Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

by Mary Lowell Putnam

I had been over it only once since Shaler left it, and that once was with himself on one of his rare visits. Franket's house is near the great gates. It was a porter's lodge in the old time, and is now a sort of post-office,—Franket having added to his other avocations the charge of going once a week to Tenpinville with letters intrusted to him, and bringing back those he is empowered to receive. When I go there to ask for letters or to leave them, no old associations are roused, for I did not use the main entrance formerly. I had a key to a little gate which opens on a bridle-path through the oak-wood. I entered the grounds through this gate when I was last there with Shaler, and I had pleased myself with the thought, that, when I entered them by it again, it would be again with him, on that happy return to which he is always looking forward.

But it seemed no violation of my compact with myself to unlock this gate for Harry, to walk with him through these grounds sacred to him as to me; for I knew that in his thought, as in mine, these untenanted lands were not so much deserted as dedicated. It was right that these places should know him. And what pleasure hereafter to talk of him as having been there,—to point out to Shaler the trees he had distinguished, the views that had delighted him! But I wished this visit to be the last we should make together. My delay in proposing it had, perhaps, made Harry attribute to me a secret reluctance. After the first eager expression of his desire to see the early home of his friend and mine, when we talked of Shaler together that pleasant afternoon on Prospect Hill, he did not mention the subject again. The Doctor did not second him then; but I knew he felt as much curiosity as Harry did interest, before his impatience broke bounds as I have told you.

"Let us go on Thursday, if you will," I answered.

Harry understood me.—"The right day!"

"Any day is the right one for me," said the Doctor, who would have named an earlier one, perhaps, if I had asked him to choose.

On Thursday, then, the last day but one of their visit here, I was their guide over "The Farms."

Two brothers settled at Metapora side by side. Their two plantations were carried on as one, under the direction of the younger brother, Colonel Shaler, the father of my friend. The brothers talked together of "The Farms"; their people took up the name; it gradually became the accepted one in the neighborhood, and has maintained itself, although the two places, having both been inherited by Charles Shaler, are now really one estate.

I opened the little gate for the Doctor and Harry to pass in, and followed them along the wood-path. All was the same as formerly; unkindly the same, it seemed.

"You have not been missed," said the Doctor, entering into my feeling, though not quite sympathizing with it. "You have not been missed, and you are not recognized. The birds are not jubilant because you have come back. The wood was as resonant before your key turned in the lock." He stopped and looked about him at the grand old oaks. "The man who grew up under these trees, and calls them his, may well long for them, but they will wait very patiently for his return. We could not spare trees and birds, but they can do without us well enough. Strange the place of man on his earth! Everything is necessary to him, and he is necessary to nothing."

Shaler had left the key of his house with me. There could be no indiscretion in introducing such guests into it. We went first into the dining-room. Everything was as it used to be, except that the family portraits had been taken away. The cords to which they had been attached still hung from the hooks, ready to receive them again. The large oval table kept its place in the middle of the room. What pleasant hours I had had in that room, at that table!