Those mellow hours by the inland sea, where sits the Garden City, with its wide grass-grown streets and its vine-veiled cottages basking in summer sunshine, were precious indeed! We had ample opportunity for developing philosophy, sentiment and politics at one sitting. Coming out of the fair and foul refuge of the fleshly saints, I thought of the wisdom of the French poet who once said to me, "Oui, monsieur: life is an oasis in which there is many a desert." In the unfruitful shoots of those thorn-bearing vines and withered fig trees I learned the burden of the desert: Though it blossom as the rose, if it yield not honey it shall be laid waste; though it deck itself with beauty, though it sing with the voice of the charmer, its fairness is a mock and its song is the song of the harlot. Harbor it not in your hearts. Let it be purged of uncleanness, let the stain be washed from it. Though the builders build cunningly, they have builded in vain. There is blood on their lintels, and their hearts are full of lust. He that sits in the seat of the scornful and is girded about with pride, let him fall as the tree falls, even the king of the forest, for there is rottenness at the core.
Like pilgrims in the earthly paradise we ploughed the long grass of the prairies; like a fiery snake our train trailed over the flowering land; its long undulations were no impediment; the grassy billows parted before us; we cleft the young forests that have here and there sprung up at the call of patient husbandry; myriads of wild-fowl wheeled over the fragrant and boundless fields; every flower in the floral calendar seemed at home in those meadow-lands of the world: the sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept to our feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a foam of flowers. Not only was the delicious day promise-crammed, but the night, loud with the chirp of the cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed the realization of some splendid dream.
Out of the redundant and prophetic life of that land I heard a prophecy, and the prophecy was the burden of the prairies. It is the chant of the future, full of life and hope. I see now rows of men and women, the toilers of the earth; they have planted forests and the strong wind is stayed; they have broken the soil and the grain is breast-high; they are merry, for they are free, and their stores increase with the years. Wine and oil are their portion, and fat kine and all manner of cunning workmanship; their cities are greater and better than the old cities, for they are builded on virgin soil; and the day shall come when the jubilee of the prairies will assemble the hosts from the borders of the two seas, and they will hear their praises sung and receive tribute, for the strength of the land is theirs.
And we came into other countries that were full of people, and of cities great and small. A thousand strange faces were turned upon us as we shot past the open doors of houses wherein the table was spread for the domestic meal. We hailed the field-laborers and the town-artisans at their toil, and every hour plunged deeper and deeper into the old civilization of the East, which in some respects differs greatly from that of our breezy West. It was time to be thinking on my journey's end and its probable results. I seemed to read it all beforehand: Ellen would greet me at the gate of the parsonage on the edge of Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the two Americas together—back to the land I love, California. Ellen would lead me in all the old paths; we would see the garden in which, as a beautiful boy, I more than once sought her to confess some grief, knowing there was no ear so willing as hers, no heart tenderer, no counsel more comforting. We would row up the stream that runs under the hill by the willows, and strand in the same shallow nook, in honor of the festal Saturdays dead and gone. We would gather the old friends about us, and eat very large apples by the study-window; we would hunt nests in the hayloft and acorns in the wood; the school-room would take us back again, and all the half-obliterated memories of the past would glow with fresher color. A hundred hands would be stretched out to me, and I would recognize the clasp of each. Ah, happy day when I again returned to Heartsease and found the lost thread of my youth unbroken, and I had only to weave on and complete the fabric so long neglected!
There were a dozen trains to enter and get out of before I could be whirled across the country to Heartsease. Now that Heartsease was easily attainable, all the restless world would be fleeing thither, and it would no longer be worthy of its name. I felt my way from town to town, pausing an hour here, another hour there, in an impatient mood, for the last train was behind time, and I feared I should not arrive in the village at the moment of all others I most desired to. Why should I not come at sunset to the parsonage—one from the land of the sunset wearing, as it were, his colors on his heart? The hour is so mysterious and pathetic—the very hour to step in upon the village, for so you can gloat over it all night, before the sun has laid the whole truth bare to you on the following morning. And moreover I had not written Ellen of my intended visit: why should I, when she had been looking for me these ten years at least? Why should I say, "At last I am coming," when a thousand things might have prevented me? Was it not better to walk up the long road from the station at twilight, pass silently through the quiet, familiar streets, and then, as I approached the gate of the parsonage, discover a form waiting there as if expecting some one, but whom it was hard to say? Drawing nearer, I would recognize the form, slender and graceful, and then the face, placid and pale, with the soft hair drawn smoothly over the temples and the thin hands folded in peace. Oh yes, it was much better thus.
At the last change of trains, ten miles from Heartsease, a heavy summer shower was drenching the town; the very rain was hot, and the earth steamed lustily. I feared, my plan was spoiled, my meeting at the gate after long years of patient and hopeful waiting. But the rain passed over, and I was again under way. Now every inch of the land was familiar: I recognized old houses and barns and strips of fence and streams that had not been in my mind once in all these years. I knew every block of forest that had been left on the border of the upland fields, and all the meadows, marshy or dry: the very faces of the people seemed to recall some one I had known before. The hills were like lessons learned by heart; and now I came upon the actual haunts of my school-boy days—the wood where we gave our picnics; the red house, a little out of the village, where one of the boys lived—strangely enough, the house I remembered, but the boy's looks and name had gone from me—and then the train stopped. I felt a tingling sensation, as if the blood were coming to the surface all over me.
A switchman, and a stranger, waved us welcome with a yard of flaming bunting. I hurried out of the car and alighted within half a mile of Heartsease. On the platform, where I had parted with my schoolmates fifteen years before, I waited till the train had passed onward and out of sight. I was alone: the switchman asked no odds of me, but furled his bunting and immediately withdrew. For a moment I looked about me in bewilderment. I think I could have turned back had I been encouraged to do so, for I felt half guilty in thus surprising my friends. A moment later I plucked up heart and struck into the road that leads up to the village.
The road has a margin of grass and weeds, and there are meadows on both sides. I walked in the very middle of it, with my portmanteau in my hand, and looked straight ahead. Before me lay the village, a cluster of white houses embowered in trees. It was sunset; the rain had washed the leaves and laid the dust in the road; the air was exquisitely fragrant and of uncommon softness; the white spire of the village church, flanked by a long line of poplars, was gilded with a sunbeam, but the lowly roofs of the villagers were bathed in the radiant twilight that had deepened under the western hills. Cattle were lowing in the meadows; the crickets chirped everywhere; a barbed swallow clove the air like an arrow whose force is nigh spent; and a child's voice rang out on the edge of the village as clear as a clarion. I paused and laughed aloud. I was mad with joy; an exquisite thrill ran through me; it seemed to me that the most delicious moment of my life had come.
I entered the village a boy again, with all the wild ambition of a boy and with a boy's roguish spirit. I resolved to play upon them at the parsonage. If Ellen were not at the gate waiting for me, I would enter as a stranger and remain a season before throwing off disguise. I would cunningly lead the conversation from topic to topic until we came naturally to the past, and there in the past my shadow would appear, and then at the right moment I would throw myself at Ellen's feet and bury my head in her lap and weep for very joy.
These dreams beguiled me as I drew near the village. My step was buoyant; I scarcely felt the weight of my portmanteau; I was drunk with expectation and delight. In the village I found the streets and houses and signs for the most part unchanged, but I looked in vain for a familiar face. A few lads were playing about "the corners," and when I saw them it suddenly occurred to me that all those youngsters under fifteen were not born when I was a schoolboy in Heartsease. I turned away from them with a feeling of unutterable disappointment. Why should not all my playmates be married or dead or have moved out of the village if changes had come to it? I had not thought much of change in this connection, and it was a hard blow.