She had looked grave during May’s flippant abstract of the new preacher’s discourse anent the six stone waterpots. Her family might suspect that she could not easily assimilate spiritual bread so unlike that broken to his flock by a good man who had been gathered to his fathers six months before, after a pastorate of thirty years in Fairhill. Nobody could elicit a hint to this effect from her lips. Mr. Wayt was the choice of a respectable majority of church and parish. The presbytery had accepted his credentials and solemnly installed him in his new place. Henceforward he was her pastor, and as such above the touch of censure. He had been the guest of the Gilchrists for a week prior to the removal of his family to the flourishing suburban town, and received such entertainment for body and spirit as strengthened his belief in the Divine authority of the call he had answered.
He left Fairhill four days before March landed in New York, to meet his wife and children in Syracuse and escort them to their new abiding place. During these days the mothers and daughters of the household of faith had worked diligently to prepare the parsonage for the reception of the travelers, Mrs. Gilchrist being the guiding spirit. And while she drew the shining silk of her boy’s curls through fingers that looked strong, yet touched tenderly, the Rev. Percy Wayt, A. M. and M. A., with feet directed by gratitude and heart swollen with pastoral affection, was nearing the domicile of his best “member.”
A long French window upon the piazza framed the tableau he halted to survey, his foot upon the upper step of the broad flight leading from the lawn. It was a noble room, planned by March and built with his proud father’s money. Breast-high shelves filled with choice books lined the wall; above them were a few fine pictures. Oriental rugs were strewed upon the polished floor; lounging and upright chairs stood about in social attitudes. The light of the shaded reading lamp shone silvery upon Judge Gilchrist’s head and heightened the brightness of May’s face. March’s happy gaze, upturned to meet his mother’s look of full content, might have meant as much in a cottage as here, but they seemed to the spectator accessories of the luxurious well-being which stamped the environment.
He sighed deeply—perhaps at the contrast the scene offered to the half furnished abode he had just left—perhaps under the weight of memories aroused by the family group. He was as capable of appreciating beauty and enjoying ease as were those who took these as an installment of the debt the world owed them. The will of the holy man who preaches the great gain of godliness when wedded to contentment, ought to be one with that of the Judge of all the earth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes——
“Ah, Mr. Wayt!” Judge Gilchrist’s proverbially gracious manner was never more urbane than as he offered a welcoming hand to his wife’s spiritual director. “You find us in the full flood of rejoicing over our returned prodigal,” he continued, when the visitor had saluted the ladies. “Let me introduce my son.”
Mr. Wayt was “honored and happy at being allowed to participate in the reunion,” yet apologetic for his “intrusion upon that with which strangers should not intermeddle.”
While saying it he squeezed March’s hand in a grasp more nervous than firm, and looked admiringly into the sunny eyes.
“Your mother’s son will forgive the interruption when he learns why I am here,” he went on, tightening and relaxing his hold at alternate periods. “I brought my wife and babies home to-day. I use the word advisedly. I left a desolate, empty house. Merely walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and floors. A shell without sentiment. A chrysalis without the germ of life. This was on last Monday morning.”
By now the brief sentences had come to imply depth of emotion with which March was unable to sympathize, and he felt convicted of inhumanity that this was so.
“I advised Mrs. Wayt of what she would find. Hers is a brave spirit encased in a fragile frame, and she was not daunted. You, madam,” letting go the son’s hand and facing the mother, “know, and we can never forget what we found when, weary and faint and travel-stained, we alighted this afternoon at the parsonage gate.”