Before a garden door he stopped and knocked--knocked loudly, and with a peculiar tantarabulation, as if it were a well-remembered signal, and stood and waited impatiently. The shuffling of feet could be heard within, and there came whisperings and rustlings, but the door remained fast, and the young man stood and waited, and knocked again, more softly this time, and with a brightening smile as he stood and listened.
"They have gone to call her," he said to himself, "that she may come and open to me herself, as she used to do. Dear girl! It is three long years since last she let me in--three weary years. But why this long delay? She could not expect me, but she knows my knock. Can she be from home? Then why does not some one open?"
Again the footsteps could be heard within. Laggingly they drew near. Heavy unwillingness could be noted in their tread. The young man knocked again. A key turned gratingly in the stiff old lock, and bolts and fastenings creaked and rasped and yielded tardily, as to a hand which trembled while it pressed them. The door swung open, and the youth with arms extended leaped within the threshold; but the figure which admitted him was not the one he had expected; his arms fell by his side--it was not she.
The figure which had opened drew backward with a scream. It was a servant, and in the doubtful light the white-handkerchief about the head stood out against the dusky foliage of the magnolias, and defined the negro face.
"O Lordie, Lordie!" was her trembling exclamation, as she shrank away. She would have run, but her limbs were powerless. She stood staring at the visitor with starting eyes whose whites revealed the round dilated pupils, while her mouth hung open in helpless terror.
"Dinah! Is this your welcome to a returned sailor? Where are your mistresses? Did they hear my knock?"
Dinah cowered against the wall, subsiding gradually into a heap upon the ground, powerless to cry out, too dazed even to pray. Her scattered faculties seemed fumbling for a word of power wherewith to reinstate themselves, and avert some peril. "Jerusalem!" was the first which came to hand. Its utterance brought strength and some return of thought. It was followed by "Bress de Lord!" and then with speech restored, she clasped her hands above her head, and with all her strength cried out. "O Lordie! Take de drown man's spook away!"
The visitor turned on his heel and walked round to the front of the house, where doors and shutters stood wide open. Entering by a window open to the ground, he stood in the reception-room: it was empty, and its recesses were concealed in gloom. Nothing was clearly seen but the great white magnolia blossoms in the dim garden without, which burdened the air with their almost too luscious sweetness.
A door opened behind him and the mistress entered, followed by her daughter carrying a lamp. The young man turned eagerly, and the light falling on his features betrayed a shade of disappointment passing across them as he recognised the ladies.
"Is Lina from home?" he asked. "But, mother, at least you can welcome me home in the meantime. What! Not a word! No kiss even for your long-lost son-in-law! Surely that is carrying your New England reserve too far."