GETTING HOME
Olney was a thriving, busy little town, numbering five hundred inhabitants or thereabouts. It had its groceries, its dry goods stores, and its two houses for public worship--the Methodist and Presbyterian--while every other Sunday a little band of Episcopalians met for their own service in what was called the Village Hall, where, during week days, a small, select school was frequently taught by some Yankee schoolmistress. It had its post office, too; and there was also talk of a bank after the railroad came that way, and roused the people to a state of still greater activity. On the whole, it was a pretty town, though different from Chicopee, where the houses slept so aristocratically under the shadow of the old elms, which had been growing there since the day when our national independence was declared.
At home Ethelyn's pride had all been centered in Boston, and she had sometimes thought a little contemptuously of Chicopee and its surroundings; but the farther she traveled west the higher Chicopee rose in her estimation, until she found herself comparing every prairie village with that rural town among the hills, which seemed to give it dignity, and made it so greatly superior to the dead levels of which she was getting so weary. She had admired the rolling prairies at first, but, tired and jaded with her long journey, nothing looked well to her now--nothing was like Chicopee--certainly not Olney, where the dwellings looked so new and the streets were minus sidewalks.
Ethelyn had a good view of it as the train approached it and even caught a passing glimpse of the white house in the distance which Richard pointed out as home, his face lighting up with all the pleasure of a schoolboy as he saw the old familiar waymarks and felt that he was home at last.
Dropping her veil over her face Ethelyn arose to follow her husband, who in his eagerness to grasp the hand of the tall, burly young man he had seen from the window, forgot to carry her shawl and her satchel, which last being upon the car-rack, she tugged at it with all her strength, and was about crying with vexation at Richard's thoughtlessness, when Tim Jones, who while rolling his quid of tobacco in his great mouth, had watched her furtively, wondering how she and Melind would get along, gallantly came to her aid, and taking the satchel down kept it upon his arm.
"Take care of that air step. Better let me help you out. Dick is so tickled to see Jim that he even forgets his wife, I swan!" Tim said, offering to assist her from the train; but with a feeling of disgust too deep to be expressed, Ethelyn declined the offer and turned away from him to meet the curious gaze of the young man whom Richard presented as brother James.
He was younger than his brother by half a dozen years, but he looked quite as old, if not older. His face and hands were sunburnt and brown, his clothes were coarse, his pants were tucked into his tall, muddy boots, and he held in his hands the whip with which he had driven the shining bays, pricking up their ears behind the depot and eyeing askance the train just beginning to move away. The Markhams were all good-looking, and James was not an exception. The Olney girls called him very handsome, when on Sunday he came to church in his best clothes and led the Methodist choir; but Ethelyn only thought him rough, and coarse, and vulgar, and when he bent down to kiss her she drew back haughtily.
"Ethelyn!" Richard said, in the low, peculiar tone, which she had almost unconsciously learned to fear, just as she did the dark expression which his hazel eyes assumed as he said the single word "Ethelyn!"
She was afraid of Richard when he looked and spoke that way, and putting up her lip, she permitted the kiss which the warm-hearted James gave to her. He was naturally more demonstrative than his brother, and more susceptible, too; a pretty face would always set his heart to beating and call out all the gallantry of his nature. Wholly unsophisticated, he never dreamed of the gulf there was between him and the new sister, whom he thought so beautiful--loving her at once, because she was so pretty, and because she was the wife of Dick, their household idol. He was more of a ladies' man than Richard, and when on their way to the democratic-wagon they came to a patch of mud, through which Ethelyn's skirts were trailing, he playfully lifted her in his strong arms, and set her down upon the wagon-box, saying, as he adjusted her skirts: "We can't have that pretty dress spoiled, the very first day, with Iowa mud."
All this time Tim Jones had been dutifully holding the satchel, which he now deposited at Ethelyn's feet, and then, at James' invitation, he sprang into the hinder part of the wagon-box, and sitting down, let his long limbs dangle over the backboard, while James sat partly in Richard's lap and partly in Ethelyn's. It had been decided that the democrat must come down again for the baggage; and so, three on a seat, with Tim Jones holding on behind, Ethelyn was driven through the town, while face after face looked at her from the windows of the different dwellings, and comment after comment was made upon her pretty little round hat, with its jaunty feather, which style had not then penetrated so far west as Olney. Rumors there were of the Eastern ladies wearing hats which made them look at least ten years younger than their actual age; but Ethelyn was the first to carry the fashion to Olney, and she was pronounced very stylish, and very girlish, too, by those who watched her curiously from behind their curtains and blinds.
It was the close of a chill October day, and a bank of angry clouds hung darkly in the western sky, while the autumn wind blew across the prairie; but colder, blacker, chillier far than prairie winds, or threatening clouds, or autumnal day was the shadow resting on Ethelyn's heart, and making her almost cry out with loneliness and homesickness, as they drew near the house where the blue paper curtains were hanging before the windows and Eunice Plympton's face was pressed against the pane. The daisies and violets and summer grass were withered and dead, and the naked branches of the lilac bush brushed against the house with a mournful, rasping sound, which reminded her of the tall sign-post in Chicopee, which used to creak so in the winter wind, and keep her Aunt Barbara awake. To the right of the house, and a little in the rear, were several large, square corn-cribs, and behind these an inclosure in which numerous cattle, and horses, and pigs were industriously feeding, while the cobs, stripped, and soiled, and muddy, were scattered everywhere. Ethelyn took it all in at a glance, exclaiming, in a smothered voice, as the wagon turned into the lane which led to the side door, "Not here, Richard; surely, not here!"
But Richard, if he heard her, did not heed her. He could not comprehend her utter desolation and crushing disappointment. Her imaginings of his home had never been anything like this reality, and for a moment she felt as if in a kind of horrible nightmare, from which she struggled to awake.
"Oh! if it were only a dream," she thought; but it was no dream, though as Richard himself lifted her carefully from the wagon, and deposited her upon the side stoop, there came a mist before her eyes, and for an instant sense and feeling forsook her; but only for an instant, for the hall door was thrown open, and Richard's mother came out to greet her son and welcome her new daughter.
But alas for Ethelyn's visions of heavy silk and costly lace! How they vanished before this woman in purple calico, with ruffles of the same standing up about the throat, and the cotton lace coiffure upon her head! She was very glad to see her boy and wound both her arms around his neck, but she was afraid of Ethelyn. She, too, had had her ideal, but it was not like this proud-looking beauty, dressed so stylishly, and, as it seemed to her so extravagantly, with her long, full skirt of handsome poplin trailing so far behind her, and her basque fitting her graceful figure so admirably. Neither did the hat, rolled so jauntily on the sides, and giving her a coquettish appearance, escape her notice, nor the fact that the dotted veil was not removed from the white face, even after Richard had put the little, plump hand in hers, and said:
"This, mother, is Ethie, my wife. I hope you will love each other for my sake."
In her joy at seeing her pet boy again, Mrs. Markham would have done a great deal for his sake, but she could not "kiss a veil," as she afterwards said to Melinda Jones, when she reached the point where she talked straight out about her daughter-in-law. No, she could not kiss a veil, and so she only held and pressed Ethelyn's hand, and leading her into the house, told her she was very welcome, and bade her come to the fire and take off her things, and asked if she was not tired, and cold and hungry.
And Ethelyn tried to answer, but the great lumps were swelling in her throat, and so keen a pain was tugging at her heart that when at last, astonished at her silence, Richard said, "What is the matter, Ethie--why don't you answer mother?" she burst out in a pitiful cry:
"Oh, Richard, I can't, I can't; please take me back to Aunt Barbara."
This was the crisis, the concentration of all she had been suffering for the last hour, and it touched Mrs. Markham's heart, for she remembered just how wretched she had been when she first landed at the rude log cabin which was so long her Western home, and turning to Richard, she said, in an aside:
"She is homesick, poor child, as it's natural she should be at first. She'll be better by and by, so don't think strange of it. She seems very young."
In referring to her youth, Mrs. Markham meant nothing derogatory to her daughter-in-law, though Ethelyn did strike her as very young, in her pretty hat with her heavy hair low in her neck. She was finding an excuse for her crying, and did not mean that Ethelyn should hear. But she did hear, and the hot tears were dashed aside at once. She was too proud to be petted or patronized by Mrs. Markham, or apologized for by her, so she dried her eyes, and lifting her head, said proudly:
"I am tired to-night, and my head is aching so hard that I lost my self-control. I beg you will excuse me. Richard knows me too well to need an excuse."
A born duchess could not have assumed a loftier air, and in some perplexity Mrs. Markham glanced from her to Richard, as if asking what to do next. Fortunately for all parties, Andy just then came in with his brother John, who approached his new sister with some little hesitation. He had heard Tim Jones' verdict, "Stuck up as the old Nick," while even cautious James had admitted his fears that Dick had made a mistake, and taken a wife who would never fit their ways. And this was why John had been so late with his welcome. He had crept up the back stairs, and donned his best necktie, and changed his heavy boots for a pair of shoes, which left exposed to view a portion of his blue yarn socks. He had before changed his coat and vest, and tied on a handkerchief, but it was not his best; not the satin cravat, with the pretty bow Melinda Jones had made, and in which was stuck a rather fanciful pin he wore on great occasions. He was all right now, and he shook hands with his new sister, and asked if she were pretty well, and told her she was welcome, and then stepped back for Andy, who had been making his toilet when the bride arrived, and so was late with his congratulations.