THE WEIGHING OF THE ANCHOR
Surely the years love best to ply their industry among the young. For two or three of them, each taking up the work where its predecessor laid it down, can transform a youth or maiden to an extent that is really wonderful. Perhaps this is because the young lend themselves so cheerfully to everything that makes for change, and resent all tarrying on life's alluring way. They love to make swift calls at life's chief ports, so few in number though they be; they are impatient to try the open sea beyond, unrecking that the last harbour and the long, long anchorage are all too near at hand.
The difference that these silent craftsmen can soon make upon a face might have been easily visible to any observant eye, had such an eye been cast one evening upon the still unbroken circle of the Simmons home. The mother had changed but little; nor had anything changed to her—unless it were that all upon which her eyes had closed shone brighter in the light that memory imparts. Still holding her secret hidden deep, her fondness for those left to her seemed but to deepen as the hope of her husband's return grew more and more faint within. If the hidden tragedy delved an ever deeper wound under cover of her silence, it had no outward token but an intenser love towards those from whom she had so long concealed it.
But Jessie and Harvey had turned the time to good account. For the former had almost left behind the stage of early childhood, merging now into the roundness and plumpness—and consciousness, too—that betoken a girl's approach to the sunlit hills of womanhood.
Yet Harvey had changed the most of all. The stalwart form had taken to itself the proportions of opening manhood—height, firmness, breadth of shoulders, length of limb, all made a strong and comely frame. The poise of the head indicated resolute activity, and the evening light that now played upon his face revealed a countenance in which sincerity, seriousness, hopefulness, might be traced by a practiced eye. Humour, too, was there—that twin sister unto seriousness—maintaining its own place in the large eyes that had room for other things beside; and the glance that was sometimes turned upon the autumn scene without, but oftener upon his mother and his sister, was eloquent of much that lay behind. The tuition of his soul had left its mark upon his face. Early begun and relentlessly continued, it had taught him much of life, of life's ways and life's severities—not a little, too, of the tactics she demands from all who would prevail in the stern battle for which he had been compelled so early to enlist. New duties, unusual responsibilities, severe mental exercise such as serious study gives, stern self-denial, constant thought of others, these had conspired to provide the manly seriousness upon the still almost boyish face.
Autumn reigned without, as has been already said, and in robes of gold. Glowing and glorious, the oak and the elm and the maple wrapt in bridal garments, glad nature went onward to her death, mute preceptress to pagan Christians as to how they too should die.
A graver autumn reigned within. For the little circle was to be broken on the morrow, and the humble home was passing through one of earth's truest crises, giving up an inmate to the storm and peril of the great world without. The world itself may smile, stretching forth indifferent hands to receive the outgoing life; what cares the ocean for another swimmer as he joins the struggling throng?—but was the surrender ever made without tumult and secret tears?
"Look, look," Jessie cried, as she turned her face a moment from the pane; "there goes Cecil and Madeline—I guess he's taking her for a farewell drive."
In spite of himself, Harvey joined his sister at the window.
"Is Madeline with him?" he said, throwing quite an unusual note of carelessness into the words.