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When Sarah Horrotian heard of the strange and terrible ending of Thompson Jowell, she found it hard to believe that she was never to see his coarse red face again, never to be uprooted and ruined by him.... Even when weeks passed without foreclosure, she was still expectant of histurning up suddenly, big and gross and greedy as ever.... When at length she realized that he was dead, she forbade herself to hope.
For the man had a son, and the son would be no more pitiful than the father, thought Sarah Horrotian. When the legal representatives of Jowell’s widow wrote, saying that the interest and principal of her debt would be remitted—when the deed of mortgage was returned to her with “Canceled” written across it—the widow faintly wondered, having gone too numb to be joyfully surprised.
Nothing now was needed to set the farm upon its legs again but a little money and a certain amount of energy.... The money she might have found, but the springs of vitality had dried up. Though there were hours, when, sitting in the gaunt, bare farm-kitchen towards nightfall, staring at the handful of coals that burned in the capacious fire-grate, she knew that the desert of her heart might grow green things again, if only Josh and his wife came home.
And, though she told herself they never would, something in her secret heart gave the lie to her. She would have died rather than admit it to herself—but for fear lest they should come, after all, and miss her, and go away to return no more—she ceased to leave the house. Presently the news spread that Widder Horrotian had come down in the world, and gone crazy-like, and never even crept outdoors to look for eggs in the tenantless sheds and empty pigsties—and that you could range over the whole place wi’out coming athirt the woman at all.
Gangs of marauding boys ventured first, after ungathered apples and unharvested turnips; and then their seniors began to take a fearful joy in nocturnal visits from which they returned, bending under mysterious loads.
The fowls disappeared—the wood-stack melted—the farm and garden tools took to themselves wings, and the vegetable shed was broken into one night, and gutted. Discovering this, the widow realized that when the flour in the garret, and the potatoes in the cellar; the sides of bacon hanging in the kitchen, and the cheese under the press in the dairy should be eaten, Want would come knock at the door of Upper Clays Farm.
Yet when the threshold was approached by ragged tramps with mendacious stories of misfortune, or lean and hairy men with scurvy-marked faces, who said simply that theywere invalided soldiers who had been sent home from the Front—Sarah gave of what she had, without reproach or girding. To these last, especially when they came limping on crutches, or showed bandaged wounds, or sleeves empty of arms, she was almost gentle. None of them could tell her anything of Joshua Horrotian, except that two squadrons of the Hundredth Lancers had ridden in the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Hope was all but dead in the woman, when upon a sultry summer evening, the white gate clashed behind a tall, thin, ragged, red-haired and bearded man—and a shabby woman carrying a baby—wrapped in the folds of a faded plaid shawl. As they stood faltering, doubtful of their reception, the heart of Sarah leapt within her faded wincey bodice, and the ice of her frozen nature broke up.
Always of formal gait and scanty gesture, there was now something eloquent, free, and almost noble in the woman’s action. She had no words—she was bankrupt of a single text to fit the occasion. But she set back the half-doors, and knelt down upon the worn stone threshold. Bowing her head, she crossed her thin arms upon her aching bosom, then spread them open wide, and waited so.
“Oh! my dear son, whom I have ill-used; and cast out and denied the right of heritage. Come, take your own, and forgive me, my son!—my son! Oh! my dear daughter, whom I have wronged so cruelly—try—try to pardon me! Teach your child to think of me forgivingly. For I have sinned, and the Lord has punished me with rods and scourges. Yet He must have relented towards me—for He has sent you home!”
In words like these the silent action and the mute gesture spoke to the returned wanderers. So they lifted Sarah up, and kissed her; and she wept and kissed them and their child, and was comforted. And they went into the house together. And with them Happiness, and in the end Prosperity, came back to dwell at Upper Clays Farm.