"HOME FROM COLLEGE"
She was standing beside the neatly painted horse-block, waiting to
welcome her boy. Will had spied her from the road.
As the buggy turned in through the gate he began to brace himself for
meeting her. This was going to be harder, he knew, than had been the
meeting at the railroad station a little while before, with his father,
whose honest old eyes had looked at him so searchingly.
He was coming nearer and nearer. She was smiling. It was the same
motherly smile he had known he would see. Now she was speaking his name.
The next moment he was out of the buggy, and she was kissing him just as
when he was an innocent little boy. She was frightened at her son's
pale, haggard face, but she did not want him to know it, and only
said, patting his cheek laughingly, "Why didn't you take better care of
yourself, child?"
[Illustration: THE MEETING
"I don't know, mother," he said slowly, "I don't know...."]
They were walking up the path. Will looked down at her. The tears were
forming in the little mother's eyes. He looked away again. "I don't
know, mother," he said, slowly, "I don't know why I didn't take better
care of myself."
"There, don't talk. You must rest after your long journey. Keep still
now. You can tell me all about everything later on." They opened the
screen door and went in.
Even Mr. Young had been alarmed when he saw his son step off the train.
At least he treated him very considerately and said, as he shook his
hand: "I guess you've been studying too hard there at school, ain't you?
'All work and no play'--you know the rest of it."
Will dropped his eyes as he thought of the kind of playing he had been
doing. Then he said, abruptly: "Well, I'll have plenty of time to get
well in," looked up the street and remarked that everything seemed the
same.
"Yes, everything's the same with us," his father replied, unhitching the
horse.
"Hello, Molly," Will said to the mare, "do you remember me?"
He was embarrassed in his father's presence, and Mr. Young seemed to
notice it, for as they got into the buggy he said, in an uneasy manner:
"Mother got your telegram, but I had to come to town anyway, so I
thought I might just as well drive you out home myself. Had a pleasant
trip?"
Indeed, his father, who had never once written him a letter during the
nine months' absence, was the last one Will expected to meet at the
station, but that was not what caused Will's constraint. It was the
queer searching way he looked at him every now and then.
"Could he have heard about it!" Will kept asking himself. "No, he
_can't_ know. If he knew--if he knew, he would be taking me to jail
instead of home. He would say it served me right for going against his
wishes."
At supper-time his father and his brother Charlie came in from the
cornfields together. "Hope you'll bring us rain," said Mr. Young. "We
need it." Charlie was brown and big, and he gave Will's hand a hearty
grip and said, "Glad to see you back, Will, blamed if I ain't."
Charlie never had ambitions for higher education. "Lucky Charlie!"
thought Will, remembering how he used to look down on him.
"They must make you study a lot, though!" Charlie added, looking at
Will's face.
Mr. Young disappeared for a few minutes into the next room; when he
returned he interrupted the conversation with, "By the way, mother, Will
says he don't think he'll go back there to school any more."
Mrs. Young did not want the matter discussed just now, for she saw a
pained look come over Will's face at the mention of it. "Whatever he
does," she said, in her bright, quick manner, "he must get well and
strong and happy again. Cheer up, Will, cheer up, look happy--my
goodness! just see his face," she went on laughing. "Don't you know
you're home, anyway, boy?"
Yes, he was home, anyway. But what a way it was; not very much like the
proud homecoming he had pictured long ago.
Mr. Young did not like to be switched off the subject. He went on, in a
queer tone: "Yes, I thought you'd come around to my way of thinking. I
thought you'd get tired of putting yourself through college, as you
called it. I ain't surprised, not a bit."
Will did not feel piqued or indignant. He only asked himself how much
longer he would wait before telling them all that he, William Young, son
of his father, member of the church, and the boy who had his tuition
remitted in consequence of a "high moral character," was a gambler and a
thief, and was liable to be exposed as such at any moment. Even now at
this hour somebody there in the East might be making inquiries as to his
whereabouts.
This load was becoming more than he could bear. Why not tell them all,
right then and there, and have it over with? "Listen, father," said
Will, his voice breaking a little. "You little understand the meaning
of my actions. Listen, everybody. I have something important to say."
"Shissh, Will, keep quiet, you're nervous," interrupted his mother.
"Father, don't let the poor boy try to talk. He's sick. He's all wrought
up; look at him."
"But I must explain--I _will_ explain. You all must know. Now listen:
the reason I'm not going back--the reason I had to study so----"
"Keep still, Will," said his father, in a grave tone; "you needn't go
on. I know all about it."
Will's heart stood still.
"You know all about it, father?"
"Yes, the minister told us how hard you were working for the prize. And
we read in the Chicago papers that another boy won it----"
"Oh, you don't understand; you don't know why I needed to win it. You
don't know anything about it--anything about it."
"Yes, yes, I do, Will," said Mr. Young, fumbling in his pocket for
something, "yes, I do."
Mrs. Young put in excitedly: "It was because you had to have the money
to go back next year. That was the reason you worked yourself nearly
into the grave and wrote such short, irregular letters home and----"
"Now, mother, keep still," interrupted Mr. Young, "I have something to
say." He dropped his eyes as though ashamed. He had taken out of his
pocket a slip of paper. There was some printing on it and some blank
places filled in with writing. He cleared his throat in the way he was
accustomed to do when he got up in prayer-meeting. "You had to have the
money. It was a necessity. You worked hard for it, but you missed it.
And I thought, seeing you missed the prize there at school, I would show
my appreciation of your efforts there at school, that--now, Will, take
this and stop looking at me in that way. You done your best. Now you
won't have to change your plans. I hate to see people change their
plans."
His father had put the slip of paper in his hand. Will looked at it. It
was a check drawn on the Farmers' National Bank. It said, "Pay to the
order of William Young Two Hundred Dollars ($200)." What did it all
mean?
It meant that the obstinate will of good old Farmer Young, that could
not be budged by the arguments of the minister or bent by the coaxing of
his wife, had finally been melted away by his own full heart at seeing
this poor sick boy of his, who bore the marks of having struggled so
pluckily and so discouragingly to earn for himself what his father had
refused to grant. Also it meant that Will Young could lift his head once
more, a free man.
"Why, where are you going, Will?" asked his mother. He had got up from
the table.
"I'm not hungry," he said, in a strange voice; "I'm going up to my room.
I'll be down soon." Then as he opened the door he said, without turning
around: "I don't deserve this, father. I can't tell you just now how
little I deserve it, but I'm going to take it." The door closed.
"What on earth's the matter with the boy?" said Mrs. Young, sighing. "I
suppose it's because he takes losing that prize so to heart. He's too
conscientious. Don't deserve it!--nonsense!"
When Will came down he looked better.
"Did Charlie say he was going to drive to town," he asked.
"Yes," said his mother. "But you don't want----"
"No, but I've got some letters here I'd like to go East the first thing
in the morning." And the next morning they were going East as fast as
the United States mail-cars could carry them.
One of them was to the Princeton Bank, and it contained the check for
$200, and an apology for overdrawing his account the month previous,
which was "not likely to happen again," he said.
The other contained checks also, drawn on that very bank for various
amounts to the order of Carey H. Lee and the rest, whose home addresses
he had looked up in the college catalogue.
And then he had the first calm full night's sleep in over a month and
came down to breakfast singing "The Orange and the Black," and all the
family thought it a "real pretty song," and did not know that Will sang
it to a tune of his own.
He felt like a new man. Perhaps he was.
"Father," said Mrs. Young, "look at Will; he's better already. I knew my
cooking and a little home comfort would do worlds for him. And I guess,"
she added, in Mr. Young's ear, "you cheered him up more by giving him
that money, father."
Mr. Young felt that he had been pretty generous, but he only growled.
They did not know the real reason Will was so exuberant this bright
sunny morning.
Was it necessary for them to know? That was one thing left to worry
about: whether it would be right to overwhelm his parents by telling
them of what their son had been through, or would it be wrong to keep on
taking their love and sympathy (as it seemed he had received his
father's check) on false pretences? He kept on being perplexed until he
finally confessed his whole story to the minister and asked him what to
do about it.
The minister, in his straightforward way, asked, "Have you confessed it
to God, Will?"
"Yes, sir," said Will, dropping his eyes.
"And has He forgiven you?"
Will paused a moment. "I think He has now."
"Then I think that is enough. In one sense it is certainly deceiving
them not to tell them, but I think it is the lesser of two evils. It
would do little or no good to tell your good old parents. It would only
grieve them as much as it would amaze them. You can pay back what you
owe your parents in love and kindness as well as in money. Don't you
think so?"
Will thought so and he made up his mind to try.
It became a matter of comment among the neighbors the way Will Young,
whom they were inclined to look at sceptically since "he went East to
college," was pitching in and working harder than any hired man on his
father's place and, what was more surprising, seeming to enjoy it; they
did not know quite what to make of it. He was paying back the $200.
It surprised his father also and pleased him, and so did Will's
respectful manner and his simple boyish endeavors to carry out all his
wishes. He was trying to pay back the other debt also.
When the fall came again Mr. Young hated more than ever to have him
leave, but this time, as he told Will's mother, he would fix it, he
guessed, so Will wouldn't have to work himself to a skeleton.