Peter Junior came in to dinner, buoyant and happy. He was disappointed not to see Betty, and frankly avowed it. He followed Mary into the kitchen and begged to be allowed to go up and speak to Betty for only a minute, but Mary thought sleep would be the best remedy and he would better leave her alone. He had been to church with his father, and all through the morning service as he sat at his father’s side he had meditated how he could persuade the Elder to look on his plans with some degree of favor––enough at least to warrant him in going on with them and trust to his father’s coming around in time.
Neither he nor Richard were at the Elder’s at dinner, and the meal passed in silence, except for a word now and then in regard to the sermon. Hester thought continually of her son and his hopes, but as she glanced from time to time in her husband’s face she realized that silence on her part was still best. Whenever the Elder cleared his throat and looked off out of the window, as was his wont when about to speak of any matter of importance, her heart leaped and her eyes gazed intently at her plate, to hide the emotion she could not restrain. Her hands grew cold and her lips tremulous, but still she waited.
It was the Elder’s custom to sleep after the Sunday’s dinner, which was always a hearty one, lying down on the sofa in the large parlor, where the closed blinds made a 133 pleasant somberness. Hester passed the door and looked in on him, as he lay apparently asleep, his long, bony frame stretched out and the muscles of his strong face relaxing to a softness they sometimes assumed when sleeping. Her heart went out to him. Oh, if he only knew! If she only dared! His boy ought to love him, and understand him. If they would only understand!
Then she went up into Peter Junior’s room and sat there where she had sat seven years before––where she had often sat since––gazing across at the red-coated old ancestor, her hands in her lap, her thoughts busy with her son’s future even as then. If all the others had lived, would the quandary and the struggle between opposing wills have been as great for each one as for this sole survivor? Where were those little ones now? Playing in happy fields and waiting for her and the stern old man who also suffered, but knew not how to reveal his heart? Again and again the words repeated themselves in her heart mechanically: “Wait on the Lord––Wait on the Lord,” and then, again, “Oh, Lord, how long?”
Peter Junior returned early from the Ballards’, since he could not see Betty, leaving the field open for Martha and her guest, much to the guest’s satisfaction. He went straight to the room occupied by Richard whenever he was with them, but no Richard was there. His valise was all packed ready for his start on the morrow, but there was no line pinned to the frame of the mirror telling Peter Junior where to find him, as was Richard’s way in the past. With a fleeting glance around to see if any bit of paper had been blown away, he went to his own room and there he found his mother, waiting. In an instant that long ago morning 134 came to his mind, and as then he went swiftly to her, and, kneeling, clasped her in his arms.
“Are you worried, mother mine? It’s all right. I will be careful and restrained. Don’t be troubled.”
Hester clasped her boy’s head to her bosom and rested her face against his soft hair. For a while the silence was deep and the moments burned themselves into the young man’s soul with a purifying fire never to be forgotten. Presently she began speaking to him in low, murmuring tones: “Your father is getting to be an old man, Peter, dear, and I––I am no longer young. Our boy is dear to us––the dearest. In our different ways we long only for what is best for you. If only it might be revealed to you and us alike! Many paths are good paths to walk in, and the way may be happy in any one of them, for happiness is of the spirit. It is in you––not made for you by circumstances. We have been so happy here, since you came home wounded, and to be wounded is not a happy thing, as you well know; but it seemed to bring you and me happiness, nevertheless. Did it not, dear?”
“Indeed yes, mother. Yes. It gave me a chance to have you to myself a lot, and that ought to make any man happy, with a mother like you. And now––a new happiness came to me, the other day, that I meant to speak of yesterday and couldn’t after getting so angry with father. It seemed like sacrilege to speak of it then, and, besides, there was another feeling that made me hesitate.”
“So you are in love with some one, Peter?”
“Yes, mother. How did you guess it?”