It was at breakfast the next morning that the great decision was announced.
“Well, young ladies,” said the doctor, looking from one to the other of his older daughters, “what do you think your mother and I have decided to do with you?” He paused for just an instant, then gave the answer himself without waiting for theirs. “Nothing short of sending you East for the rest of the summer. We’ve held a council, and decided that nothing else will do in your case.”
They caught their breath, gasping for a moment at the suddenness of it, then Kate brought her hands together with a clap. “Glorious!” she cried; “that’s the best news I ever heard. But, do you know, I felt in my bones last night that it was coming.”
The doctor laughed. The idea of this plump young creature deriving any premonitions from her bones amused him. “And what did yours indicate?” he asked, turning to Esther.
“Nothing as delightful as that,” she said. Her face was not as bright as Kate’s. She wondered, with a sudden misgiving, whether her discontented mood of the evening before had any share in bringing the decision, and the thought was in the glance which she sent at that moment toward her mother.
The latter met it with a smiling clearness. “Your father has been in favor of it for some time,” she said, “and now that the wheat has turned out so well there is really nothing in the way.”
The shadow flitted from Esther’s eyes. “Oh, it will be beautiful to go, perfectly beautiful! I only wish Virgie could go, too,” she said, with a glance at the little sister, whose face had grown very sober.
“Now you needn’t worry a bit about Virgie,” said the doctor, putting his arm around the child, who sat beside him. “Your mother and I couldn’t stand it without her, and we’re going to see that she has a good time. Just you wait, Virgie,” he added, lowering his voice confidentially, “I have a plan for this fall, and you’re going to be in it. There’ll be a fine slice of cake left for us three when the others have eaten theirs all up.”
He was exceedingly fond of his children. With their training, either physical or mental, he had never charged himself,—perhaps because they were girls,—but to gratify their wants, and to shield them as far as possible from the hardships of life, was a side of parental privilege to which he was keenly responsive.
“But when are we going?” Kate was already demanding.
“Just as soon as your mother can get you ready,” said the doctor; “and I shouldn’t think that need to take very long. I fancy she has your wardrobe planned already. Something kept her awake last night, and when I asked her, sometime in the small hours, what it was, she said she was contriving a new way to make over one of your old dresses. For your mother,” he added, smiling at that lady, “is like the wife of John Gilpin. Though bent on pleasure—yours, of course—she has ‘a frugal mind.’”
“Think of being likened to that immortal woman!” cried Mrs. Northmore. “I only hope my plans will work better than hers did.”
“Oh, your plans always work,” said the doctor. “But don’t tax your wits too far reconstructing old clothes. Get some new ones; get ’em pretty and stylish. I want the girls to be fixed up nice if they’re going to visit those Eastern relatives.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Kate. “Papa, your ideas and mine fit beautifully.”
He was in the best of spirits. The good wheat crop had already brought the payment of some long-standing medical bills, and Dr. Northmore could always adjust himself to a time of abundance more gracefully than to the day of small things.
“We shall treat you handsomely in the matter of our expenses, you may depend on that,” said his wife. She had no intention of relaxing her carefulness in the use of money; but she never wounded her husband’s pride, and she always indulged him in the amused smile with which, in times of comparative ease, he seemed to regard feminine economies.
There were plenty of them in the days that immediately followed, but the girls had most of the things they wanted, and their father was more than satisfied with the pretty becoming dresses in which they bloomed out, one after another, for his benefit. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Northmore was quite as desirous as he that her girls should be well provided for this summer outing. She was a bit of a philosopher, but she never affected the slightest indifference to the matter of dress. She had excellent taste herself, and had given it to her children.
Things moved so swiftly that in little more than a week they were ready. There were good-by calls to be made, and a host of others to be received from friends who came to offer their congratulations and express effusive hopes for their pleasure during the summer, for the news of their plan had spread rapidly. But there was one friend to whom word came late, and who, but for accident, might have missed it altogether.
This was Morton Elwell. The girls were walking home from the village late one afternoon, when Kate, glancing back, saw the young man with the New Light preacher. The two had been harvesting together at the other end of the county, and since that day at the farm neither of them had been in town.
“There’s Mort Elwell!” she exclaimed; and then she faced about, drawing her sister with her, and waited frankly for him to come up.
The two men quickened their steps instantly. “Upon my word, I didn’t know you till you turned,” said Morton. “My, how fine you look!”
Kate smiled, and Esther flushed. Perhaps it was one of the liberties she did not quite like his taking, that he should be so plainly observant of their new dresses.
“Well, it’s a wonder that anybody knowsyou, face to face, Mort,” said Kate. “I declare you’re as brown as a mulatto.”
“Am I?” said the young man cheerfully. “Well, I’m at the engine now, and what with smoke and sunburn it paints a fellow up in good style.”
“I suppose you know we’re going away next Wednesday,” said Kate. She had fallen behind with him, leaving Esther to walk with the preacher.
“Why, no, I didn’t know it,” said Morton, fairly stopping in his walk. “Is that so?”
“‘Certain true, black and blue,’ as we used to say when we were children,” replied Kate. “We’re going to Grandfather Saxon’s. It was all settled that night after we got home from the threshing.” She paused a moment; then, as he had not spoken, added, with a little pout: “I suppose you couldn’t strain a point to say you’re glad. Everybody else seems to say it easily enough.”
“Why, of course I’m glad,” said Morton, hastily, “and I hope you’ll have a tremendously good time; but it sort of takes a body’s breath away, it’s so sudden. When are you coming back?”
“We’re not thinking of that part yet,” said Kate; “but not before September.”
His face lengthened. “Why, I shan’t see anything of you girls all vacation,” he said. “I did think when the harvesting was over I should get an occasional glimpse of you. I wish threshing hadn’t begun so early this year.”
“What’s that?” said the preacher, turning his head. “Wanting seed time and harvest put off for your special benefit! That won’t do, Mort.”
“Oh, not that exactly,” said the young man. “But itissort of hard on a fellow not to get any chance of seeing his friends all summer, when that’s the only time in the year he’s at home.”
“There’ll be plenty of your friends left,” said Esther. She had half turned her head, and was looking wonderfully pretty in her new leghorn hat with the corn-flowers and poppies.
“Oh!” he said, reproachfully; but he had no chance to say anything more just then, for the preacher claimed her attention.
“How far East are you going?” he asked.
“To mother’s old home in New England,” said the girl. The preacher gave a surprised whistle. “Was your mother raised back there?” he demanded. “Well, I never should have known but she was a born Hoosier.”
As a born Hoosier herself the young lady appreciated the compliment. “No,” she said, “mother came from Massachusetts; but she’s lived here twenty years, and I don’t suppose there’s much difference now.”
“Oh, we’ll let her have the name now,” said the preacher, good-naturedly. “But it’s queer I never heard her say a word about ‘Boston.’”
“She didn’t come from Boston,” said Esther. “There’s ever so much of New England outside of Boston, you know.”
“’Pears to cover the whole ground for most Yankees,” said the preacher, dryly. “I don’t recollect as I ever talked with any of ’em—except your mother—that it didn’t leak out mighty quick if they’d come from anywheres near the ‘Hub.’ ’Peared to carry it round as a sort of measuring stick, to size up everything else by.”
His figure was a trifle mixed, but it met the case. After a moment he added: “Well, I’m right glad you’re going. It’s a good thing for young folks to see something of the world outside of the home corner. I always thought I’d like to travel a bit myself, but I reckon I’ll never get to do it any other way than going round with a threshing machine, and that don’t exactly hit my notion of travelling for pleasure. Eh, Mort?” he queried, turning to the young man behind him.
The latter was not in a mood to feel the full humor of the remark, which he had heard in spite of his apparent attention to Kate’s lively chatter. “Can’t say there’s much variety in it,” he replied rather absently.
“However,” continued the preacher, turning again to Esther, “I did go to Kentucky once when I was a little chap. No,” he said, shaking his head, as he caught the eager question in her eyes, “not in the Blue Grass country where your father was raised, but in among the knobs where the Cumberlands begin. It was a mighty poor rough country. I reckon you’ll see something of the same sort where you’re going.”
“Oh, but that is a beautiful country! Mother has always said so,” cried the girl, looking quite distressed.
“Well, maybe you’d call that country down there pretty too,” said the preacher, with easy accommodation, “though it’s all in a heap, and rocks all over it. Reminds me of the story about a soldier from somewhere hereabouts that was going through there in the war-time, and stopped to talk a minute with a fellow that was hoeing corn. ‘Well, stranger,’ says he, ‘reckon you’re about ready to move out of here.’ ‘Why so?’ says the fellow, looking sort of stupid. ‘Why, I see you’ve got the land all rolled up ready to start,’ says the soldier.”
The preacher interrupted his mellow drawl for a moment to join in her laugh at the story, then went on: “Now my notion of a pretty country is one that looks as if you could raise something on it; the sort we’ve got round here, you know,” he added, stretching out his arm with an inclusive gesture.
His idea of landscape beauty was not Esther Northmore’s, but as she looked at that moment over the peaceful country, golden and green with its generous harvests, with here and there a stretch of forest rising tall and straight against the sky, she felt its quiet charm with a thrill of pride and gladness. “Yes; this is a beautiful country,” she said softly. “I shall never change my mind about that.”
They had reached a point where another road crossed the one they were following, and the preacher paused in his walk. “I must turn off here,” he said. “Good-by! and take care of yourselves.” He shook hands heartily with each of the girls, and added, with a nod at Esther: “Give my special regards to your mother. Tell her I’ve just found out that she’s a Yankee, and I don’t think any less of her for it.”
He was an odd genius, this New Light preacher. The Northmores were by no means of his flock, but the feeling between them was most cordial. In his office of comforter he had touched that of the healer more than once among the families under his care, and the touch had left a mutual respect between him and the doctor. With Mrs. Northmore the feeling was even warmer. Rough and ill-educated as he was, there was a native force and shrewdness in the man by no means common, and they were joined with a frank honesty which would have attracted her in a far less interesting person than he.
Morton Elwell walked on to the house, but refused the girls’ invitation to come in to supper. “You know mother would like to have you,” Esther said, with polite urgence. “She was complaining the other day that we saw so little of you.”
But Morton was resolute. Perhaps the thresher’s costume in which he was arrayed, the blue flannel shirt, jean trousers, and heavy boots, none too black, helped him to stand by the promise he had given Mrs. Elwell. “No,” he said; “I told Aunt Jenny I wouldn’t fail to come home to supper.” But he leaned on the gate when he had opened it for the girls, and stood for a minute as if he found it hard to turn away.
“HE LEANED ON THE GATE WHEN HE HAD OPENED IT FOR THE GIRLS.”“HE LEANED ON THE GATE WHEN HE HAD OPENED IT FOR THE GIRLS.”
“HE LEANED ON THE GATE WHEN HE HAD OPENED IT FOR THE GIRLS.”
“Of course you’ll write to me first,” he said, glancing from one to the other. There had been a correspondence of a desultory sort between them ever since he went away to college, and he seemed to take for granted that it would go on now. And then he added, looking to Esther, “You wrote to me real often when you were a little girl, and went to your grandfather’s before.”
Her color rose a trifle. “You have a remarkably good memory, Mort, to remember such little things when they happened so long ago,” she said lightly.
“Why, I’ve got every one of them now,” he replied. “I was looking them over not so very long ago, and they were the jolliest kind of letters, with little postscripts added by Kate in cipher. She was five, I believe, then. They were joint productions in those days, but you needn’t feel obliged to make them so now.”
“I suppose we needn’t feel ‘obliged’ to write them at all,” she said, lifting her eyebrows a little.
“Oh, you wouldn’t go back on a fellow like that!” said Morton. “Why, it would break me all up.”
There was something so affectionately boyish in his manner that Kate said instantly: “Of course we’ll write to you, and tell you everything that happens. You may wish my letters were postscripts again before you get through with them.”
And Esther added cheerfully, “Yes, if you want to add a few more specimens of my handwriting to that ancient collection, you shall certainly have them.”
“Maybe we’ll send you our pictures too,” said Kate. “We’re going to have some taken after we get there, and if they’re good—”
He broke in upon her with a sudden eagerness. “Well, don’t let your cousin get you up like statues. I hate that kind.”
Kate burst into a laugh, but Esther looked impatient. “Oh, dear, don’t you know that common, everyday faces like ours can’t be made to look that way?” she said.
“Can’t they? Well, I’m awfully glad of it,” he replied. “Good-by.” And then he grasped their hands for a moment, and struck off at a long, swinging gait across the field that lay between their home and his uncle’s.
The days that were left ran fast. They were full and hurried, as the last days of preparation are apt to be in spite of the best-laid plans. But the girls managed to take some rides with their father, who, in view of the coming separation, seemed to expect more of their company than usual, and Kate contrived to hold some sittings in the kitchen with Aunt Milly, who had been in a depressed state of mind ever since the summer plan had been decided on. In spite of being one who held with no superstitions, a fact she never failed to mention when she had anything of a mysterious nature to communicate, the number of dreams and presentiments she had in regard to this visit was remarkable, and they all tended to throw doubt on the probability of her darlings’ return.
“Why, we came back when we were children,” said Kate one evening, when the old woman was unusually depressed, “and it was just as far to grandfather’s then as it is now. It’s because you’re getting old and rheumatic that you feel so blue about us, Aunt Milly.”
But Milly sighed as she shook her head. “It was different in those days, honey,” she said. “You couldn’t help comin’ back to your ole mammy when you were chil’en. But you’re older now, an’ a mighty good looking pair o’ girls, if I do say it, an’ there’s no tellin’ what may happen when you get to gallivantin’ roun’ with the young men in your mother’s country.”
“Now, Aunt Milly,” laughed Kate, “you’ve always pretended to think we’re only children still, and all at once you talk as if we were grown-up young ladies. It’s no such thing. Besides,” she added cunningly, “didn’t we come back safe and sound from Kentucky last year? And you know there are no young men anywhere to hold a candle with those down there.”
“That’s a fac’, honey,” said Aunt Milly, lifting her head. “The ole Kentucky stock don’t have to knock under yet, if some things is changed.”
“Trust Milly to stand up for her own country,” laughed Dr. Northmore, who had paused in his passage through the kitchen, and caught the last remark.
“And me for mine, papa,” cried Kate. “I shall always like it better than any other. I know I shall.”
Apparently he did not disapprove the sentiment, but he added warningly, “Well, make it big enough.” And then he took her away with him to join the family conclave in talking over the proposed journey.
They were small travellers, the Northmores, and the excursions from home had of late years been short. The length of the one about to be taken impressed them all. Mrs. Northmore spoke of it with manifest anxiety, and the doctor spent much time poring over the railroad guide and time-table. It was a work which, in spite of its fascination, harassed him, and he alternated between the exasperated opinion that it was impossible for any man not inspired to understand its vexatious figures, and a disposition to combat with vehemence any one who reached a conclusion different from his own on a single point. By this time the course of the journey had been fully decided on. There would be but one change of cars, and this had been hedged about with so much of explanation and admonition that no two girls of average sense could possibly go wrong.
The day came at last, and a perfect day it was, when they started off. The doctor and Virgie accompanied them to the station, but Mrs. Northmore preferred to say the last word quietly at home. There was a crowd of young people gathered at the station, but the time for good-bys was brief. The through train for the East was not a moment behind time. There was a short impatient stop of the iron steed, a sudden crowding together for hurried farewells, then two flushed faces, half smiling, half tearful, pressed against the window, and the great wheels were in motion again and the travellers on their way.
They drew a long breath as they settled fairly into their seats. “I’m glad that part of it’s over,” said Kate.
“So am I,” said Esther; and then she added: “I’m glad we don’t get there right away. It’s nice to have an interlude between the acts.”
The journey to New England was more than a mere interlude for the girls. It was a distinct pleasure in itself. To watch the low, rich landscape which had lain around them from their infancy change imperceptibly to one different and bolder; the broad fields narrowing; the long, rolling swells lifting into clear-cut hills; the forests of beech and oak, with smooth, sunlighted floors, giving place to woods filled with a bewitching tangle of vines and ferns—all this was a constant delight to travellers as fresh and unsated as ours.
“I like the wide, open stretches better,” said Kate once, when they were winding with many turns between the close-set hills. But Esther did not assent to this. It seemed to her that nature had heaped the measure of her bounty here,—the bounty which is beauty,—not spread it out in even level, and something in her heart responded to the change.
The hills had sharpened to a rugged sternness, the fields were checkered off in little plots by lines of gray stone walls, plots in which men were gathering hay behind oxen instead of horses, when at last they reached the village of Esterly.
They had passed a succession of such villages, catching just a glimpse of pretty homes and shaded streets, with always a spire or two lifted above them,—an endless number it seemed to the girls,—but this was the name for which they had been breathlessly waiting, and it was no sooner spoken than they rose unsteadily in their places and turned their faces toward the door.
“They’ll be here, of course. I only hope we shall know them,” murmured Esther, anxiously.
She need have had no fear. Aside from some functionaries of the station there were but two persons on the platform of the Esterly depot when the Western train drew in, and these two were unmistakable. One of them was an old man, leaning eagerly forward, with his hands clasped on the top of his cane; a small, spare man, with clean-shaven face, and a touch of ruddy color in his cheeks, hair but slightly gray, and bright blue eyes which searched the faces before him without the aid of spectacles. The other was a petite young lady, in a stylish dress, with a mist of golden hair about her face, and a hat, which seemed to belong exactly with the face, tied in a gauzy mesh of something under her chin. She did not look in the least like a goddess, she was too slight and genteel; but she was clearly Stella Saxon.
“Grandfather! Stella!” came from the one side in a moment, and “Girls! Girls!” from the other, as the four met and embraced.
“We knew somebody would be here to meet us,” said Esther, when they had taken another breath and a good look at each other; “but I’d no idea it would be you, grandfather.”
“Hm,” said the old gentleman, evidently enjoying her surprise. “Mebbe you thought I’d be propped up in a big chair waiting for you at the house.”
“If you knew the state of mind he’s been in since morning!” said Stella. “We got Uncle Doctor’s telegram early, saying you’d be here on this train, and grandfather seemed to regard it as a summons to start for you at once. Mother and I had hard work to hold him back at all, and in spite of us he would start an hour before time this afternoon; actually hurried his horse to get here, too,” she added, glancing with a little grimace at the fattest of family horses which was standing before the two-seated carriage at the side of the depot. “I shudder to think what would have happened to him if you hadn’t come.”
She was saying this last to Esther privately. The old gentleman had started briskly off with Kate to look after the trunks. These were to follow to the farm in a spring wagon, and securing them was a matter involving so little delay at this quiet station that the four were very shortly on their way behind the gray nag, which, after receiving an admonishing “cluck” at starting off, was allowed to settle to his own jog-trot without further attention. They made a long circuit through the main street of the village, the old gentleman bowing and smiling to every one he met, and obviously eager to attract attention. But as the houses grew more scattering he laid the reins across his lap, put on a pair of spectacles, and for a full minute gazed through them steadily at his granddaughters.
“You look as your mother did at your age; wonderfully like,” he said, with his eyes on Esther’s face, “and you, too, but not so much,” he added more slowly, turning to Kate. He took off his spectacles and returned them to an old-fashioned steel case; then asked, with much deliberation, “And what do you think of your old grandfather?”
“Why, you look just as I thought you did, only so very much younger,” replied Esther. “I’d no idea you were so strong and active.” She paused an instant, then, with a charming eagerness in her voice, added: “You make me think of the ‘Farmer of Tilsbury Vale.’ You know the poem says,—
“‘His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streakOf the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek.’”
The old gentleman made no attempt to conceal his elation. He fairly beamed; and Stella murmured in Esther’s ear: “You’ve done it! His youthful looks are his particular vanity; and to have a fresh quotation brought to bear upon the subject!” She lifted her hands as if in despair of expressing the effect on her grandfather, and settled back in her seat. He had turned to Kate and was plainly waiting for her to speak now.
“Well,” said that young lady, regarding him with cheerful scrutiny, “I can’t quote any poetry about it. It’s always Esther who puts in the fine strokes with that sort of thing; but I must say I think you look mighty young for a man of your age.”
In its way this was equally good. Ruel Saxon evidently considered that she had used a very strong expression.
“Well,” he said with complacence, “I guess there ain’t much doubt but what I do bear my age better ’n most men at my time of life. I guess I’m some like Moses about that. You know it says, ‘his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated,’ when he got to be a very old man.”
There was such evident surprise on the part of his granddaughters at this remark that he added: “To be sure, Moses was a good deal older ’n I am; he was a hundred and twenty years old when that was said of him, and I hain’t got tothatyet by considerable. But I’m past the time of life that most men get to, a good deal past. I was born in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and if I live till the twenty-first day of next June I shall be eighty-nine years old.”
He paused to let the statement take full effect, and Stella remarked: “That’s the way grandfather always tells his age. He names that year, away back in the last century, and then he tells what his birthday next year will make him. I don’t mind his keeping account for himself that way, but he has the same style of reckoning for the rest of us.”
“Well,” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes, “the women would forget their own ages if it warn’t for me and the big Bible. Now Stella here was born in the year—”
“There,” cried the girl, “what did I tell you! And isn’t it enough to make one feel ancient, the way he rolls out the syllables? Never you mind about me, grandfather. Tell the girls when they were born. I’m sure they’ve forgotten.”
They admitted the fact promptly, but he had not yet exhausted the subject of his own exceptional fortune in withstanding the ravages of age. It was a theme of which he was never weary, largely no doubt from a certain vanity, which time had spared to him in a somewhat unusual measure, along with his physical powers. To have a fresh and interested audience was inspiration enough.
“It’s a great blessing to retain one’s faculties in old age,” he said impressively. “Now I enjoy life, for aught I know, pretty near as much as I ever did; but it ain’t so with everybody. There was Barzillai, for instance. He was a younger man, by eight years, than I am, but he must have been terrible hard of hearing, by his own account, and he’d lost his taste so that there warn’t any flavor to him in the victuals he ate; though he seems to have been an active enough man in some ways,” he added reflectively.
There was a moment’s pause during which Deacon Saxon doubtless mused upon his own mercies, and his granddaughters pondered the question, who the unfortunate octogenarian whom he had just mentioned might be. Esther could not remember ever hearing of any relative of that name, and it hardly seemed to have a local flavor. She was glad when Kate, who seldom remained ignorant for want of asking a question, inquired briskly:—
“Who was this Bar—what’s his name, that you’re talking about?”
“Who was Barzillai?” cried the old man, turning upon the girl an astonished countenance. “Hain’t you never heard of Barzillai, the Gileadite, the man who went down to give sustenance to David when he was fleeing before Absalom? Don’t you know aboutthat, and how David afterwards wanted to take him up to Jerusalem with him, but Barzillai said he was too old, and asked the king to let him stay in his own place? Hain’t you read abouthim? Well, I never!”
He paused as in speechless wonder, then ejaculated: “When your mother was your age she could have told all about him and anybody else you could mention out of the Bible. What on airth is she doing that she hain’t trained you up to know about it? I hope she hain’t stopped reading the scriptures herself, living out there in the West.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Kate, quite overwhelmed by this burst, and in her jealousy for her mother indifferent for the moment to the insinuation against her native section. “Mother knows more about the Bible than anybody I ever saw,—except you,—and I’ve no doubt she told us all about that man when we were little” (she made no attempt now at his name), “but I never could remember those Old Testament folks.”
It is doubtful whether Ruel Saxon felt much reassured as to the training his daughter had given her children by the cheerful manner in which Kate made the last admission. For himself his delight in those “Old Testament folks” was perennial. He had pored over their histories till every incident of their lives was as familiar to him as that of his own neighbors. He had entered so intimately into the thoughts and experiences of those ancient worthies that it was no meaningless phrase when, in his daily prayers, he asked that he might “sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven.”
Ruel Saxon was a type of that class of men, passing away now even from the hills of New England, who from infancy were so steeped in knowledge of the Bible that its incidents formed the very background of their daily thinking, and its language colored their common conversation. It must be confessed that in the Old Testament he found his keenest pleasure, but between the covers of the Old or New there was no spot which was not to him revered and familiar ground. That all scripture was given by inspiration of God, and was “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, and for instruction in righteousness,” was a part of his creed on which no shadow of doubt had ever fallen. The doctrine, according to his lights, he maintained with unction; the instruction he counted himself well qualified to give; and the reproof he felt equally called to administer on all needful occasions.
It was some minutes before he could quite recover from the astonishment of finding himself the direct progenitor of two young people who knew nothing of that worthy Gileadite whose state in old age formed such a striking contrast to his own. Probably he would have delivered a little homily, then and there, on the importance of reading the Bible, had not a turn in the road at the top of a long steep hill brought them suddenly into sight of the old Saxon homestead.
“There ’tis! There’s the old place! Should you know it?” he demanded of his granddaughters.
Esther leaned forward from the back seat where she was sitting with Stella and gazed for a moment, almost holding her breath. Then she lifted a pair of moist shining eyes to her grandfather. “I should know it anywhere,” she said, with a thrill in her voice. “It looks just as I have dreamed of it all these years.”
Indeed it was a picture which might easily hold its place in a loving memory; an old white house, with a wide stone chimney rising in the middle of a square old-fashioned roof, standing in the shelter of a cluster of elms, so tall, so noble, and so gracious in their bearing that the special guardianship of Heaven seemed resting on the spot.
Kate had been looking at it steadily too, but she shook her head as she glanced away. “No,” she said, “I shouldn’t know that I’d ever seen it before; but if you had handed me the reins, grandfather, and told me to find it somewhere on this road, I don’t think I should have turned in at the wrong place.”
They talked of nothing else as they drove slowly toward it. The motion Ruel Saxon had made—a most unusual one—to apply the lash to Dobbin had been checked by Esther, who declared she wanted to take in the details one by one, and begged him, with feeling, not to go too fast, a request which threw Stella into a state of inward convulsion from which she barely recovered in time to prevent the old gentleman from monopolizing the whole distance with an account of the various improvements he had made on the house, notably the last shingling and the raising of the door-sills.
“You might tell the girls how youdidn’tchange the windows,” she said slyly; but if he was inclined to do this, Esther’s exclamation just then prevented.
“Oh, those dear little old-fashioned windows!” she cried. “They’re blinking in the sunshine just as they used to. Grandfather dear, I’m so glad you haven’t had them changed into something different.”
He winced a little at this, and Stella said magnanimously, “It was really my mother’s idea. She does complain sometimes of the trouble it is to keep all those tiny little window-panes clean, and so grandfather thought one spring that he’d have some new sashes put in, with a single pane of glass above and below. They had it all fixed up between them, but I came home just in time to prevent.” She gave a shudder, then added: “I’ve always believed in special providences since then. Why, the change would have been ruinous, simply ruinous! You know if you can’t have a lovely new house with everything graceful and artistic, the next best thing is to have one that’s old and quaint. I wouldn’t have a thing changed about our house for any consideration. I’ve set my foot down about that.” (With all her daintiness she looked as if she could do it with effect.) “But mother and grandfather understand now, and have given their solemn promise never to make the smallest alteration without consulting me.”
The old gentleman had been listening to this with his mouth pulled down to an expression of resignation which was clearly not natural to him. “Well,” he said, when she had reached her triumphant conclusion, “I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s best to let women-folks have their way about things in the house. It pacifies ’em, and makes ’em willing to let the men manage things of more consequence. You know Solomon says ‘it is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious woman.’”
“That’s a fact, grandfather,” said Stella, cordially; “and there’s no describing how contentious I should be if you set about changing this old house.”
They had almost reached it now. A minute more carried them under the elms, straight to the door. It was open, and under the latticed porch, covered with honeysuckles on one side and bitter-sweet on the other, stood Aunt Elsie waiting to receive them. She was a delicate-looking woman, whose quality, as one read it at first glance, was distinctly that of a lady. That she was somewhat precise and old-fashioned came next, in spite of the graceful French twist in her hair and her pretty lavender dress. She kept her place under the lattice, the color rising slightly in her thin cheeks as the girls came up, and her manner of greeting them, though affectionate, had none of the eager warmth of the earlier meeting.
Aunt Elsie Saxon, beside her vivacious daughter, or her still more sprightly father-in-law, seemed a singularly colorless person, but her quiet unresponsive manner covered a stronger individuality than appeared. The war had made her a widow at the very beginning of the struggle. In the bereavement of those first days she had come with her children to the old home for the help and comfort she sorely needed, but the time never came when she could be spared to leave it. And now for many years she had been mistress of the house, bearing with the somewhat erratic humors of Ruel Saxon as a more impulsive woman could hardly have done, and consoled, no doubt, for much that was trying by the certain knowledge that in his heart he loved and leaned upon her.
There was one other member of the family circle, Tom, the sixteen-year-old boy, but he, it appeared, had some pressing duty in the field. At least he did not show himself till supper time, and then he slipped in with the hired man, who, as well as himself, was duly introduced to the cousins. He was a shy, awkward fellow, with a freckled face, and a pair of shrewd observant eyes, in whose glance Kate thought she detected a lurking disdain for the society of girls. She wanted to begin making his acquaintance at once,—by way of punishment, of course,—but his seat was too far from hers at the table, and he was off like a flash when the meal was over.
It seemed to both the girls that this was the longest day they had ever known, but its hours did not outlast the pleasure they brought. Esther could not rest till she had rambled about the place to find the old familiar things, and her delight, as she came upon one after another, knew no bounds. There was the cherry tree, almost strangled by the grape-vine which hung around it in a thick green canopy, under which she had done miniature housekeeping in those childish days, and a fragment of old blue china, trodden in the ground, was a find to bring a joy like that of relic-hunters in Assyrian mounds, when they come upon some mighty treasure.
“It was a part of our best tea-set, Stella,” she cried. “Don’t you remember how I broke one of grandmother’s company plates by accident, and after mourning over it a little in her gentle way, she gave us the pieces to play with, so I shouldn’t feel too badly?” She wiped the bit on her lace-edged handkerchief and held it for a moment lovingly against her cheek.
There was the bunch of striped grass, growing still at the corner of the garden, and she felt a childish impulse to throw herself on the ground beside it, and hunt, as she used to, for two of the long silky spears which would exactly match. She had never quite done it in the old days. Perhaps she could find them now. She peered up into the tallest of the elms and shouted for joy to find the nest of a fire hangbird swinging just as it used to among the long, lithe branches. She made her way straight to the tree where the pound sweetings grew, and laughed to find that it bore them still, large and golden as ever.
And here again a childish memory came back with a rippling delight over the years that were past. “Do you remember how I tore my dress one day, climbing that tree to get apples?” she appealed to Stella. “I could never bring enough down in my pocket, and if I took a basket up it was sure to spill and the chickens to peck the apples before I got down. One day I gave my dress a horrible tear going up. It scared me at first, and then it dawned upon me, What a place for apples! It was a woollen dress and the skirt was lined. I used that hole for a pocket, and filled the skirt full. It’s a wonder I wasn’t dragged from the tree by the weight of it. The gathers were dragged from the belt, I remember that perfectly, and how grandmother looked when I went in to share the booty with her,” she added, laughing.
Oh, it was pleasant, this wandering over the old place, the finding and remembering!
It was really inside the house that things were most changed; but this, as Stella explained, was really a return to the way they rightly belonged. Much of the furniture which Esther remembered as crowding the dusky garret had come down, and some which her grandmother had rejoiced in as new and handsome had taken its place there. The haircloth sofa and chairs over which she had slipped and slidden in her youthful days had given place to an oak settle and chairs which, in spite of their old-fashioned shape, were roomy and comfortable. One, a delicious old sleepy hollow, covered with the quaintest of chintz, stood in the corner which had been the grandmother’s, and the little, round light-stand was beside it, with the leather-covered Bible smooth as glass, and the candlestick and snuffers, as if she still might sit there of an evening to read.
“Grandfather himself prefers a lamp,” Stella remarked, in passing; “he says he’s got past tallow dips, but out of respect to grandmother’s memory—I impressed that on him strongly—he lets me keep the stand just as she used it.”
She certainly had a genius for restoring the old, and doing it with an art which threw all its stiffness into graceful lines. The fireplace in the sitting room, which had been boarded up in Esther’s day, with a sheet-iron stove in front of it, was open now, and the old brass andirons shone at the front. The old bricks had been cracked with age, but they had been replaced by some blue Dutch tilings representing Bible scenes, which gave the whole a charmingly quaint effect.
“It came high,” Stella said to Esther, who hung on every word of explanation, “and I didn’t know for a while as I should get what I wanted. There was a Colonial tile that would have been perfect, but grandfather wouldn’t hear of it. Then all at once I lighted on this in a shop in Boston, and I knew the deed was done. Grandfather fell a victim to my account of the pictures, and I couldn’t get them quick enough to suit him. I consider that fireplace my greatest triumph.”
The house was really a succession of them. It was only at the pictures on the walls that the girl’s desire to restore the old had stopped. “If there had only been some fine old family portraits!” she said mournfully. “But there weren’t. I suppose our ancestors never had any money to spend for that sort of thing. There was positively nothing but some wretched prints, and one oil painting that grandmother saved her egg-money for months to buy; hideous thing, quite on the order of those that are advertised nowadays, ‘Picture painted while you wait.’ I had to banish them all. There was no other way. But I found some of grandmother’s dear old samplers tucked away in the drawers, and I pinned them up around to take the edge off the other things.”
“The other things” were some of them her own, and they mingled on the walls with photographs of foreign scenes, and here and there an etching with a name pencilled in the corner, to which she called attention as they passed, with the air of one confident of impressing the beholder.
“Oh, I’ve picked up a few good things in the course of my travels,” she said, after one of Esther’s bursts of admiration. “I’ll defy anybody to make a better showing than I with the amount I’ve spent. Mother thinks I’ve spent too much; but it’s my only extravagance, positively my only one, and you have to let yourself out in some direction. It’s all that makes saving worth while.”
She seemed to have no vanity about her own work, but there was one bit of it before which Esther paused with a long delight, turning back from famous Madonnas again and again to gaze at it.
It was a picture of a sweet old face, framed in a grandmother’s cap, very softly done in crayon, and it hung above the little stand in the corner. Below it, pinned carefully on the wall, was an old, old sampler, and the faded letters at the top spelled, “Roxana Fuller, aged eleven.” It was a deft hand, though so young, that had wrought it. There was exquisite needlework in the flowing border, and in the slender maidens at the centre, clasping hands under a weeping willow, above the lines:—
“When ye summers all are fled,When ye wafting lamp is dead,Where immortal spirits reign,There may we two meet again.”
Why these two sweet creatures, evidently in the bloom of life, should have been consoling themselves with this pensive sentiment it was hard to see; but a consolation it may have been to the poor little artist who achieved them to think of Elysian fields where teachers should cease from troubling and samplers be no more.
It had grown dark in the house, too dark for any more searching of its treasures, when the two girls at last sat quietly down in the old south doorway. “If grandmother were only here it would all be perfect,” said Esther, with a long, soft sigh. “Somehow it seems strange that she should be gone, and everything else just as it used to be. I had no idea I should miss her so.”
“I always miss her when I sit in this doorway in the evening,” said Stella. “It was her favorite place. She was so feeble in those last years that she seldom got beyond the threshold, but she said there was always some pleasant smell or sound coming in to find her. You ought to have seen her here in the spring. The door was always boarded up in the winter, with a bank across the threshold to keep out the cold, and she was so happy when it was opened. I used to tell her when the frogs began to peep, and she would listen and smile, and say it seemed to her their voices were softer than they used to be. Dear heart, she was so deaf in those days that I really suppose she only heard them singing in her memory, but it was all the same to her.
“Yes, it was all the same,” she repeated musingly, “and just as real, though grandfather used to argue with her sometimes that a person who couldn’t hear her own name across the room couldn’t hear frogs peeping at a quarter of a mile. And she would admit it sometimes in a humble way, but she always forgot it, and enjoyed the singing just the same the next evening.”
“She wasn’t a bit like grandfather, was she?” asked Esther. She wanted Stella to keep on talking about this sweet old grandmother, whom she herself had known only in a brief childish way.
“Oh, dear, no,” said Stella; “there couldn’t be two people more unlike. She never talked of herself, and she never quoted scripture unless it was one of the promises. Grandfather always lorded it over her in a way, and she was so frail toward the last that he did it more than ever. If the least thing ailed her he thought she was going to die right off, and he always felt it his duty to tell her that she was a very sick woman, and that it would not be surprising if she were drawing near her end.”
She made a soft gurgling in her throat, then went on.
“But that never worried grandmother a bit. She always said she was willing to go if ’twas the Lord’s will; but, do you know, in her heart she really expected to outlive him! She told me so once confidentially, and explained, in her perfectly sweet way, that she knew how to manage him better than any one else, and she was afraid it would be a little hard for us to get along with him if she were gone. She said it had been a subject of prayer with her for years, and she had faith that her prayer would be answered.”
She paused, and Esther said gravely: “But she did die before him, after all. I wonder what she thought about her prayer then.” Stella shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said; “I imagine she didn’t think of it at all, but only that God wanted her. It would have been just like her.”
Esther did not speak for a minute. She was pondering her grandmother’s case, while the crickets in the grass filled the stillness with their chirping, and the long, clear call of a whippoorwill sounded from the woods. Presently she asked, “Did she know at the last that she was really going to die?”
“I think she did,” said Stella. “I’ve always felt sure she did, though no one else feels just as I do about it.”
She clasped her hands about her knees, and a graver note than usual crept into her musical voice, as she went on. “There was something like a paralytic stroke toward the end, and after that she never got up, but lay in bed, not suffering any pain, but only growing weaker every day. I was with her a great deal, and there never was any one easier to take care of. One morning I was watering the flowers in her window and I saw a cluster of buds, that were almost blown, on her tea rose. She was passionately fond of flowers, and that rose was a special favorite, though it blossomed so seldom that any one else would have lost all patience with it. I knew how pleased she would be, so I took it over to her bed. ‘Grandmother,’ I said, ‘there are some buds on your tea rose; it’ll be in bloom in a day or two.’ If you could have seen how her face lighted up! ‘Why, why,’ she said, ‘my tea rose!’ And then she put out her hands all of a tremble, as if she couldn’t believe it without touching. I guided her dear old fingers, and she moved them over the bush as gently as if it had been a baby’s face. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it has blossomed so many times when something beautiful happened! Somehow, it seemed to know. It blossomed when Lucia was married, and the day your mother came home to live with you children; but I never thought it would be so now. A day or two, did you say; only a day or two more?’ And then she closed her eyes with such a smile, and I heard her saying softly to herself,—
“‘There everlasting spring abides,And never-withering flowers.’
“Her mind wandered a little all that day and the next, and she never once spoke of leaving us, but she slipped away at night as quietly as going to sleep, and in the morning the rose was in bloom. I told grandfather about it afterward, but he didn’t attach any significance to it at all. In fact, I think he felt a little mortified, and he said if she had realized that she was on the brink of eternity she wouldn’t have been thinking about a rose.”
She was silent a minute, then added: “In one way I don’t know but grandmother’s prayer was answered after all, for grandfather seemed different after her death. He has been more considerate of us all, and we—yes, I guess we’ve tried harder to be good to him. We couldn’t help it when we remembered how patient she always was.”
The chirping of the crickets seemed to grow fuller and gladder in the summer stillness, and the notes of the whippoorwill came with yet mellower call. It was as if the influence of a sweet, unselfish, loving spirit filled the place, and somehow it did not seem to Esther Northmore at that moment a poor or paltry thing to have lived and died one of the common throng.
In the privacy of their room that night Kate confided to Esther two resolutions. The first was that she would not again, during her stay at her grandfather’s, needlessly expose her ignorance of any point of Bible history: “For if we’re going to get mother into disgrace, and make him think she never taught us anything about it, it’ll be a pretty business,” she ended with feeling.
To this Esther gave cordial assent, but she was not so sure of Kate’s wisdom in the other matter; for the girl, with her usual penetration, had guessed that the Eastern relatives held a somewhat exalted opinion of the superiority of New England to the rest of the United States, and announced her intention of correcting it to the best of her ability. Esther, whose loyalty to her own section was not of a combative sort, suggested mildly that people’s opinions about things didn’t alter them, and that the grandfather, at his advanced age, should at least be left to the enjoyment of any prejudices he might have in favor of his native section.
But the allusion to his age should have been omitted. Kate shook her head at this, and declared that he of all others was the one not to be spared. Was it not his pride and boast that time had not robbed him of either mental or physical vigor? No, no; she should not hold herself debarred from supplying him with new ideas on any subject. It was only when he stood on Bible ground that she should let him alone.
It was evident the next morning that on this ground he did not intend to let her alone, for at family prayers he read the pathetic story of David’s flight from his unworthy son, and his eyes sought hers for a moment with pointed meaning as he paused on the name of the loyal friend whose swift generosity remembered the fugitives, “hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness,” and who of good right met them again with rejoicing in their hour of victory.
The quaint old story held the girl’s absorbed attention to the end. She wished it were longer, and told her grandfather so after breakfast, adding that the way he read the Old Testament made it more interesting than common.
He received the compliment with complacence. “Well,” he said, “I guess I do read it better than some folks. I guess I’m a little like those men in the days of Ezra the scribe, who stood up before the people, and ‘read in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand.’”
Kate privately wondered how many more people in the Bible her grandfather resembled, but she refrained from suggesting the query, lest he should claim her attention at once for the whole list.
It was while they sat at table that morning that he said, looking at her with the sudden lighting of face which marks a mental discovery: “It’s your great-aunt Katharine that you put me in mind of. I knew there was somebody. It ain’t your looks so much; but a way you have.”
“Oh, grandfather, how can you?” cried Stella. “Kate, you won’t thank him much for that when you know Aunt Katharine.”
“She’s the one I was named for, I suppose,” said Kate. “I’ve heard mother tell about her. Well, if she’s disagreeable, there won’t be any love lost between us on account of the name. I never did like it particularly.”
“Disagreeable!” cried Stella, “why, she’s the queerest, most cross-grained, cantankerous—”
“Stella! Stella!” said her mother, severely. “Why will you prejudice your cousins against your poor Aunt Katharine?”
“My poor Aunt Katharine will do it herself quick enough,” said Stella. “Oh, yes,” she added with a little shrug, as she saw her mother’s lips parting again, “my mother’s going to tell you that Aunt Katharine has had a great deal in her life to try her, and that she is really a remarkably bright and capable woman. It’s perfectly true; and several other things are true besides.”
“The trouble with my sister Katharine,” said Ruel Saxon, setting down his cup of tea, which he had been drinking so hot that every swallow was accompanied by an upward jerk of the head and a facial contortion, “the trouble with Katharine Saxon don’t lay in her nat’ral faculties. It lays in a stiff-necked and perverse disposition. When she gets a notion into her head she won’t change it for anybody, and she’s wiser in her own conceit than ‘seven men that can render a reason.’”
“Grandfather himself frequently personates the whole seven,” observed Stella, with a nod at her cousins. She smiled, as if the memory of some past scenes amused her, then said soberly: “The fact of it is, Aunt Katharine is a regular crank. There’s nothing in this world that goes right according to her notion of it, but she’s particularly down on the ways of the men. Shewouldhave a little patience with women—for she thinks their faults are mostly due to their being so down-trodden—if they only wouldn’t marry. I’ve heard her say so! She never married herself, you know, and she has an awfully poor opinion of the whole institution.”
Ruel Saxon looked as if he had a word to offer at this point in regard to his sister’s matrimonial opinions, but Aunt Elsie was before him. “Now, don’t you think,” she said, looking gravely at Stella, and incidentally including him in the passing glance, “that we’d better let the girls form their own impressions of Aunt Katharine? They may like her a great deal better than you do, Stella.”
“I’m sure I’m willing,” said the girl, with another shrug, and her grandfather, after wrestling with a little more extremely hot tea, seemed to be willing too; but he suggested that the girls should make an early call on their Aunt Katharine. It would give them a chance of forming the desired impressions, and besides she would expect it.
The girls accepted the suggestion promptly. Indeed Kate, whose interest in her namesake had been considerably whetted by what had been said of her, proposed that they should go that very morning; but to this Aunt Elsie’s judgment was again opposed. It seemed that Aunt Katharine had a special dislike to being interrupted in her morning duties by callers, and was disposed to think slightingly of people who hadn’t “work enough to keep them at home in the fore part of the day.” In the case of her nieces, who must certainly be excused for being at leisure, she might waive the last objection, but it was best to be on the safe side.
It was settled that the girls, accompanied by their grandfather, should go that afternoon, and if the call had been upon some distinguished person they could not have taken more pains with their toilets. Esther debated between three gowns, and finally settled on a soft gray, with plain white cuffs and collar, while Kate put on a pretty lawn and the dashing Roman sash which had been Aunt Milly’s parting gift.
It was less than a half hour’s walk across the fields to Aunt Katharine’s house, but the grandfather had decided to go by the road in state, and had Dobbin and the two-seated carriage at the door in good time. He had taken a little more pains than usual with his own appearance, and his daughter-in-law added the last touches with careful hand.
She was not much inclined to the giving of gratuitous advice; but, in the absence of the young people from the room, she did say, persuasively, as she adjusted the old gentleman’s cravat: “If I were you, father, I’d try not to get into one of those discussions to-day with Aunt Katharine. We want the girls to have as pleasant an opinion of her as possible, and you know she always appears at a disadvantage when she’s arguing with you.”
Sly Aunt Elsie! There were moments when the wisdom of the serpent was as nothing to hers. Ruel Saxon twisted his neck for a moment impatiently in his cravat, then replied meekly: “Well, I s’pose it does kind of put her out to have me always get the better of her. Katharine has her good p’ints as well as anybody, and I’d be glad to have Lucia’s children see ’em. If she don’t rile me up too much I’ll—yes, I’ll try to bear with her this afternoon. Solomon says there’s a time for everything: a time to keep silence and a time to speak; and mebbe it’s a time to keep silence to-day.”
In this accommodating frame of mind he started off with his granddaughters. Stella had declined an invitation to accompany them—possibly at her mother’s suggestion—though the fact that the way lay along one of her favorite drives, the old county road, had been something of an inducement to go.
It was one of those dear old roads, familiar in every part of New England, through which the main business of the region, now diverted to other highways, once took its daily course, but which, as its importance dwindled, had gained in every roadside charm. The woods, sweet with all summer odors, had crept close to its edge; daisies and ferns encroached on its borders, and its wavy line made gracious curve for the rock which had rolled from the hill above and lay beside it still, a moss-covered perch for children and squirrels. Here, the birds, not startled too often in their secret haunts, tilted on sprays of the feathery sumach, finishing their songs with confident clearness as the traveller drew near, and the swift brown lizards darted across the way before the very wheels of his carriage.
Miss Katharine Saxon’s farm was one of those which still had contact with the world through this deserted highway, but its comparative isolation had not affected its well-kept appearance. The house was white, with green blinds at the front and sides, but presented a red end to the fields behind, after the fashion of many in that section. The dooryard, a small rectangle, was shut off from the surrounding pastures by a high picket fence, though there were no shrubs, or even a flower-bed, inside the enclosure. The owner was not visible at any of the windows as her guests walked up the gravel path, which was too narrow to admit of their advancing in any but single file, but the brass knocker had scarcely fallen before she opened the door in person.