FOR JOHN IS COMING HOME.
There is a little frame house sitting, in the shade of maples and oaks, by the roadside to the south aways from Chalk Hill. It is a leaning building, to some extent, in many ways, by reason of its age. A crooked little chimney heaves up on the exterior of one end, by reason of its insecure foundation. Shingles curl, up, as if in dotage, by reason of the sun. Weather boarding warp and twist and turn, grayed by the wash of years, by reason of their antiquity. Windows peep out, with little panes, and rattle in the wind, by reason of their frailty. Wasps and bees, in season, build their mud nests beneath curling shingle and behind twisting board; bats fly out, at eventide, from unseen holes in the gables; and swallows chatter and circle round the chimney top in the twilight of the summer days. An ancient porch, with oaken floor, hangs against the front wall, and the woodbine and morning glory creep and twine and bloom around its slanting columns. A gate swings out at the end of the path leading from the door to the highway. Flowers—the rose, the marigold, the bouncingbetty, the wild pink, the primrose, all as old-fashioned as the people who dwell here—border the pathway. A paled patch of ground stands to one side, as sacred as the Garden of Gethsemane. In the rear a gnarled and aged orchard has but recently shed its snowy burden of bloom, with lingering scents still in the air; and beyond and around, fence-enclosed fields are greening with growing crops, and still beyond are dark forests and open fields and noisy ravines.
Evening is coming on. The sun has gone down over the mountain top. Shadows have disappeared into the gray of fading light. Odors of night are ascending from the cooling earth. The robins are rendering the last stanza of their solemn doxology to the dying day. The whippoorwills send forth their melancholy praises to the approaching darkness through the wooded chancel of their shadowy choir loft. And frogs swell their throats in grave bass tones to the melody of country life at this time of departing day.
A gray-haired farmer, in rough garb, sits on the porch, smoking his pipe, and by his side sits his patient, loving wife. On the top step of the porch sits their young daughter, reading her fate, perhaps, in the evening stars, the while glancing up the road, and listening for the click of horses' feet on the stones. But no sound is heard before night comes on. The mother rises, goes in, and lights the oil lamp, and sets it by a window for the expected visitor to see. For John is coming home.
"They are late in getting here," says the mother, as she descends from the porch, and goes down the path to the gate. She looks up the road through the shadows; then returns, and sits down by her daughter on the steps.
The father relights his pipe, clanks down to the gate, in his heavy boots, looks up the road through its shadows; then returns. "They are late," he says, and resumes his seat.
"I wonder what is keeping them," says the daughter, with an expectant hush in her sweet voice, as she rises, and goes down to the gate. She looks up the road through its shadows; then returns, and sits down.
Listen!
John is coming home.
They hear the clank of horses' hoofs, the rattling wheels, the rhythm of a lively trot; then indistinct voices far in the distance.
John is coming home. The son who went away the year before—the brother—is coming home. The father's boots clank on the porch as he impatiently walks back and forth. The mother rises, and shades her eyes, and peers up the roadway through the shadows. The sister rises, with a dancing heart, and flutters down to the gate, like an angel in the darkness.
For John is coming home. Home! His only place of sweet rememberance.
It is an age, it seems, before the team draws up and John leaps out to catch his sister in his arms.
"Come into the light, Anne, that I may see your face, for I know you are growing so handsome," said John, putting his arm around his sister, and went laughing with her toward the house. Could he have seen those blushes, in the darkness, because of his brotherly praising of her!
"How is mother?" was his greeting to his mother, as he kissed her at the foot of the steps. And, with her clinging to him on one side and Anne on the other, he ascended the steps to the porch.
"Where is father?" asked John, not seeing him in the darkness, standing just ahead of them. "Oh, here he is!" John exclaimed, as he released himself from his mother and sister, and grasped his father's rough hand. "Come into the light and let me see you all," said John, after the formalities of greeting had been performed, to the satisfaction of all around.
The light brought forth a revelation for them all, as light does for everything. The family now saw in John a new being in outward appearance, but still the same loving son and brother. John now saw his father and mother a little older, it appeared, perhaps, from anxiety over his absence, or it may have been their strenuous toil was showing plainer on them. He also saw in his sister, a simple country maiden in the rusticity of young beauty.
"Anne, will you let me kiss you again?" asked John, as he stood in admiration over her by the lamp, holding her hand, after his mother and father had gone to complete the supper that had been almost ready for hours waiting for him.
Anne tip-toed up to her brother, at his request, and put up her sweet lips to his.
"And how has my little sister been all these months?" he asked, patting her on the cheek.
"Very well, John; I hope you have been a good boy," she answered.
"Sister wouldn't expect anything else of me, would she?" he asked, kissing her again.
"Oh, no, indeed, John," she replied, with wide eyes.
"And have you been good?" he asked.
"Very, John," she responded.
"No beaus yet, I hope?" he asked, in his teasing way he always had with her.
"Why, no, John!" and she blushed, not that she had a beau, but through maiden coyness. "You are the only one I've got, John."
Supper was then announced. James, who brought John from town, came in after putting away the horses. And they all sat down in happy reunion once more. For John was home.
"What was the cause of your delay, John?" asked Michael Winthrope, the father.
"Oh, by the way, father, I must tell you about it," answered John, laughing heartily, and looking slyly at James, who was now dressed in his best clothes, and presented as good an appearance as John himself. "I have two lady friends, who—"
"Why, John!" exclaimed the mother, looking over her glasses.
"Wait, mother; will you hear my story?" said John, turning a happy smile upon his mother. "As I was going to say, I have two lady friends stopping at the Summit House. One is the daughter of my employer; the other her cousin. They saw us, as we were coming by, and, of course, we saw them. Knowing them as I do, I could not come on without the formality of greeting them. I introduced James to them, mother; and what do you think?—"
"Now, John, you mustn't be too severe on me," said James, modestly, "for I don't pretend to your polish since you went away."
"Never mind, James; you are a capital fellow, after all—but, mother, James and sister here"—turning to Anne—"saw them the other day, and they are—they think he and sister cannot be beaten as—roving mountaineers—no, they didn't say that sister"—turning to his sister again—"They did say they would come out to see us, if you will drive in for them."
"Law, me, John; we have no place here to entertain such grand people. What do you mean?" asked the mother, holding up her spoon, and shaking it with a remonstrative motion as emphasis to her thoughts.
"Wait, mother; wait, and hear me out, before remonstrating any further," said John, cheerfully. "They wouldn't accept my invitation; but they want sister to drive our old rig in for them, and extend the invitation to spend the day with us. They thought it would be so romantic to go on a lark with little sister"—turning to her again with such a fond look that Anne beamed under his countenance. "Will you go, sister?" he asked.
"Shall I, mother?" asked Anne.
"If John says so. What do you say, James?" asked the mother.
"That is up to John," responded James.
"And father?" asked the mother.
"Whatever John says about it," replied the father.
"Now, everything is up to you, sister," said John. "Are you going?"
"Why, of course, brother," she answered. "When?"
"Tomorrow," replied John.
So it was settled. That night, as John lay down to sleep in his old bed, so pure and white, in a little room up stairs, he heard again, above the screeching insects, the booming frogs, the wailing owls, that old sweet song that carried him into the slumberous land of nowhere—"Good bye! Good bye!"—as on so many nights before.
In the night, when the house was still, a gray-haired man, in night clothes and carrying a lighted lamp, softly stole into John's room. John lay with his face upturned, his eyes closed, and his lips parted in a sleeping smile. The father stood over him a moment, bent down and touched his lips to his son's brow. "He is a good boy yet," he said to himself, and softly stole away.
Anne was singing, as she went about her work, when John awoke in the morning; and life was astir on every hand. The pigs were squealing in their sty; the calves were bawling in their pens; ducks were squawking in their pond; chickens were cackling in the barn yard, and the sun was shining everywhere. John dressed himself and descended the narrow stairway, with tousled head and open shirt front. The mother was milking the cows, James was in the field, and the father was in the barn. Anne was preparing breakfast.
"Now, I may see you in the sunlight, sister," said John, as he sauntered into the old-fashioned kitchen, and stood before her, with folded arms, and half yawning yet from sleep, as she was spreading the cloth upon the table. "I didn't know I had such a dear little sister," he said, as he put his arm about her and kissed her on the lips.
"You are such a fine brother, John, that I am almost in love with you," she returned, as she lovingly left an imprint of a kiss on his cheek; then leaving him to pursue her work.
"Whose love would I want more than yours, Anne?" he asked, in his laughing manner.
"Oh, I don't know, John; maybe you have a girl better than me to love you," she replied.
"I shall never place any one above my dear little sister," he said thoughtfully; "but—for no one can be your equal—except—one."
"Is it one of those, John, whom I am going after this morning?" asked Anne, rattling the skillet on the stove. "One of those whom brother James and I met on the road a short time ago?"
"One of those, Anne—the rich man's only child—but I am too poor for her," he answered, regretfully.
"Is she as good as you, brother—and me?" asked Anne, distributing the plates around the table. She was innocent yet of the ways of the world; but was feeling the first calling of young maidenhood.
"She is very good, Anne; very good; but no better than you," he returned, with the same uncertain cloud of perplexity that overcast him so often before, still pervading him like a wave of blinding light that comes to obscure the vision, at times, by reason of its intensity of purpose.
"She is very fine looking, John—both of them, John. Which one is it you mean?"
"The smaller of the two."
"Oh, the one with the bluest eyes, who took fright at us and ran."
"That is just like Edith, to run."
"I know I could love her, John."
"You are anticipating, sister."
"Why, who couldn't love you, John?" asked Anne, looking up at him, with some doubts as to what he meant.
"That is a sister's opinion, child," said John.
"A sister's opinion of her brother is better than any one else's. Maybe she does love you, John. Did you ever ask her?"
"Maybe she does," said John, going toward the door and looking out over the garden fence and into the fields, and dreamily into the distance; "but she is too rich to accept me, sister," he said, turning about. "How soon will breakfast be ready?"
"As soon as you wash your face," she answered.
John, heeding this hint, went to a basin on a bench in the yard, which forcibly recalled the old days. How refreshing it was to him to soap and souse his face into the cold water! And how inconveniently unpleasant it was, after such soaping and sousing, to rush with blinded eyes, and water trickling down the neck beneath the shirt collar, to the kitchen and fumble, like a blind man, for the towel. But it was home to John.
The rattling wheels and squeaking springs of the old rig could be heard far up the road after Anne, dressed in a clean white frock and wearing a pink sun-bonnet, had left the front gate on her mission, guiding the old farm horses on their sure and steady gait.
Oh, John, John! If there is anything worth while, it is Edith's love, the love that never dies. Blind man, as you are, and too considerate of high state, and too proud of your own, you are the only one to make her sweet soul happy. Bestir yourself, John, and come out of the fog of self-consciousness that has kept you in obscurity so long as to your final intentions. High state and low state are all the same to the Cupid that has engaged you so relentlessly. High caste and low caste do not count for him. Come and see the right, and see the light. She is only mortal, you are only mortal. Money is nothing to her; money is nothing to you. Love is all to her; love is all to you. It is the man and woman, after all, that makes happiness supreme. Come!
John has donned the garb of a mountaineer, which gives him a wild romantic bearing. It is the garb of his former self. This is the one in which Edith, secretly, wished to see him in, sometimes; and she shall have her wish fulfilled. He wears a gray slouch hat; a check shirt, opened in the front and turned up at the sleeves; a pair of blue overalls, with bed-ticken suspenders, and high boots. Typical! He is in his elements now, for his vacation period. He wishes Edith, when she comes, to see him as he once was. It is not vanity; it is pride of home. He wishes her to see life as it really is in a well directed loving home, where toil is the simple reward of living. He wishes her to see what life is to these people of the hills, how they thrive, and how they bear their burdens. He wishes her to see all this in contrast to her own life, and how love and duty can go on perpetually in a humble home, as well as in a mansion.
Work must not cease on the farm, at this season, except in case of sickness or death; visitors must make themselves at home during the work hours, and be entertained only at meal time, or go their way. The wheels of industry must go on there as noisily, ever grinding, as the wheels of industry, ever grinding, in the city. But there are rare occasions, even in both instances, when surcease is had for a spell to meet the call of recreation. And this was one of those rare occasions on the farm. For Edith and Star were coming, and a half holiday was cut out for their especial pleasure. James would cease his ploughing the corn at noon. The father would knock off duty at eleven to help mother get up the feast, and then smoke his pipe thereafter, perhaps, as his company. Thus it was planned.
After Anne had gone, John roamed about the place, speculating on the tender association everything had for him. He went through the house from garret to cellar, and beheld, with warming heart, how dear the old things were, and how different they were to the things in the mansion on the hill. Here was everything still that he knew in his boyhood days, and he saw with a thrill of regret, but not remorse, for it was still his home any time he wished to abide therein. And no one could gainsay him that privilege.
But how would Edith look upon all this, and not be struck by the simple evidence of his lowly origin? Ah, the comparison is too great, he thought, as he went into the garden, where he first learned the secrets of plant life; and then into the orchard, where he first saw the wonderfulness of the fruiting time; and then into the old barn, where was taught him the nature of domesticated animals; and then into the fields, where he had ploughed and sowed and reaped. How different from his life for the past year! How different!
Edith could see nothing of interest in such bucolic surroundings, he thought. She would come, and see, and go, and want to forget him. It is well, he thought, that she sees it now, and of her own coming.