The old man studied his son’s face keenly for a while, as they resumed their walk; then he said, gently,—
“Perhaps it’s best that way. Go ahead. Give me your list, an’ I’ll ’tend to it. I’ll take a day or two in New York myself: it’s a long time since I had one. Give us the list; and get out.”
Phil fumbled in his pockets for the memoranda that he had neglected so long. Then a new fear came to him, and he said,—
“Father, you know about everything, and can do almost anything you attempt, but don’t go to trying to mend this wretched affair of mine: If I——”
“What?” interrupted the old man. “Meddle in a love-scrape? Have I got to be this old to be suspected by my son of bein’ an old fool? No, sir; I never did any love-makin’ except for myself, an’ I’m not goin’ to begin now. You go home an’ brace up; I reckon you need a mouthful of country air to set your head right.”
CHAPTER XIV.
GOING HOME.
Philip Hayn accounted it a special mercy of Providence that the impulse to leave New York had been so timed that the train which he caught would land him at Haynton Station after dark. He did not feel like seeing old acquaintances that day; he felt that his face was being a persistent, detestable tell-tale, and that he could not train and command it while so busy with his thoughts. If seen at all, he intended to offer as few suggestions for remark as possible: so, before leaving his hotel, he divested himself of every visible trace of city raiment, and clothed himself in the Sunday suit which Haynton had seen often enough to pass without remark. He could not restore his shorn superfluity of hair, but he again put on the hat which for a year had been his best at home. He even went so far as to leave for his father a new trunk which he had purchased, putting his own personal property into the antique carpet-bag—real carpet—which the old farmer had brought down. Lastly, that he might not appear in the least like a city youth, he carried with him two religious weeklies which some society for the reformation of hotel-boarders had caused to be placed in his box in the hotel-office, and he read them quite faithfully on the train.
Reminders of the old life to which he was returning came to him thick and fast when the train got fairly out of the city. In a field he saw a man stripping the leaves from standing corn-stalks, and although the view was what photographers term “instantaneous,” it was long enough to show the shabby attire, brown face, shocking bad hat, clumsy boots, and general air of resignation that marked all farmers in the vicinity of Haynton. Two or three miles farther along he saw a half-grown boy picking up stones in a field of thin soil and adding them to piles which were painfully significant of much similar work in past days.
Down in a marshy pasture beside the railway-embankment two men were digging a drainage-ditch: they were too far apart to be company for each other, and too muddy to be attractive to themselves. Phil at once recalled much work of like nature he had done, and more that still depended upon his muscle to make the entire acreage of Hayn farm available for cultivation. Estimating according to past experience and newly-acquired knowledge, he found that the number of days of work required, if paid for at the lowest rate of common laborers in New York, would amount to twice as much as the value of the land when improved. It was easy to see why farmers never got rich. Still, the farm was his natural sphere; he had been born to it. Heaven, in arranging his life-career, knew in advance what he was fit for, and his own difference of opinion would probably be explained away in time by the logic of events which he could not foresee.
In a dusty road near a little station at which the train stopped he saw two farmers’ wagons meet, stop, and their owners engage in conversation. Thus would he, the observer, soon be obtaining whatever news he acquired; instead of every morning opening a newspaper recording the previous day’s doings throughout the civilized world, he would be restricted to stories of how Joddles’s horse, who had cast himself, was getting along with his scraped hip-joint, and when Bragfew thought he might be likely to kill a beef if he could find somebody to take a forequarter which hadn’t been spoken for yet, the chances of Nemy Perkins being “churched” for calling Deacon Thewser a sneaking old sheep-thief, and much more information equally entertaining and instructive. Well, why not? What better news would he himself be likely to offer? He was not going to fall into the sin, warning of which had been given by one of the apostles, of esteeming himself more highly than his neighbors: some people in the vicinity of Haynton did not seem much better than fools, but probably none of them had ever been so idiotic as to fall in love with women far above them in social station and consequently far beyond their reach.