AT HOME
The month of May that year was unusually wet, with warm sunshine between
the rains, so that with the sun and the rain June came on apace, and by
the middle of the month the roses and the early summer flowers were in
full bloom, and nowhere in Merivale was there a lovelier spot than the
grounds around the Grey house. They had been well cared for during the
previous year, and now special pains were taken with them, and the house
as well.
The proprietor, about whom there had been so much speculation, was
expected, Mr. Blake said, and had given instructions for everything to
be put in order, from the stables to the attic, while every nook and
corner of the garden and grounds was to be cleared from weeds and put
under the highest state of cultivation.
To Nancy Sharp the news that the master was expected came as a crusher,
for that might mean a return to White’s Row, which would be a great
descent from her present quarters; but when told that she could stay on
as laundress for the family, she assumed her old assurance of manner as
preferred creditor and occupant of the finest place in town, not
excepting that of Judge White, which, if more massive and solid, could
not compete with the Grey house in grace and artistic beauty.
It was when curiosity with regard to the owner, who had been incog. so
long, was at its height that a message came from England to the effect
that Fred Lansing and Louie had been married quietly in London, and that
later on “they were coming to Merivale for a few days,” Mr. Blake said,
with a knowing wink, which told as much as words could tell, and
confirmed the people in the suspicions which had been strengthening ever
since Mr. Grey’s debts were paid by Fred Lansing.
Evidently Judge White, who had received a letter from Fred, knew more
than was in the cablegram, but he was not to tell it.
“No, sir! When I’m bound, I’m bound,” he said to some friends who were
questioning him. “I don’t know nothing, and if I did, I’m not to tell.
Wait and you’ll see. Fred Lansing has a right to do as he pleases—marry
anybody he likes; and, by George, he’s got a smart little cat, if she is
Grey’s girl; might have had—” Here he checked, himself, thinking it
better not to tell that Grey’s girl had declined the honor of a marriage
with his son. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “Fred has a right to do as he
pleases, with all his money and blood—the bluest in the land, and his
pedigree going back to the Garden of Eden, for what I know. Yes, sir;
and if he brings his wife here we ought to do something out of the
common—fireworks, or something—set pieces; one the two banks as they
used to be; only you couldn’t blow up one without the other, and mine
stood. Yes, sir, it stood!”
Every word the judge said was repeated, and more, too; and when next
morning Nancy Sharp saw Mr. Blake, who came to the house, she pounced
upon him and nearly shook the breath out of him in her fierce demands
for the truth.
“Can you keep a secret, Nancy?” Mr. Blake asked; and for answer she
produced a Bible nearly a hundred years old, which had belonged to her
mother, and offered to swear upon it to be silent as the grave if he
would tell her what she believed she already knew.
He did not require the oath, but he told her; and with a cry of “Glory
Hallelujah!” the old woman began to imitate a skirt dance she had seen
in a travelling show, and thought rather immoral. Nothing was immoral
now, if it gave vent to her joy; nothing too complicated; and she not
only tried the skirt dance, but the Highland fling she had learned when
a girl. She was sure to stay where she was, and she refused the next
washing brought her; said she was out of the business, and if folks
waited a spell they’d know why.
The next two weeks she devoted to cleaning the part of the house she had
occupied, and picking up every dried leaf and stick in the grass, and
pulling every weed in the garden and flower beds.
More artistic hands than hers had arranged the rooms with flowers and
ferns and potted plants and palms on the June day when Fred Lansing and
his bride were expected. They had been in New York a week, and now, with
Fred’s mother and Miss Percy, were coming to Merivale—as guests of Judge
White, Louie thought; and the belief marred a little the pleasure of her
home-coming.
Herbert had written a letter of congratulation, in which he had said:
“I am glad for you, Louie, but cannot forget that I once hoped to be to
you what Fred is. If there is any good in me, I owe it to you. God bless
you. I shall never marry.
“HERBERT.”
There were tears in Louie’s eyes when she read this, but Fred kissed
them away, and then began to talk of the joy of being in Merivale again
and meeting her friends, who, Mr. Blake wrote, were anxiously waiting to
see her.
“Yes,” Louie said; “I am very glad, but I wish there was some place for
us besides Judge White’s. You don’t know how I shrink from going there.
Would it be very bad to stop at the hotel?”
“Yes, darling; very bad,” Fred answered, laughing, as he thought of the
surprise in store for her.
It was one of the loveliest days in June when the New York train stopped
at the Merivale station, where, it seemed to Louie, the whole town was
assembled, reminding her of the run and the failure. This crowd,
however, was animated by very different feelings; and as cheer after
cheer went up, and her hands were grasped by friend after friend, eager
to welcome her home, she began to feel faint and nauseated as she had
felt sometimes when the shadows were darkest around her. Fred saw it and
tried to draw her from the swarming throng to his uncle’s carriage,
which the judge told him was waiting for him.
“Godfrey Sheldon is here with Jack and Jill,” he said, “and it’s like
his impudence to ask you to ride with him, but it’s fitting you should
go in my carriage, seeing I’m your kin;” then to Louie he said, as a
band struck up a lively strain of welcome, “’Pon my soul, it beats all,
how glad the folks are. Why, if ’twas the President and his lady they
couldn’t make more of a cotouse. See what ’tis to belong to my family
and the Lansings’.”
He straightened himself back till he nearly fell over, and Louie
straightened, too, and held herself proudly erect, not because she was
allied to the Whites and Lansings, but because of some feelings the
judge’s words had stirred within her. It was not for him or his pedigree
the people were making this demonstration. They were her friends and her
father’s; they had forgotten the past, and were glad to have her back,
and there was nothing to mar her joy except a wish that she was not
going to Judge White’s, where, heretofore, she had only been received as
an inferior, to be civilly treated, or patronized, which was worse.
She was in the carriage now and Fred was with her, holding her hand,
which she had involuntarily stretched out to him in her excitement. The
crowd was dispersing rapidly—some in the vehicles which had brought them
there, some on wheels, some on foot, and nearly all hurrying in the same
direction the carriage was taking.
“Where is Nancy Sharp?” Louie asked, as they drove through the town.
“That’s so,” Fred answered, as naturally as if her non-appearance had
struck him as something strange.
“I hear the owner of the house is expected. Perhaps that is keeping her.
Shall we drive there first? It will please the old lady.”
“No—yes,” Louie answered, with conflicting emotions—a longing to see her
old home and a shrinking from it.
The horses’ heads were turned into the street, through which people were
hurrying as if eager to reach some point of interest. David had driven
very slowly all the way from the station, and now he drove more slowly
still, and finally made a detour through a side street, which gave more
time to the pedestrians and others hastening to the Grey house, every
door and window of which stood open, while in the grounds and on the
piazza were many people who had been at the station.
Conspicuous among the crowd was Nancy Sharp, with the tears rolling down
her face and her voice raised above all others as she said:
“Thank God for this day, and welcome home to Mis’ Fred Lansing; and if
she can find a speck of dust, my name ain’t Nancy Sharp.”
The truth was dawning upon Louie by this time, making her so weak that
Fred was obliged to lift her from the carriage and support her after she
was upon the ground, where more cheers greeted her, with more handshakes
of welcome.
None of the people entered the house. They were only there to see “how
Louie took it,” and when they saw how pale she was, with the tears
streaming down her cheeks as she tried to smile upon them, they felt
that she “took it” as she should, and were satisfied.
There was a cheer or two more, and the people departed, leaving Fred and
Louie alone, as Mrs. Lansing and Miss Percy had gone with the judge and
Mrs. White.
“Oh, Fred, it was you all the time, and I was so stupid not to suspect
who our generous landlord was,” Louie said, going from room to room with
the eagerness of a happy child.
Nothing had been changed, and everything was in perfect order. “Spick
and span,” Nancy said, following her mistress at a respectful distance,
but not so far away that she could not see “kissin’ and huggin’ that
went on every minute or two,” she confided to the cook and housemaid,
who, having lived with the Greys before the failure, had been hired to
take their former places, and, not being preferred creditors, were not
supposed to take the same liberties as Nancy.
Every deep wound leaves a scar after it has ceased to ache, and Louie
had been hurt so sorely that there would always be a slight shadow on
her life when she thought of the past, but she was as near perfect
happiness now as she ever could be, and the happiness seemed to increase
as the summer day waned and the moonlit night came on.
They were sitting upon the piazza, and Fred’s arm was around her, while
he told how he had planned buying the house and keeping his name from
the public, because he thought she might feel more willing to accept the
favor from a stranger than from him.
“It was sometimes hard work to keep it from you when we were abroad, and
especially when I received the letter you wrote to your unknown friend,
and which came to me on the ship which brought you. In it you said, “if
there is one thing more than another which you desire, I hope God will
give it to you,” and he has given me _you_—my heart’s desire—and I am
more than repaid. I thought you would like your old home, and meant to
give it to you. We have another house in Washington, you know. My mother
and Miss Percy like it, and we will spend our winters there and our
summers here, if it pleases you.”
“Pleases me! Oh, Fred, everything pleases me, and I am so happy that I
can scarcely breathe,” Louie said, clutching at her throat as if for
breath.
The high collar choked her, and she tore it off.
“There!” she said, at last, with a long gasp, “something which closed up
in Paris has given way. I began to feel it when the people at the
station cheered so loud. I believe I can sing again.”
She did not wait for Fred to reply, but, standing up, began a song in
which she had failed in Paris, her voice rising louder and clearer, and
striking the higher notes without a quiver. Then a few bars of the bird
song rang out on the air, and was answered by the faint twitter of a
robin roused from its first sleep, and thinking, perhaps, that its mate
was calling it.
“My voice has come back. I might have sung on the stage and paid my
debts myself,” she cried, in an ecstasy of joy, while the moonlight fell
around her like a halo, making her face seem to Fred like the face of an
angel.
He watched her till her transport of joy subsided. Then, drawing her
down beside him, he said:
“Louie, which would you rather be, a star before the footlights or my
wife, plain Mrs. Fred Lansing?”
Just what Louie’s answer was only the night wind heard, or the robin, if
she was still awake; but Fred was satisfied.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
POPULAR NOVELS
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
ENGLISH ORPHANS.
HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.
’LENA RIVERS.
MEADOW BROOK.
DORA DEANE.
COUSIN MAUDE.
MARIAN GREY.
EDITH LYLE.
DAISY THORNTON.
CHATEAU D’OR.
QUEENIE HETHERTON.
BESSIE’S FORTUNE.
MARGUERITE.
MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.
THE TRACY DIAMONDS.
DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
HUGH WORTHINGTON.
CAMERON PRIDE.
ROSE MATHER.
ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
MILBANK.
EDNA BROWNING.
WEST LAWN.
MILDRED.
FORREST HOUSE.
MADELINE.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
GRETCHEN.
DR. HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS.
PAUL RALSTON.
THE CROMPTONS.
THE MERIVALE BANKS.
“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affection of her readers, and of holding their attention to
her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”
Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 each, and sent _free_ by mail on
receipt of price.
G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers
NEW YORK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
263 hard face. Mrs. White sent them hard face. Mrs. White sent them
a sure specific for a cure specific for
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.