CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE BROTHERS.
Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a letter from her father, asking her to come home. Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote penitently and asked Patty's forgiveness. Captain Lumsden never did anything otherwise than meanly. He wrote that he was now bedridden with rheumatism, and it seemed hard that he should be forsaken by his oldest daughter, who ought to be the stay of his declining years. He did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so religious and yet leave him to suffer without the comfort of her presence. The other children were young, and the house was in hopeless confusion. If the Methodists had not quite turned her heart away from her poor afflicted father, she would come at once and help him in his troubles. He was ready to forgive the past, and as for her religion, if she did not trouble him with it, she could do as she pleased. He did not think much of a religion that set a daughter against her father, though.
Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that it set before her to feel the sting very keenly. There was another pain that had grown worse with every day she had spent with Morton. Beside her own sorrow she felt for him. There was a strange restlessness in his eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he was doing, that indicated how fearfully the tempest raged within. For Morton's old desperation was upon him, and Patty was in terror for the result. About the time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul also. He had mastered himself, and the restless wildness had given place to a look of constraint and suffering that was less alarming but hardly less distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding her own agony. But the disappearance of Pinkey had awakened some hope in her. Not one jot of this trembling hopefulness did she dare impart to Morton, who for his part had but one consolation—he would throw away his life in the battle, as Kike had done before him.
So eager was Patty to leave her school now and hasten to her father, that she could not endure to stay the weeks that were necessary to complete her term. She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the possibility of getting some one to take her place, and both had concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane Morgan being too much out of health. But to their surprise Nettie offered her services. She had not been of much more use in the world than a humming-bird, she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would be better pleased that she should make herself useful.
Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and Morton, who could not reach the distant part of his circuit, upon which his supply was now preaching, in time to resume his work at once, concluded to set out for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents fared. But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who departed in company with Brady and his wife. Morton would not trust himself in her society longer. He therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks to Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.
I may not describe the enthusiasm with which Morton was received at home. Scarcely had he kissed his mother and shaken hands with his father, who was surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting up into manhood, when his mother whispered to him that his brother Lewis was alive and had come home.
"What! Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I thought he was killed in Pittsburg ten years ago."
"That was a false report. He had been doing badly, and he did not want to return, and so he let us believe him dead. But now he has come back and he is afraid you will not receive him kindly. I suppose he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard on his evil ways. But you won't be too hard, will you?"
"I? God knows I have been too great a sinner myself for that. Where is Lew? I can just remember how he used to whittle boats for me when I was a little boy. I remember the morning he ran off, and how after that you always wanted to move West. Poor Lew! Where has he gone?"