HOMECOMINGS.
"The bugles sound the swift recall;
Cling, clang! backward all!
Home, and good night!"
--E. C. STEDMAN.
The war was over; the drums lay unbeaten, the snarling trumpets sang
their songs no more upon the level plains or sloping sides of far blue
hills; liberty had triumphed, and the scarlet insignia of kingly rule
had gone from the land forever. But peace did not bring the desired
order of things. The unstable government of an untrained congress could
not control the spirit of maraud and chaos that had so long dominated
certain classes of people. Eight years of warfare had left its scar on
the whole country, but particularly in those portions where the fighting
had fallen. The sanguine among the triumphant contestants had looked for
an immediate rehabilitation of affairs, thinking that the taps of war
would be the reveille of commerce and order and prosperity. But as yet
Americans were better soldiers than statesmen. They had to learn to
govern themselves, learn to wield the mighty power they had won; and at
first knowledge was slow in coming. Private wrongs were remembered,
individual grievances were recalled. The spirit that refrained from
shouting over a fallen foe at Yorktown manifested itself at home in many
petty ways against the defeated Tories, so that among these latter was a
feeling of unprotected helplessness that made them sullen and restive.
"Joscelyn," Mary Singleton said, coming in one day when the winter was
at its fiercest, "father says he is going to Canada to stay until things
get settled. We cannot stir from our gate without receiving some
rudeness, and our property is threatened with confiscation, piece by
piece, on the ground that we used it to aid the king's cause. Will you
come with us? We would love to have you."
"No, for my mother would not think of such a thing; and where she is,
there will I stay."
"Well, you had no man in the war; but against us the enmity is strong,
because Eustace actually bore arms in the king's service."
"Will Eustace go with you?"
"No; he writes that as soon as he gets his discharge, he means to return
here and accept whatever fate comes to him."
"I am glad. That is the right way to take his defeat. Your father is old
and worn with annoyance, but Eustace is young enough to meet the
struggle and win his way. Trust me; all will be well with him in the
end," and Joscelyn's eyes were on Betty's window over the way.
"Edward Moore joins us in New York," Mary said, with a blush.
"And I shall not be there to play the part of bridesmaid! Well, I shall
content myself with putting a handful of rice and an old shoe into your
trunk."
After the Singletons were gone, Joscelyn was very lonely, for the only
house at which a welcome always met her was Mistress Strudwick's.
"You may say what you please, Amanda Bryce, but that girl comes here
when she likes, and stays as long as she pleases; and if there is
anybody I'm gladder to see, I do not know who it is," said the stanch
old lady.
Soundly she lectured Joscelyn at times, but the fault-finding always
began and ended with a caress, so there was no sting in it. Here the
girl sometimes met Betty; and the older woman, seeing the desire of
their hearts shining in their faces, encouraged them to be friends.
Here, too, Janet Cameron often came, and after the visit walked home
openly with her arm in Joscelyn's, making merry little mouths at
Mistress Bryce as they passed her door. These visits and walks were
Joscelyn's chief pleasure, and she stood sorely in need of recreation,
for of late she was thinner and more irritable than her mother had ever
seen her.
"You need a course of bitters," Mistress Strudwick said, opening her
medicine-box one day.
"I have been taking such a course for eight years."
"Yes, Amanda Bryce's tongue drips not with honey! But I shall talk with
your mother, and between us we will take you in hand and get the edge
off your nerves." So Joscelyn dutifully yielded herself to her two
physicians, who took much delight in the teas and tonics they brewed for
her.
During all these autumn and winter weeks, Richard Clevering had lain in
the field hospital at Yorktown, racked with pain and fever from the
wound he got when--singing a song of the Carolina hills--his regiment
stormed that gun-girt bastion on the British left, and the colonies were
free!
Things would have gone better with him had he been content to lie still
and let the bones knit; but he could not stay away from that last scene
of the surrender, which made all the privations of the past worth while.
To miss that was to miss the joy of life, the glory of the fight, the
crown of the conqueror; and so he had pretended to be much stronger than
he was, and had gone to stand in his place when the British, with silent
drums and cased banners, marched from their surrendered fortifications,
and stacked arms between the martial lines of French and Continentals.
The sight compensated him for the pain the exertion entailed, so that he
never complained when, afterwards, the surgeon shook his head gravely
over the fever that flushed his veins. He had had his heart's desire; he
would bear its results.
But in the early part of January, seeing a tedious recovery still ahead
of him, and the hospital facilities being so limited, he asked to be
sent home to be cared for by his own people. There would be no more
fighting, and his stay was an unnecessary burden upon the army
officials, whose hands were full trying to keep down the spirit of
insurrection that was fermenting the camp over the delay in the
soldiers' pay. To relieve the strain upon the moneyless army coffers,
many of the men who had been invalided were allowed to return to their
homes. Thus it was, that Joscelyn, unconscious of the extent of the hurt
that had come to him--for he had written no particulars home--and also
of his dismissal, answered a knock at her door one bleak January day,
and gave a great cry at sight of the weary man leaning against the
veranda railing, with an empty sleeve pinned helplessly to the bandaged
arm beneath.
"Richard Clevering!"
"Ay, Richard come back with a crushed arm, but a sound heart to claim
you, unworthy though he now knows himself to be of such a prize,
Joscelyn, Cornwallis has struck his martial colours, will you surrender
to me for love's dear sake?"
He had come into the hall and closed the swaying door against the wind,
while she retreated backward until she stood close to the wall, her
hands behind her.
"I owe you life and all the gratitude that means, but it is out of my
love for you, which has grown with every hour of my absence, that I ask
this--will you come to me, Joscelyn?"
She did not speak, but slowly she shook her head, her eyes meeting his
with a curious compassion. For one long minute he looked at her,
searchingly, yearningly; then his outstretched arm fell to his side.
"Then is the war not over for me," he said sadly.
He went with her into the sitting-room, and, with the luxurious
hearth-glow brightening his face and taking that deathly pallor out of
it, the while her magnetic presence kindled a tempestuous fire in his
veins, he told her the story of that final surrender and of his hurt,
softening the former narrative as best he might, remembering how she had
wished it otherwise. Then with a half-whimsical, half-pathetic touch
upon his bandaged arm, he said:--
"The surgeon said that with time and care this would heal, but the
accident has left me but one hand wherewith to begin that other campaign
which means so much to me,--for if I win you not, I might as well have
perished at the hands of the Redcoats."
As she listened, while the afternoon wore away, she was conscious of
some change in him. Not that his tone showed less of resolution to
achieve his purpose; it was rather an absence of the over-weening
self-confidence which had so offended her in the past. Five years of
warfare and baffled wooing had taught him something of self-distrust,
something of humility which became him well. The empty sleeve and the
emaciated, listless figure touched her with a quick pity, in such
violent contrast were they to his former robust activity and superb
proportions, so that she sighed and turned her face aside.
And he, on his part, was studying her, finding again, with a thrill of
joy, the same saucy curves about her lips, the same glinting blue lights
in her eyes that had held his heart captive in the past; and noting,
too, the touch of womanly dignity which had in some wise supplanted the
impetuosity of the old days. The girl of eighteen had become a woman of
twenty-three since that day she had laughed down upon the Continentals
marching away to Valley Forge. But there was not an attraction lost;
rather was every charm ripened and perfected by the hallowing touches of
growth and development. If he had loved her in the past, a thousand
times more did he love her now in her splendid womanhood. Had she cared
for Barry? Always the question was a stab; and with it now there came
the first quick doubt of the final healing of his arm. Could she ever
love him if he should be maimed like this forever?
Looking up suddenly, she found his eyes upon her face in such a wistful
gaze that she flushed involuntarily, and a painful silence fell between
them. Intuitively she felt that this was not the same Richard who had
gone away, this earnest, tender man with not a trace of arrogance in his
manner. Had he always been like this, they need not have quarrelled. She
had been willing to overlook much had he only left her a right to her
own opinions, and treated the views her father had taught her with
respect.
"Do you know," she said, breaking the pause with a little nervous laugh,
"that if you are to preserve the good will of your neighbours, you must
stay away from me?"
"Then do I this minute forswear their friendship, for to stay from you
would be to remain outside of Paradise. Only tell me one thing,--you did
not hate me for the news I wrote you of Barry?"
"Nay, it was the one of your letters I felt drawn to answer."
He took her unresisting hand and kissed it softly. "If you loved him, I
would I had died in his place."
And then again that silence fell between them, while at his heart was
biting that most helpless of all jealousy--the jealousy of the dead.
Against a living rival one may contend with hope; but when that on which
the heart is set has come to be but a memory, incapable of blunder or
cruelty, the contest becomes useless, or pitifully unequal. Yearningly
Richard's eyes studied the face before him, and yet he would not ask her
the question that burned in his heart. Some day she would tell him the
truth of her own accord; until then he must wait and suffer.
His return, she foresaw, was to be to her at once a relief and an
embarrassment, for she would not consent to his making public her share
in his escape of the winter, lest it look like a plea on her part for a
cessation of hostilities.
"I have held my own against them all these years; I will not ask for any
terms, now that the end has come, and my side has gone down in defeat,"
she said.
"But, Joscelyn, think how they would adore you for such a service to
their country! My information was most useful to General Greene."
"I did it not for sake of their country."
"Well, then, for sake of their countryman. They love me, if you do not."
He leaned toward her laughing, yet pleading; and she noted how honest
and pleasant were his eyes. But she held to her point against all of his
arguments; and so he was feign to yield except in regard to his mother;
there he was firm.
"I never dreamed but that she knew, for the quick movements of the last
campaign left no time for letters to reach me from home. Had I not
thought you would tell her as soon as the British were well out of town,
I should have asked a furlough, and come home to set you right. To think
what you have suffered for saving my poor life!"
And so it was that half an hour later Mistress Clevering came hastily
in without the ceremony of knocking, and taking Joscelyn in her
arms,--to Mistress Cheshire's amazement,--said many grateful and
affectionate things.
"When I think of what you have done for us, I am bowed down with
humiliation for the cruelty with which I have requited you. Oh, my dear,
my dear! had you only told me and your mother at the time, things would
have been very different."
"Yes," answered the girl, demurely, "so different that Master
Clevering's life would have paid the penalty of his daring. Nay, it was
a game at which only one could play with safety. You could have done
naught but share my anxiety, and that were no help."
"And to think how I have scolded and blamed you for the quarrel between
me and Ann," said her mother, tearfully; but Joscelyn's tender answer
comforted her.
"And here comes Betty to make her peace with you, too," Aunt Clevering
said, as the breathless girl entered.
"Oh, Betty and I have been friends these many weeks, as dear Mistress
Strudwick can testify," Joscelyn said, putting her arm affectionately
around Betty, who with a grateful cry had sprung to her side. And from
the doorway, Richard thought he had never seen a more beautiful picture.
Thus was the breach that had yawned between the two families healed; and
the sorest ache in Joscelyn's heart was cured as she witnessed the
happiness of her mother who, with a firmness scarcely to be expected,
had given up her old friend and held stanchly to her daughter, although
she held that daughter to blame. It was touching to see her childish
delight in the renewal of the old relations. A dozen times a day she was
in and out of the two houses, for Richard's wound afforded her many
pretexts for kindly ministrations. He never left his bed except to lie
on the sofa by the window, for his strength seemed suddenly to have
failed him after the sustained effort he had made to reach home. Often
he wished Joscelyn would come in her mother's stead; but for her own
reasons the girl kept her distance, so that sometimes he did not see her
for days together. And every day that she stayed away the jealous pain
bit deeper into his heart.
But one day she came of her own accord. There had been a knock and the
sound of a man's voice at the door, followed by the maid making some
excuse for Mistress Clevering; and presently, when all had grown silent,
Betty came through the sitting-room with a face so white that Richard
called out from where he lay to know what was the matter. But she did
not stop to answer, and so he waited in a troubled doubt while the clock
ticked off a slow twenty minutes. Then the door opened, and Joscelyn
came straight up to his couch, a strange light of pleading in her eyes.
"Richard," she said, and his face brightened, for she had taken to
calling him Master Clevering with a formality he hated. "Richard, if a
man be true and honest and loves a woman, should he not have the chance
to tell her so and win her?"
"Most assuredly."
"And old feuds and differences of a former generation, with which he had
nothing to do, should have no weight to hold him back?"
"Why--what mean you?"
"This; that even as you love me," and a brilliant colour dyed her cheeks
at mention of it, "so does Eustace Singleton love Betty."
"I had half guessed as much--and I am sorry."
"And Betty loves him. Nay, lie still and look not so angrily at me.
There is no one to blame; a woman's heart, like a man's, asks no
permission in the giving of itself."
"But Betty knew--"
"Yes, she knew all the opposition in store for her, and she made her own
fight; but love takes no dictation."
"Right well do I know that."
"Then you have no room for a quarrel with her; rather should your
sympathy be on her side. All her happiness is set on Eustace; he is her
true lover, has been for years,--and I have resolved so to aid her, that
you and Aunt Clevering shall not break her heart by a cruel and useless
separation." She stepped back and threw up her head; just so had she
looked a year ago, when she bade defiance to the short colonel while he
himself crouched in her shadowy garret. For a moment they gazed at each
other steadily, then she was again beside him, her eyes luminous with a
gentle entreaty:--
"Richard, if--if I loved you with all my soul, would you let my mother's
dislike, if she did dislike you, stand between us?"
"My God, no!"
"Eustace is a man like you--and Betty loves him like that."
He saw the drift of her meaning but he did not answer, and thus for
another minute they looked into each other's eyes unwaveringly; then his
gaze fell, and with a sudden delicious softening of manner, she stooped
and took his hand.
"Richard, Eustace is yonder in my parlour,--come back like a brave man
to begin life all over, and suffer anything to be near Betty. He has
been denied entrance at your door. Bid me bring him here to you. If
not--then will I take Betty to him, even though I should thus lose yours
and Aunt Clevering's friendship forever."
"You make hard terms."
"I am dealing with a hard man."
"Think you so, sweetheart? Methought I had ever been gentle to you.
Betty's happiness is very dear to me--" he broke off, sighing. She still
held his hand, or rather he held hers, for his was the stronger grasp.
Suddenly, with that same enchanting gentleness, she bent close to him,
and laid her cheek against his tingling fingers:--
"Thank you, Richard, for yielding; I knew when once you understood, you
could not be so cruel as to refuse. I will bring Eustace at once."
"But, Joscelyn, I did not say--"
"Oh, but you looked your consent--and I never saw your eyes so
beautiful, such a tender gray." He flushed with pleasure, still,
however, protesting; but she was already at the door, whence she looked
back at him with a roguish smile, "I shall give you half an hour to make
Aunt Clevering see things as we do. At the end of that time I will be
here with Eustace; and if you wish to go on being friends with me, be
sure to have on your very best manners and--and that beautiful light in
your eyes."
She kept her word; no one ever knew what passed between Richard and his
mother, but an hour later Mistress Clevering, stiff of lip, but
courteous of manner, bade Betty take Master Singleton from Richard's
room to the parlour, and find him some refreshment. And when Betty had
obeyed, Joscelyn softly closed the door behind them, shutting them into
a rose-hued world of their own, where it were sacrilege for another to
intrude. Upstairs she heard Richard calling her entreatingly, but
remembering by what means her victory over his prejudice had been won,
she pretended not to hear, but ran swiftly into the street, and reached
Mistress Strudwick's door with such a glowing face that that lady
exclaimed:--
"Hoity-toity, child! still letting your cheeks play the Royalist,
although the war is done? Your sweetheart should see you now. In sooth,
I think Amanda Bryce would even agree that you are pretty. Come here and
tell an old woman what all these blushes mean."
And Joscelyn's fibbing tongue said it was only the race she had run in
the wind from her door.