When the sign-board on a station platform said "5.2 miles to St. X,"
Pauline sank back in her chair in the parlor-car with blanched face.
And almost immediately, so it seemed to her, Saint X came into
view--home! She fancied she could see the very house as she looked
down on the mass of green in which the town was embowered. The train
slid into the station, slowed down--there were people waiting on the
platform--her father! He was glancing from window to window, trying to
catch a glimpse of her; and his expression of almost agonized eagerness
made her heartsick. She had been away from him for nearly seven
months--long enough to break the habit which makes it impossible for
members of a family to know how they really look to each other. How
gray and thin his beard seemed! What was the meaning of that gaunt
look about his shoulders? What was the strange, terrifying shadow over
him? "Why, he's OLD!" The tears welled into her eyes--"He's gliding
away from me!" She remembered what she had to tell him and her knees
almost refused to support her.
He was at the step as she sprang down. She flew into his arms. He held
her away from him and scanned her face with anxious eyes.
"Is my little girl ill?" he asked. "The telegram made me uneasy."
"Oh, no!" she said with a reassuring hug. "Where's mother?"
"She--she's got a--a--surprise for you. We must hurry--she'll be
impatient, though she's seen you since I have."
At the curbstone stood the familiar surrey, with Mordecai humped upon
the front seat. "I don't see how the colonel ever knowed you," said
he, as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the like for growin'."
"But YOU look just the same, Mordecai--you and the surrey and the
horses. And how's Amanda?"
"Poorly," replied Mordecai--his invariable answer to inquiries about
his wife. She patterned after the old school, which held that for a
woman to confess to good health was for her to confess to lack of
refinement, if not of delicacy.
"You think I've changed, father?" asked Pauline, when the horses were
whirling them home. She was so busily greeting the familiar streets
and houses and trees and faces that she hardly heard his reply.
"'I never seen the like for growin','" he quoted, his eyes shining with
pride in her. He was a reticent man by nature as well as by training;
he could not have SAID how beautiful, how wonderful he thought her, or
how intensely he loved her. The most he could do to express himself to
her was, a little shyly, to pat her hand--and to LOOK it into
Mordecai's back.
She was about to snuggle up to him as a wave of delight at being home
again swept over her; but her secret rushed from the background of her
mind. "How could I have done it? How can I tell them?" Then, the
serene and beautiful kindness of her father's face reassured her.
Her mother was waiting in the open front door as the surrey came up the
drive--still the same dear old-young mother, with the same sweet
dignity and gentleness.
"Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed Pauline, leaping from the carriage into
her arms. And as they closed about her she felt that sorrow and evil
could not touch her; felt just as when she, a little girl, fleeing from
some frightful phantom of her own imagining, had rushed there for
safety. She choked, she sobbed, she led her mother to the big sofa
opposite the stairway; and, sitting there, they held each the other
tightly, Pauline kissing her, smoothing her hair, she caressing Pauline
and crying softly.
"We've got a surprise for you, Polly," said she, when they were calmer.
"I don't want anything but you and father," replied Pauline.
Her father turned away--and so she did not see the shadow deepen in his
face. Her mother shook her head, mischief in her eyes that were young
as a girl's--younger far than her daughter's at that moment. "Go into
the sitting-room and see," she said.
Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John Dumont caught her in his
arms. "Polly!" he exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come round
and--and--here I am!"
Pauline pushed him away from her and sank to the floor in a faint.
When she came to herself she was lying on the divan in the
sitting-room. Her mother was kneeling beside her, bathing her temples
with cold water; her father and her husband were standing, helplessly
looking at her. "Send him away," she murmured, closing her eyes.
Only her mother heard. She motioned to the two men to leave the room.
When the door closed Pauline sat up.
"He said it was all right," she began feverishly. "What did he mean,
mother?" She was hoping she was to be spared the worst part of her
ordeal.
But her mother's reply dashed her hopes, made her settle back among the
cushions and hide her face. "It IS all right, Polly. You're to have
your own way, and it's your father's way. John has convinced him that
he really has changed. We knew--that is, I suspected why you were
coming, and we thought we'd give you a surprise--give you what your
heart was set on, before you had to ask for it. I'm so sorry, dear,
that the shock was--"
Pauline lay perfectly still, her face hidden. After a pause: "I don't
feel well enough to see him now. I want this day with you and father.
To-morrow--to-morrow, we'll--to-day I want to be as I was when I
was--just you and father, and the house and the garden."
Her mother left her for a moment and, when she came back, said: "He's
gone."
Pauline gave a quick sigh of relief. Soon she rose. "I'm going for
father, and we'll walk in the garden and forget there's anybody else in
the world but just us three."
At half-past eight they had family prayers in the sitting-room; Pauline
kneeling near her mother, her father kneeling beside his arm-chair and
in a tremulous voice pouring out his gratitude to God for keeping them
all "safe from the snares and temptations of the world," for leading
them thus far on the journey.
"And, God, our Father, we pray Thee, have this daughter of ours, this
handmaiden of Thine, ever in Thy keeping. And these things we ask in
the name of Thy Son--Amen." The serene quiet, the beloved old room,
the evening scene familiar to her from her earliest childhood, her
father's reverent, earnest voice, halting and almost breaking after
every word of the petition for her; her mother's soft echo of his
"Amen"--Pauline's eyes were swimming as she rose from her knees.
Her mother went with her to her bedroom, hovered about her as she
undressed, helped her now and then with fingers that trembled with
happiness, and, when she was in bed, put out the light and "tucked her
in" and kissed her--as in the old days. "Good night--God bless my
little daughter--my HAPPY little daughter."
Pauline waited until she knew that they were sleeping. Then she put on
a dressing-gown and went to the open window--how many springtimes had
she sat there in the moonlight to watch, as now, the tulips and the
hyacinths standing like fairies and bombarding the stars with the most
delicious perfumes.
She sat hour after hour, giving no outward sign of battle within. In
every lull came Scarborough's "Be SURE, Pauline!" to start the tumult
afresh. When the stars began to pale in the dawn she rose--she WAS
sure. Far from sure that she was doing the best for herself; but sure,
sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty to her parents.
"I must not punish THEM for MY sin," she said.
Late the next morning she went to the farthest corner of the garden, to
the small summer-house where she had played with her dolls and her
dishes, where she had worked with slate and spelling-book, where she
had read her favorite school-girl romances, where she had dreamed her
own school-girl romance. She was waiting under the friendly old canopy
of bark--the posts supporting it were bark-clad, too; up and around and
between them clambered the morning-glories in whose gorgeous,
velvet-soft trumpets the sun-jewels glittered.
And presently he came down the path, his keen face and insolent eyes
triumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to note
hers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than demonstrative
with him.
"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out of a sensation," he
said. Though she was not looking at him, his eyes shifted from her
face as he added in a voice which at another time she might have
thought strained: "Then, too, your father and mother and mine are so
strait-laced--it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're a good
deal like them, Polly--only in a modern sort of way."
Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips. She said presently:
"You're sure you wish it?"
"Wish what?"
"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're both too young, that we
might wait----"
He put his arm round her with an air of proud possession. "What'd be
the sense in that?" he demanded gaily. "Aren't you MINE?"
And again she flushed and lowered her eyes and compressed her lips.
Then she astonished him by flinging her arms round his neck and kissing
him hysterically. "But I DO love you!" she exclaimed. "I do! I DO!"