trouble of taking ’em in and doing for ’em. I hate to see things go so far and then make a fizzle of it.” And she had pressed the earth about their roots in the big stone jars with a carefulness of touch and a look of exasperated patience which the girl had enjoyed immensely.
The friendship which to others seemed so odd seemed to her now the most natural thing in the world, and more and more she valued it. Once, in the soreness of that clash with Kate, she had poured out her heart to her mother. Perhaps Kate had done so too in the days that followed her return; but the reply which Mrs. Northmore made had cleared the atmosphere for Esther, at least, and left the intimacy free and untroubled.
“My dear child,” she wrote, “I am sure you will not believe that I share your sister’s uneasiness over your friendship with Aunt Katharine. The questions over which she has brooded so long are real and vital, and I am not sorry that you should come to know them through knowing one who holds her views upon them with such deep and unselfish earnestness as your Aunt Katharine. A braver or truer heart than hers I have never known. But it must have occurred to you—if not, it surely will later—that she sees only one side of some of the great facts of our woman’s life. The reformer who sees only one side of any question is needed, no doubt, to startle others into recognition of facts they would otherwise miss, but in the end the reform must depend on those who see both sides, and see them with steady fairness. If your life shall be as happy as I hope it may be, I cannot think you will permanently hold some of Aunt Katharine’s opinions; but meanwhile I would not have you shut your heart to her or her word. Oh, believe me, my dear, there is no eye-opener in the world like love.”
The old woman was drawing the shades behind the chrysanthemums in the windows when Tom came to her house in the dusk of that evening. He had expected to deliver his message at the door, but she insisted on his coming in and rendering it with careful detail. Certainly he did not err on the side against which his mother had cautioned him. Indeed, if the old gentleman had heard his grandson’s statement of his case he would probably have felt a strong inclination to get out of bed and go to his sister’s at once for the express purpose of telling her that he was much worse than the boy had represented.
Tom was not inclined to anxieties, and a certain inquisitorial attitude which his grandfather had maintained during the past few days as to his own work at the barn, and the amount of care which Dobbin was receiving, had left the impression on his mind that his grandfather was not suffering as much as he might be.
He revealed this to some extent as he answered Aunt Katharine’s questions, and she, after putting them sharply for a few minutes, settled back in her chair with an air of evident relief. She was not surprised to learn that Esther had put off her going to Boston. “I should know she’d do it,” she said, nodding, and she added, with a peculiar smile, “I s’pose your grandfather hated dreadful bad to disappoint her.”
Tom disclaimed any knowledge on this head, and then remarked acutely, “He’ll keep her busy enough while she stays. He doesn’t seem to want her out of his sight a minute.”
“Hm,” said Miss Saxon. “I’ll warrant he’d keep ’em all busy if they were there.” And then she remarked casually, “It must seem sort of quiet at your house compared with what ’twas this summer.”
“Kate was the liveliest one,” said Tom, and he said it with such a tone of regret that his aunt looked at him keenly.
“You liked her, did you?” she asked.
Perhaps his secret knowledge of that interview in which she had worsted Kate, and an impression that she had a special grudge against the girl, inclined him to the unusual emphasis with which he answered the question.
“I never saw a girl I liked so well in my life,” he said. “She’s made of the right sort of stuff, and she’s game clear through.”
“Hm,” grunted Miss Saxon again, beginning to look very much interested. “I understand you ’n’ she did a sight of quarrelling. She generally got ahead of you, didn’t she?”
“No marm, she didn’t,” said Tom, promptly. “I generally got ahead of her, only she’d never own it.”
Aunt Katharine laughed. If anything could please her more than to have a girl get the best of a controversy it was to know that she had kept on after getting the worst. She had always approved the spirit of those old Britons, of whom Cæsar complained that they never knew when they were beaten.
“What do you mean by saying she’s made of the right sort of stuff?” she asked suddenly.
“Why, I mean,” said Tom, hesitating a little,—he was not analytical in his turn of mind,—“I mean she’s plucky, and she’s out-and-out about everything. I’d trust her as quick as I would a boy.”
“As quick as you would a boy!” repeated Aunt Katharine, bristling; “what do you mean by that, I’d like to know.”
Tom had not come for a controversy with Aunt Katharine, and she really looked a little dangerous at that moment. But he remembered suddenly that word of Kate’s, that the old woman’s manner didn’t “faze” her, after the first, and he determined, as far as in him lay, not to be fazed either.
“Why, I didn’t mean anything bad,” he said, drawing a little nearer the edge of his chair, “but there’s a difference, you know. At least you would know if you were a boy. Most girls are sort of sly when they want to get anything out of you, and they do things they wouldn’t think were fair for you to do. But she wasn’t that way. She always let you know what she was up to, and when it came to fighting she struck right out from the shoulder. But I wasn’t blaming the rest of ’em. I guess it’s all right, being girls,” he added, rising and beginning to move toward the door.
Aunt Katharine rose too, and brought her cane down on the floor with a sharp thud. “That’s it!” she said, fiercely. “Boys ’n’ men, you’re all alike, and you’ve got the notion already. You act as if we women folks were weaker creatures than you are. You make us think we are; and then you look for all the tricks that weaker creatures use when they defend themselves. It serves you right if we do use ’em. But it’s a lie all the same, for both of us.”
She drew her lips hard, then, as she saw his hand on the knob of the door, she said, “Tell your grandfather I’ll be up to see him to-morrow.”
She did not keep the promise. The rain, which had been threatening for days, falling now and then in drizzling showers, then stopping again, as if, though still in sullen mood, some vacillating purpose held it, settled down at last for steady work. There was a week of leaden days, with the rain beating out all that was left of the color in the woods, and changing the world into one brown monotony which melancholy seemed to have marked for her own.
And through it all, at the old house, Ruel Saxon kept his bed, and as the days went on grew no better. There was not much pain: a little fever, a growing drowsiness, a failing appetite, a little swelling of the limbs. Even the doctor seemed not to know what it was that had crept so suddenly upon the active frame, but he looked graver with every visit. Once, as he added another vial to the little row on the stand by the bed, he mentioned a name which the sick man, opening his eyes a little wider, repeated, adding, “That was what ailed my grandfather;” and then he closed his eyes without sign of uneasiness. Perhaps he remembered how much stronger in all its seeming powers was this body of his than that worn-out form from which the spirit of the grandfather stole away at last.
But a change came over him in these days. He lost the querulous tone of inquiry about things at the barn. He seemed to have forgotten that suspicion of his that Tom was liable to let Dobbin’s manger go empty. Once he said to the boy instead, “It’s a little hard on you and Mike to have it all to do, Tom. I wish I could help you with the husking.”
At last there came a day when the rain ceased to fall. The sun shone out clear and bright, and the clouds went stately across the sky, to the measure of marches they had kept in October. Mists rose from the earth, not heavily, but with a lightness suggestive of warmth still in the breast of the earth, and Esther, standing on the doorstep of the old house, noted that there was even yet a little greenness among the limp stalks in the garden where a flock of birds were twittering over the seeds they had found for their breakfast. “I’m so glad the rain has gone,” she said, drawing a long breath. “It’s pleasant weather that grandfather needs.”
And then she went softly into his room to tell him how the sun was shining, and smiled as he murmured in reply, “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.”
It was that day in the afternoon that Aunt Katharine came across the fields. The door of the kitchen was on the latch, and she lifted it and stepped in without knocking. Perhaps she expected to see him sitting by the fire, for she looked before her eagerly, but even Aunt Elsie was not in sight, and she passed on without greeting to her brother’s room. He looked quite bright as he lay with his face toward Esther, who had just been giving him a cup of broth.
“Why, Aunt Katharine!” exclaimed the girl, rising to her feet, and the old man, lifting his head, put out his hand with an eager welcome.
“So you hain’t managed to get out of bed yet?” she said, taking the chair from which Esther had risen, and looking down at her brother with an affectionate smile. “Well, I’m sorry for you, Ruel.” Then, a half whimsical expression creeping over her smile, she added: “’Pears to me you don’t hold up so much better’n some of us that don’t claim to be so stout. I’ve owned up to it for a good while that I ain’t as young as I used to be, and there’s no denying that I make a pretty fair showing with most old women when it comes to aches and pains, but they hain’t brought me onto the flat of my back for the last ten years.”
“I’ve been favored above most, Katharine,” said the old man, mildly. “I’ve had my strength and faculties spared to me beyond the common, and I can’t complain of anything now. ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?’ It is the Lord’s will, let him do what seemeth him good.”
She was evidently struck with his reply, and for a moment looked at him keenly. “I should have come up before this, if it hadn’t rained all the time,” she said, “and I took it for granted you was getting along. But I guess you hain’t needed me any, with those that are here to wait on you.”
The old man’s eyes turned to Esther with a peculiar tenderness. “No, I don’t want for anything,” he said. “Elsie manages everything just right, and Esther here seems to know what I need before I get a chance to speak of it. It’s queer now how she puts me in mind of her mother,” he went on musingly. “Sometimes I can’t get it out of my mind that it’s Lucia sitting right here by me. And I hain’t been out of my head either, have I?”
The girl did not answer the question, but she stooped and kissed his forehead. “It’s nice to have you think I’m mother,” she said. “Do it all you please.”
He smiled at her, then turned with a sudden wistfulness to his sister. “Katharine,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and how much harder ’twould be for you than ’tis for me, if you should be taken sick down there all by yourself. There wouldn’t be anybody to take care of you as the folks take care of me. I wish you lived up here with us. I’ve wanted it this good while; and Elsie’d be willing, you know she would.”
“She wouldn’t like it, Ruel, and you wouldn’t either, after a little while,” said the old woman, her swift honesty throwing a note that was a trifle harsh into her voice. “You and I never did see things the same way, and we should see ’em more contrariwise than ever, if we had to stand on just the same piece o’ ground to look at ’em.”
The old man lifted his head with an obvious effort, and his breath came quick for a moment. “No,” he said, “we never did look at things just alike, you ’n’ I, and I guess ’twas natural to us both to want to pull the other round to our way. But I’ve been thinking about that too, Katharine, and I’m—I’m afraid I’ve riled you up sometimes when I hadn’t or’ to. You’ve got just as good a right to your way of looking at things as I have to mine, and I’m afraid I’ve said things to you sometimes that warn’t becoming.”
What she might have replied to this, if a neighbor, with Aunt Elsie, had not entered the room at that moment, is not certain. A pallor had swept suddenly across her face, and her eyes, wide and startled, were fixed with a frightened look upon her brother. She rose from her chair as the others drew near, and without responding to their greeting stepped swiftly outside the door. Then she beckoned to her niece with a trembling gesture.
“Elsie,” she whispered, when the other had crossed the threshold, “I’ll be obliged to you if you’ll let Tom hitch up and drive me down to the house. I want to get a few things and come right back. If you don’t mind I’ll stay here a while. Ruel’s a dreadful sick man.”
She had guessed the truth first, but they knew it, all of them, in a few days more. They knew that Ruel Saxon’s feet were set on the downward path to the valley from which there is no return.
They did not send for Stella. She had her work, and there were enough in the home to do all that could be done for him. Still there was little pain, a growing weakness, and the mind wandering more and more often, but always peacefully, and oftenest over the years that lay far, far behind him. Of Esther he seemed almost to have lost knowledge. He called her Lucia constantly now, and liked no one so much at his bedside.
And she kept her place, with no regret for any employment she might have had in its stead. There came a letter from Mr. Philip Hadley, with messages for her grandfather, and though the latter but half understood as she read them, he seemed touched and pleased. The young man had learned, through a call on Stella, of the old gentleman’s illness and the consequent delay in the carrying out of Esther’s plan, and he wrote, earnestly hoping it might not be for long, with kindest expressions of sympathy for his aged friend.
And then there came another, but this Esther did not read aloud. The reading to herself alone left a troubled look in her eyes as she laid it down. It seemed that Mr. Hadley’s plans had suffered change, too. His father was not bearing the Boston November well, and California for the winter was the doctor’s prescription. He must go with them, the young man wrote, to see his father and mother well settled, but it would be only for a few weeks, and by the time he returned surely Esther herself would be in Boston. “I confess,” he added, “that anxious as I am to do what I can for my father, I could hardly bear it to be away from Boston if you were here now.”
They objected to her sitting up with her grandfather that night on the ground that she was not looking as well as usual, but Esther protested. It was her turn, she pleaded. She had had the promise of staying with him till midnight, and indeed, she was perfectly able. So they let her have her way, and left her alone with him in the dear, familiar room, with the lamp burning low on the table, and everything ready to her hand. She could call the others in a moment if she needed them. He had been easier than usual during the day, sleeping most of the time, and again at moments seeming so like himself that, in spite of them all, she could not believe he was going away soon. Why should he? Life was sweet to him still, and his body, till now, had seemed strong and active. What was that length of years which people named with a shake of the head as they mentioned his illness? It was not years that counted in making men old. It was labor and loss and heartache. The labor was joy to one who loved it as he did, the simple labor of the fields, and of friendly service among his fellows. And of loss and heartache there could be none to sap the springs of life for one whose cheerful faith laid hold of the eternities like his. It was not time, surely it was not time yet, for the silver cord to be loosed which bound Ruel Saxon to his work and his friends.
So she said to herself with the easy hopefulness of youth, as she watched the old man lying there with his face on the pillow. He grew more restless as the hours went on. Memory, while all the other faculties lay sleeping, seemed to bestir itself with unwonted vigor. Hymns, quaint and long-forgotten in the churches, rolled one after another from his lips, and Psalms, so many and with such unhesitating sureness, that the girl listened marvelling, and wondered if he knew them all.
Then there came a change in his voice, and his tone grew more appealing. It was not recitation now, it was exhortation. He seemed to be warning sinners, pleading with fellow-Christians. Ah, she caught the meaning. He thought he was in prayer-meeting again, and the zeal of the place had eaten him up with its old delight and fervor. She smiled, remembering that last meeting, and bent her head closer to catch the words.
A strain of tenderness crept through them now. Solemnly and very slowly he repeated, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.” He paused for a moment, then, in a voice that was low but strangely clear, went on, “Oh, my friends, do you mark the word? That precious stone, that head of the corner, is a tried stone, tried through all the years and proven sure. Tried”—he lingered on the word with unspeakable earnestness—“by whom? By Abraham, by Moses, and by all the prophets, men who heard the voice of God and followed where it led them; tried by Peter, by James, and John, men who saw his face in the face of his Son, and leaned upon his breast and loved him; tried by all the host of martyrs, who laid down their lives for his sake, counting it gain for the joy that was set before them; tried by”—the voice sank almost to a whisper, and the names of old neighbors and friends fell lovingly one after another, the names of fellow-farers with him in the journey of life who had passed to their rest before him. Listening intently, the girl knew them at the last for some of her own kindred, as he murmured softly, “by Caleb Saxon, by Joel and Mary, by Rachel my wife,” and then, after longer pause, with his eyes opening wide and a tremor of unutterable joy and humility in the low glad murmur, “tried—by—me.”
A smile flitted over his face, and the eyelids dropped. She thought he was asleep, and moved noiselessly away lest even her breathing should disturb him. It was almost an hour later, and the watch on the table told her it was time for his medicine, when she went again to his side.
“Grandfather,” she said, bending over him; but he did not stir. She laid her hand on his, and the chill struck to her heart. She started back, and for a moment stood in her place, almost as white and motionless as he. Then, with a cry, she flew out of the room, calling to the others to come, the others who, with all their haste, could never again in the old way catch word or look of his.
For he was gone. With that last word, the spirit so bright and eager—ah, yes! so impatient at moments, so prone to the hasty word, so open to the little vanities, but sound at the core, and steadfast to bear its part in sun and storm as any oak on the hills—had stolen away. It was of himself he had spoken last. They mused on it a little as she told them; but they knew it was of himself as the humble, the rich recipient of grace unspeakable, and in that great gladness had passed on to the Giver.
They bent around him weeping, the older women, but Esther was too stunned for tears. She had been alone with Death and had caught no hint of his presence. She had never guessed that he could come and go as stealthily as this. There was nothing more that she could do, and they sent her away, not letting her reproach herself that she had not known. “It was not strange,” they said; and Aunt Elsie added, steadying her voice for the girl’s sake, “It was better so; the kindest way it could have come.”
It was a wonderful night. The first snow of the season had fallen while the old man lay dying, and now the moon shone out with a still, white glory, in which all the world lay new and clean. In the orchard beyond her window some boughs of trees, cut by the saw of the pruner and not yet gathered from the ground, lay glistening like great branches of coral; and the old stone wall had been builded anew, touched with masonry of silver. Strange how every detail of the scene swept in upon the girl, as she stood there looking out upon it, wide-eyed and silent!
It was a picture in which her thoughts would frame themselves again and again in the years that were coming, when the solemn moods of life should bring her face to face with the things of the soul. And in that clearness and stillness, things which had puzzled her grew plain, and she knew her own heart as she had not known it before. She could not have explained how it came; but before that great reality of death, the unrealities of life slipped noiselessly away. The things which had been of the surface fell off, and the needs, the loves, that were deepest only were left. To have seen them once in that clear light was to know them for what they were, and she could not afterward forget.
They sent word to Stella in the morning, and late that night Tom brought her from the station. She had not loved her grandfather as Esther had—she had not so enjoyed his companionship; but the knowledge that he was gone brought tears and genuine sorrow.
“Dear old grandfather!” she said, looking down at the still face. “How we shall miss him! It won’t seem like home with him gone.” And then she drew her mother away to talk over the details of the event that was coming. There must be no flowers about his coffin, only one long beautiful sheaf of wheat; and she would have no crape on the door, only a branch of evergreen from the woods he had planted, with a sprig of myrtle.
It was at the church that the last services were held. The rooms at the old house could not have contained the throng that gathered to do him honor. He had been a diligent attendant at funerals himself, and had been frankly in favor of extended remarks on the character of the deceased, even though the custom put the preacher to sore straits sometimes, when the virtues of the departed were not too many or luminous.
Indeed, he had been known to excuse the preacher under such circumstances for blinking the facts a little. At least he had called the attention of captious critics to that funeral lament of David’s, in which he distinctly alluded to a very persistent persecutor of his as “lovely and pleasant,”—language which, to tell the truth, had really seemed to Ruel Saxon a little excessive, and had led him to wonder at times what the generous psalmist would have done if he had not been able to couple Saul’s name with Jonathan’s.
There was no lack of words at his own funeral, words spoken with impressive earnestness and warmth, and it was a tribute to the wide regard in which Ruel Saxon was held that not only the minister of his own church, but others from towns around, begged the privilege of a part in the service.
“He would have liked it if he had been there; it was a funeral after his own heart,” Stella said, talking it over that evening with Esther. She drew a long soft sigh, and added, “I declare I can’t realize yet that it was actually grandfather himself. He was trying sometimes, but never tiresome; and life will lose part of its spice here at home, with him gone out of it.”
Esther did not reply. Somehow she could not talk about things which were close to her heart in the cool way Stella could. After a little silence the latter said: “You’ll go to Boston with me, of course, when I go back. I shall stay at home long enough to get things settled for mother, and there’ll be no need of either of us staying after that.”
“Stella,” said Esther, speaking very quietly, “I suppose you’ll think it’s strange, but I’ve decided not to go to Boston.” The other started, and she went on hurriedly, “I should like to be with you, and I know there’d be a great deal to enjoy, but grandfather’s dying has changed everything for the present, and honestly, there’s nothing I want now so much as to be at home.”
For a minute Stella seemed too much surprised to speak. Then she said, with a peculiar look at her cousin, “There’s somebody besides me who’ll be dreadfully disappointed if you don’t come.”
Esther returned the look without flinching, though her color rose a little. “If you mean Mr. Hadley,” she said, “I should be very sorry to think he’d care much, and truly I don’t think he would; at least not after the very first. I shall write to him. I must; for he sent such kind messages to grandfather, and he’d want to know how it all was at the last. I think he’ll understand how I feel. I can’t quite explain it, but it’s home and the home people I want. There’s nothing here now that I care for as I care for them.”
Stella’s eyes were on the floor, and she did not raise them as she said, after a long pause, “I don’t quite make you out, Esther, but you are an awfully nice girl. I wish it wasn’t so far between here and Indiana.”
“I shall never think it’s far after this,” said Esther, giving her cousin’s hand a little squeeze. And then she added cheerfully, “Don’t you think it would be nice to give Mr. Hadley one of grandfather’s old books? There are some of them, you know, that are really very curious, and he’s so fond of those rare old things. I’ll tell him that you’ve taken one for him; I believe it would please him.”
She had more misgiving as to how Aunt Katharine would receive the news of her changed intention, but not from her either did she meet any entreaties. The old woman seemed strangely broken by her brother’s death. It was she beyond all others who had been stricken. An apathy which was wholly new had settled upon her, and was only shaken off at moments when she talked of him.
“I thought he’d outlive me by years,” she said to Esther. “I always twitted him with thinking that he was so much smarter than the rest of us; but he was, and I used to think, as he did, that he might live to see his hundred years. I don’t know why he shouldn’t have had ’em.” And then she added, with a quaver in her voice: “I wish I’d spoke up when he said what he did the day I came in. I’ve riled him too, sometimes, when I needn’t, but it took me so by surprise that I couldn’t answer then. All I could think of was that he was going to die.” She drew a long sigh, and ended, “You must do as you think best, child, about going home. I don’t blame you any for changing your plans.”
She went back to her own house the day after the funeral, in spite of Aunt Elsie’s entreaty that she should stay. “It’s good of you, Elsie,” she said, with a shake of her head, “and I guess I could live with you as easy as I could with anybody; but I should miss him more here than I should anywhere else, and I’d rather be in my own place.”
They let her go, but Aunt Elsie said the last word with affectionate earnestness, as she passed out at the door: “Don’t be sick or in any kind of trouble without letting us know. I’ll do for you there just as willingly as here if you should happen to need me.”
Three days later Esther was gone too. She took a silent farewell of her grandfather’s room, looked long from the windows at the hills she had come to love so much and stepped out of the family circle like a daughter of the house whose place no one else would ever quite fill. Stella went with her to the depot, and their hands unclasped reluctantly when the last moment came. There were thoughts which neither whispered to the other, and they wondered as they looked in each other’s eyes whether the time would ever come when they could fully tell them, but Esther understood best what the silence held.
It was that other day over again when she came home to her own, but the welcome lacked something of the boisterous gladness which had greeted Kate, and the mother’s smile was full of tears as she clasped the girl in her arms. No one, not even Mrs. Northmore, understood exactly why she had given up the Boston plan. The grandfather’s going away, in the fullness of his ripe old age, hardly seemed a reason why she should relinquish pleasures which had looked so bright, and an opportunity which had meant so much to her. However, they were all most heartily glad to have her at home again, especially Kate, and the latter felt a little foolish, remembering that morning at Aunt Katharine’s, when it appeared from Esther’s report that the old woman had not objected at all to her giving up the engagement which she had believed to be planned with such deep and deadly designs. Really, it seemed that she had lashed herself up to that affair and been disagreeable on quite gratuitous grounds. She admitted it, to herself, with her usual frankness, and thanked her stars, in a strictly private manner, that no one but Aunt Katharine and herself knew it, save Tom.
To Mrs. Northmore, watching Esther thoughtfully by the steady light of mother-love, it seemed that the girl had found real value in the summer. She seemed somehow older, looking at things more quietly, and with a leisure from herself which, in spite of her ready sympathy for others, had too often been wanting in the past. It was an aid against the restlessness which might have come when a sudden vacancy in one of the Rushmore schools brought her at Christmas an unexpected offer of the position. She accepted it with her mother’s quick consent, doing good work and enjoying it, as well as the pay that came with it. Indeed, as she carried home her check at the end of each month, she was impressed more than ever with the soundness of certain views of Aunt Katharine’s on the moral value of earning and owning. She wrote to the latter repeatedly, and once Aunt Katharine replied; but she was not fond of her pen, and the letter, though affectionate, was brief.
There were longer letters from Stella, letters of the chatty, personal sort, with a generous sprinkling of family news. Mr. Hadley was calling often. If he had sustained any disappointment that the cousins were not in Boston together, he was apparently consoling himself with the company of the one who was left. They were going to art lectures and symphony concerts together, and the married sister had called.
“It’s precisely what ought to happen,” Esther said to herself more than once; and the smile in her eyes as she said it suggested that there was no vagueness in her mind as to what the happening should be. Sometimes when the smile was gone a wistful look came in its place, but if she had any regrets or longings of her own, she told them to no one.
The spring vacation in the schools came with the Easter, early that year. Esther laid plans valiantly at the outset for work to be accomplished in the space between terms, but she had grown thoroughly tired of her needle on the afternoon of the second day, when her father announced suddenly that he was going to drive out to the farm. There were matters connected with the spring planting to be talked over with Jake Erlock.
“What do you say to my going with you?” she exclaimed, dropping her work. “It’s ever so long since I went out there, and I feel just like it.”
There was nothing Dr. Northmore enjoyed more than having one of his daughters with him when he took a long drive. “That’s a capital idea,” he said. “Get your things on quick.”
Spring was coming along the track of the wide straight road by which they took their way to the pretty uplands which were the doctor’s pride and care.
Here and there broad fields of wheat were already showing a tender green from the springing of the grain which had lain all winter under frost and snow, and between them new-ploughed fields sent up a pleasant smell, the wholesome smell of the kindly earth turning itself again to the sun and the rain.
The little gray house, set back from the road, wore its old shy look, and the occupant, who greeted them as they drove up to the door, seemed like one who, in his solitary wintering, might have sat asleep on his hearth, coming out half timidly now to greet the warmth and stir of the world. He lost his air of uncertainty as he saw his callers, and welcomed them to his kitchen, which was orderly as ever, setting chairs for them about his fire with a bustling hospitality. Esther did not keep her place long. A few kindly inquiries, a polite listening to his report of the winter, and then she left the two men together, and slipped away for a stroll by herself through the orchard and along the edge of the field where the threshing had gone on so blithely in the summer past.
The straw-stack was there to remind of it still, not fair and golden now, but gray and weather-beaten from the winter storms. It had grown smaller with the passing months, and a great hollow had been worn in its side by the browsing cattle. On the soft matted floor of this inner shelter lay two calves, one with its pretty, fawn-like head resting on the dark red neck of the other. They turned soft wondering eyes to the girl as she looked in upon them, and a sitting hen, so near the color of the straw that at first she did not see her, ruffled warningly from her nest in the side.
She did not disturb them in their quiet retreat, but sat down for a little while in the warm friendliness beside their open door, and thought half-dreamily of that day that was gone. What a bustle of work had filled the place! She could see the puffing engine sending up its quick black breath against the sky, and the great crimson machine, like a chariot, at its back, with Morton Elwell at the front, a charioteer holding the car of plenty on its way, amid a score of sunburnt outriders. How confident he had looked as he stood there in his workman’s dress, bare-armed and bare-throated, how strong and steady!
She smiled at her own fancy. And then the rest of the picture faded, leaving the one figure alone; but it was not at the threshing she saw him now, it was at home, at school, on the playground, and everywhere her comrade, her champion, her friend. Had he been something more in those old days, and was he still? Ah, if she could be sure of that! The letters had lost the old boyish freedom in these last months. She had complained once that Morton Elwell took too much for granted. He was taking nothing now.
Her father’s voice calling from the house roused her at last from her revery, and they were off again for home. He was thinking too busily of his summer plans to talk, and she, wrapped in her own thoughts, was glad of the silence. But she broke it suddenly as they drew near the substantial brick house which belonged to the Elwells, almost at the end of the ride.
“Suppose you let me out here, father,” she said. “I haven’t been in to see Mrs. Elwell for weeks, and I’ve been thinking all the afternoon how good she was to us last summer at the threshing. I want to go in and thank her for it over again. I’ll come home by myself in a little while.”
She hesitated a moment whether or not to go in by the back way in the old familiar fashion, then, for some reason, walked to the front door and rang the bell. The mistress herself opened it, her hands a little floury, and a clean gingham apron over her afternoon dress.
“Well, upon my word!” she exclaimed, starting at the sight of her caller. “If we weren’t talking about you, Esther Northmore, this blessed minute! Come in, come in. Who do you think is here?”
She had not time to guess. She had not time to speak the name which rose with wondering incredulity to her lips when the owner of it himself came hurrying through the hall to meet her.
“You!” she cried, fairly springing to meet Morton Elwell. “Why, how does this happen?”
“It’s vacation for me too,” he said, beaming at her in the most radiant manner. “And—yes, I’ll own it. It was a genuine fit of homesickness that brought me. I’ve been struggling with it all winter, but it was simply too much for me when there actually came a halt in the school work. I had to come. There was no other way.”
“Think of it,” said Mrs. Elwell, who looked so happy that there was almost a halo round her head; “think of his taking that journey and coming home for a week’s vacation, when he could hardly afford a day off for us all last summer.”
“It does seem as if I’d grown to be something of a spendthrift, doesn’t it?” said the young man. “But you can’t hold yourself down all the time. You have to break loose now and then. And let me tell you,”—they had reached the sitting room now, and he was sitting between them, looking from one to the other like a happy child—“let me tell you that I’ve taken the Lisper scholarship, and that means my tuition all the rest of my course. Don’t you think I could afford to give myself a glimpse of home when I wanted it so desperately?”
They cried, “Oh!” in concert, Mrs. Elwell, whose ideas were a little vague in regard to scholarships, prolonging hers as if to cover the comments she ought to make, and Esther adding, with the color sweeping over her face, “Why, that is splendid, perfectly splendid! I can’t tell you how glad I am.”
“And won’t you have to work your way any more?” asked Mrs. Elwell, when she could get her breath.
“Oh, yes. I shall have to turn an honest penny for myself now and then,” said her nephew, smiling. “Tuition doesn’t cover all the expenses by a good deal, but it’s a big help. Why, I feel quite like a nabob.”
The name, with its sudden reminder of the one to whom Tom Saxon had mockingly given it in the summer, made Esther laugh. Morton Elwell, with his brown hands and common suit of clothes, did not look the character in the least.
“Well, I’m glad you are not a nabob,” she said, meeting his eyes, and then demurely dropping her own. “Please don’t go on to be one so fast that we can’t keep up with you. There are some of us that like the old ways and have to go slow.”
His face kindled, and he was on the point of saying something, when his aunt spoke. “Now you children just make yourselves at home,” she said, rising, “and I’ll go on and get the supper. I was just fixing to make some biscuits when you came, Esther. You’ll stay to supper, of course.”
“Oh, I must go home in a minute,” said the girl. For the first time in her life she felt a sudden timidity in the thought of a tête-à-tête with Morton Elwell. “Mother’ll expect me.”
“Now what makes you talk like that?” said Mrs. Elwell, in an injured tone. “Doesn’t she know where you are? Of course she won’t expect you. She knows I wouldn’t let you go home before supper. Why, you never used to do that way, and it’s ever so long since you were here.”
The logic was unanswerable, and Esther settled back in the chair from which she had half risen. “She’ll stay, Aunt Jenny,” said Morton, and he added, smiling at Esther, “weren’t you just saying that some of us liked the old ways?”
She took refuge in them swiftly when they were left alone. He must tell her all about himself, about college, what he had done to gain that scholarship, and what else he had done. She was all sympathy, all interest, with all the old responsiveness in her face, and he yielded himself to the warmth and joy of it as one yields to spring sunshine after the cold. She grew easier after the first, and presently there was no chance for embarrassment nor for confidences left; for the senior Elwell, with Morton’s young cousins, came into the room, and then the talk grew general, though with Morton still at the centre, as was the newcomer’s right, and indeed his necessity with Esther leading him on.
She was at her best—winsome, adroit, and determined if there was family pride in this uncle of his, it should bestir itself now. She had grown even prettier than she used to be, her manners even more charming, the young man said to himself, and the bounding happiness in her heart might well have made it true. For there had been a moment, just that moment before the others came into the room, when she had caught sure knowledge of the thing she had longed to know.