CHAPTER XXIVAT HOME

The month of May that year was unusually wet, with warm sunshine between the rains, so that with the sun and the rain June came on apace, and by the middle of the month the roses and the early summer flowers were in full bloom, and nowhere in Merivale was there a lovelier spot than the grounds around the Grey house. They had been well cared for during the previous year, and now special pains were taken with them, and the house as well.

The proprietor, about whom there had been so much speculation, was expected, Mr. Blake said, and had given instructions for everything to be put in order, from the stables to the attic, while every nook and corner of the garden and grounds was to be cleared from weeds and put under the highest state of cultivation.

To Nancy Sharp the news that the master was expected came as a crusher, for that might mean a return to White’s Row, which would be a great descent from her present quarters; but when told that she could stay on as laundress for the family, she assumed her old assurance of manner as preferredcreditor and occupant of the finest place in town, not excepting that of Judge White, which, if more massive and solid, could not compete with the Grey house in grace and artistic beauty.

It was when curiosity with regard to the owner, who had been incog. so long, was at its height that a message came from England to the effect that Fred Lansing and Louie had been married quietly in London, and that later on “they were coming to Merivale for a few days,” Mr. Blake said, with a knowing wink, which told as much as words could tell, and confirmed the people in the suspicions which had been strengthening ever since Mr. Grey’s debts were paid by Fred Lansing.

Evidently Judge White, who had received a letter from Fred, knew more than was in the cablegram, but he was not to tell it.

“No, sir! When I’m bound, I’m bound,” he said to some friends who were questioning him. “I don’t know nothing, and if I did, I’m not to tell. Wait and you’ll see. Fred Lansing has a right to do as he pleases—marry anybody he likes; and, by George, he’s got a smart little cat, if she is Grey’s girl; might have had—” Here he checked, himself, thinking it better not to tell that Grey’s girl had declined the honor of a marriage with his son. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “Fred has a right to do as he pleases, with all his money and blood—the bluest in the land, and his pedigree going backto the Garden of Eden, for what I know. Yes, sir; and if he brings his wife here we ought to do something out of the common—fireworks, or something—set pieces; one the two banks as they used to be; only you couldn’t blow up one without the other, and mine stood. Yes, sir, it stood!”

Every word the judge said was repeated, and more, too; and when next morning Nancy Sharp saw Mr. Blake, who came to the house, she pounced upon him and nearly shook the breath out of him in her fierce demands for the truth.

“Can you keep a secret, Nancy?” Mr. Blake asked; and for answer she produced a Bible nearly a hundred years old, which had belonged to her mother, and offered to swear upon it to be silent as the grave if he would tell her what she believed she already knew.

He did not require the oath, but he told her; and with a cry of “Glory Hallelujah!” the old woman began to imitate a skirt dance she had seen in a travelling show, and thought rather immoral. Nothing was immoral now, if it gave vent to her joy; nothing too complicated; and she not only tried the skirt dance, but the Highland fling she had learned when a girl. She was sure to stay where she was, and she refused the next washing brought her; said she was out of the business, and if folks waited a spell they’d know why.

The next two weeks she devoted to cleaning thepart of the house she had occupied, and picking up every dried leaf and stick in the grass, and pulling every weed in the garden and flower beds.

More artistic hands than hers had arranged the rooms with flowers and ferns and potted plants and palms on the June day when Fred Lansing and his bride were expected. They had been in New York a week, and now, with Fred’s mother and Miss Percy, were coming to Merivale—as guests of Judge White, Louie thought; and the belief marred a little the pleasure of her home-coming.

Herbert had written a letter of congratulation, in which he had said:

“I am glad for you, Louie, but cannot forget that I once hoped to be to you what Fred is. If there is any good in me, I owe it to you. God bless you. I shall never marry.

“Herbert.”

There were tears in Louie’s eyes when she read this, but Fred kissed them away, and then began to talk of the joy of being in Merivale again and meeting her friends, who, Mr. Blake wrote, were anxiously waiting to see her.

“Yes,” Louie said; “I am very glad, but I wish there was some place for us besides Judge White’s. You don’t know how I shrink from going there. Would it be very bad to stop at the hotel?”

“Yes, darling; very bad,” Fred answered, laughing, as he thought of the surprise in store for her.

It was one of the loveliest days in June when the New York train stopped at the Merivale station, where, it seemed to Louie, the whole town was assembled, reminding her of the run and the failure. This crowd, however, was animated by very different feelings; and as cheer after cheer went up, and her hands were grasped by friend after friend, eager to welcome her home, she began to feel faint and nauseated as she had felt sometimes when the shadows were darkest around her. Fred saw it and tried to draw her from the swarming throng to his uncle’s carriage, which the judge told him was waiting for him.

“Godfrey Sheldon is here with Jack and Jill,” he said, “and it’s like his impudence to ask you to ride with him, but it’s fitting you should go in my carriage, seeing I’m your kin;” then to Louie he said, as a band struck up a lively strain of welcome, “’Pon my soul, it beats all, how glad the folks are. Why, if ’twas the President and his lady they couldn’t make more of a cotouse. See what ’tis to belong to my family and the Lansings’.”

He straightened himself back till he nearly fell over, and Louie straightened, too, and held herself proudly erect, not because she was allied to the Whites and Lansings, but because of some feelings the judge’s words had stirred within her. It was not for him or his pedigree the people were making this demonstration. They were her friends and herfather’s; they had forgotten the past, and were glad to have her back, and there was nothing to mar her joy except a wish that she was not going to Judge White’s, where, heretofore, she had only been received as an inferior, to be civilly treated, or patronized, which was worse.

She was in the carriage now and Fred was with her, holding her hand, which she had involuntarily stretched out to him in her excitement. The crowd was dispersing rapidly—some in the vehicles which had brought them there, some on wheels, some on foot, and nearly all hurrying in the same direction the carriage was taking.

“Where is Nancy Sharp?” Louie asked, as they drove through the town.

“That’s so,” Fred answered, as naturally as if her non-appearance had struck him as something strange.

“I hear the owner of the house is expected. Perhaps that is keeping her. Shall we drive there first? It will please the old lady.”

“No—yes,” Louie answered, with conflicting emotions—a longing to see her old home and a shrinking from it.

The horses’ heads were turned into the street, through which people were hurrying as if eager to reach some point of interest. David had driven very slowly all the way from the station, and now he drove more slowly still, and finally made a detour through a side street, which gave more time to thepedestrians and others hastening to the Grey house, every door and window of which stood open, while in the grounds and on the piazza were many people who had been at the station.

Conspicuous among the crowd was Nancy Sharp, with the tears rolling down her face and her voice raised above all others as she said:

“Thank God for this day, and welcome home to Mis’ Fred Lansing; and if she can find a speck of dust, my name ain’t Nancy Sharp.”

The truth was dawning upon Louie by this time, making her so weak that Fred was obliged to lift her from the carriage and support her after she was upon the ground, where more cheers greeted her, with more handshakes of welcome.

None of the people entered the house. They were only there to see “how Louie took it,” and when they saw how pale she was, with the tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to smile upon them, they felt that she “took it” as she should, and were satisfied.

There was a cheer or two more, and the people departed, leaving Fred and Louie alone, as Mrs. Lansing and Miss Percy had gone with the judge and Mrs. White.

“Oh, Fred, it was you all the time, and I was so stupid not to suspect who our generous landlord was,” Louie said, going from room to room with the eagerness of a happy child.

Nothing had been changed, and everything was in perfect order. “Spick and span,” Nancy said, following her mistress at a respectful distance, but not so far away that she could not see “kissin’ and huggin’ that went on every minute or two,” she confided to the cook and housemaid, who, having lived with the Greys before the failure, had been hired to take their former places, and, not being preferred creditors, were not supposed to take the same liberties as Nancy.

Every deep wound leaves a scar after it has ceased to ache, and Louie had been hurt so sorely that there would always be a slight shadow on her life when she thought of the past, but she was as near perfect happiness now as she ever could be, and the happiness seemed to increase as the summer day waned and the moonlit night came on.

They were sitting upon the piazza, and Fred’s arm was around her, while he told how he had planned buying the house and keeping his name from the public, because he thought she might feel more willing to accept the favor from a stranger than from him.

“It was sometimes hard work to keep it from you when we were abroad, and especially when I received the letter you wrote to your unknown friend, and which came to me on the ship which brought you. In it you said, “if there is one thing more than another which you desire, I hope Godwill give it to you,” and he has given meyou—my heart’s desire—and I am more than repaid. I thought you would like your old home, and meant to give it to you. We have another house in Washington, you know. My mother and Miss Percy like it, and we will spend our winters there and our summers here, if it pleases you.”

“Pleases me! Oh, Fred, everything pleases me, and I am so happy that I can scarcely breathe,” Louie said, clutching at her throat as if for breath.

The high collar choked her, and she tore it off.

“There!” she said, at last, with a long gasp, “something which closed up in Paris has given way. I began to feel it when the people at the station cheered so loud. I believe I can sing again.”

She did not wait for Fred to reply, but, standing up, began a song in which she had failed in Paris, her voice rising louder and clearer, and striking the higher notes without a quiver. Then a few bars of the bird song rang out on the air, and was answered by the faint twitter of a robin roused from its first sleep, and thinking, perhaps, that its mate was calling it.

“My voice has come back. I might have sung on the stage and paid my debts myself,” she cried, in an ecstasy of joy, while the moonlight fell around her like a halo, making her face seem to Fred like the face of an angel.

He watched her till her transport of joy subsided. Then, drawing her down beside him, he said:

“Louie, which would you rather be, a star before the footlights or my wife, plain Mrs. Fred Lansing?”

Just what Louie’s answer was only the night wind heard, or the robin, if she was still awake; but Fred was satisfied.

THE END

POPULAR NOVELSBYMRS. MARY J. HOLMES.Tempest and Sunshine.English Orphans.Homestead on Hillside.’Lena Rivers.Meadow Brook.Dora Deane.Cousin Maude.Marian Grey.Edith Lyle.Daisy Thornton.Chateau d’Or.Queenie Hetherton.Bessie’s Fortune.Marguerite.Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.The Tracy Diamonds.Darkness and Daylight.Hugh Worthington.Cameron Pride.Rose Mather.Ethelyn’s Mistake.Milbank.Edna Browning.West Lawn.Mildred.Forrest House.Madeline.Christmas Stories.Gretchen.Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.Paul Ralston.The Cromptons.The Merivale Banks.“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affection of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price.G. W. Dillingham Co., PublishersNEW YORK.

POPULAR NOVELSBYMRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

POPULAR NOVELS

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

Tempest and Sunshine.English Orphans.Homestead on Hillside.’Lena Rivers.Meadow Brook.Dora Deane.Cousin Maude.Marian Grey.Edith Lyle.Daisy Thornton.Chateau d’Or.Queenie Hetherton.Bessie’s Fortune.Marguerite.Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.The Tracy Diamonds.Darkness and Daylight.Hugh Worthington.Cameron Pride.Rose Mather.Ethelyn’s Mistake.Milbank.Edna Browning.West Lawn.Mildred.Forrest House.Madeline.Christmas Stories.Gretchen.Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.Paul Ralston.The Cromptons.The Merivale Banks.

Tempest and Sunshine.

English Orphans.

Homestead on Hillside.

’Lena Rivers.

Meadow Brook.

Dora Deane.

Cousin Maude.

Marian Grey.

Edith Lyle.

Daisy Thornton.

Chateau d’Or.

Queenie Hetherton.

Bessie’s Fortune.

Marguerite.

Mrs. Hallam’s Companion.

The Tracy Diamonds.

Darkness and Daylight.

Hugh Worthington.

Cameron Pride.

Rose Mather.

Ethelyn’s Mistake.

Milbank.

Edna Browning.

West Lawn.

Mildred.

Forrest House.

Madeline.

Christmas Stories.

Gretchen.

Dr. Hathern’s Daughters.

Paul Ralston.

The Cromptons.

The Merivale Banks.

“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affection of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price.G. W. Dillingham Co., PublishersNEW YORK.

Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 each, and sentfreeby mail on receipt of price.

G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers

NEW YORK.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESPageChanged fromChanged to263hard face. Mrs. White sent them a sure specific forhard face. Mrs. White sent them a cure specific forTypos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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