HOME AGAIN
Quit your whistlin' Jimmy, and hold your whist--all of you--don't you
know your poor sister is dead for sleep. Hasn't she been up hill and
down dale this last six weeks. I never saw the like of it, and it's a
God's mercy she ever lived through it--and then last night when she
drove over from her school nothing would do your pa but she must talk
half the night, when she should have been in bed. So now clear out you
lads, and let's keep the house quiet, for Pearl is a light sleeper and
always was."
"And a light stepper too, ma, for here I am--up and dressed, and
hungry as a bear." It was Pearl herself who opened the stairs' door.
A shout of joy arose from the assembly in the kitchen, dearer to Pearl
than any burst of hand-clapping she had ever heard in a theatre, and
there was a rush for the first kiss, which Danny landed neatly, though
we must admit it was done by racing over his brother Patsey, who sat
on the floor tying his boot, and Patsey's ruffled feelings did not
subside until Pearl opened her valise, which stood inside the "room"
door, and brought out jack-knives for the youngest four boys. Patsey
declared, still smarting over the indignity of being run over, and
stood upon, that Danny should not get a knife at all, but Mrs. Watson
interposed for her latest born by saying:
"O Patsey, dear, don't be hard on him. He was just that overjoyed at
seein' Pearl, he never noticed what he was standin' on; anything would
ha' done him just as well as you."
"I'll overjoy him, you bet," grumbled Patsey--tenderly feeling the
back of his neck, "when I get him outside. I'll show him what it feels
like to have some one stand on your neck, with heavy boots."
Danny made no defence, but gazed rapturously on his sister, and
expectantly at the valise, whose bulging sides gave forth promise of
greater treasures yet to come.
"I have some things here for broken hearts and rainy days," said
Pearl, "that Ma and Mary will be placed in charge of. I believe a
skinned neck should qualify, so if Patsey Watson will dry his tears
and iron out his face and step back against the wall, close his
eyes--and smile--he will get a pleasant surprise."
Patsey complied with all the conditions. Indeed, he not only smiled,
he grinned, showing a gaping expanse in the front of his mouth from
which the middle tooth had gone, like a missing gate in a neat white
fence.
When Pearl placed a box in his hands, which contained the makings and
full directions for setting up a red and black box-kite, a picture of
which in full flight adorned the cover, a war-whoop of joy rent the
air.
"Ain't you the luckiest kid!" cried Tommy enviously, as he crowded to
get another look. "If there's anything goin', you get it."
"Now clear out, all you boys, and let Pearl get her breakfast," said
Mary. "I haven't had a chance to speak to her yet, and I want to know
how the girls are wearing their hair and how long a girl of sixteen
should wear her skirts, and lots of things."
The boys departed to make whistles with the new knives, Pearl offering
a prize for the shrillest and fartherest reaching; to be tried at
twelve o'clock noon, and silence settled once more on the kitchen.
"It's sort of too bad you came home on Saturday, Pearl," said her
mother anxiously, as she toasted a slice of bread over the
glowing wood coals. "The boys will pester you to death today and
tomorrow--though of course I know you have no other time."
"I like to be pestered, ma," said Pearl, as she began on a generous
helping of bacon and eggs. "Home is the best place, ma, and I never
knew just how good it was to have home and folks of my own, as the day
I went to school and found no children there. Isn't it queer, ma,
how hard people can be on each other. It makes me afraid God must be
disappointed lots of times, and feel like pulling down another flood
and getting away to a fresh start again.
"But I am not going to talk about anything--until I get back to
feeling the way I did when I went away. I want to see the hens and
the cows and the new pigs. I want to get out in the honest, freckly
sunshine. Do the potatoes need hoeing, ma? All right, pa and I will
go at them. I like people, and all that, but I have to mix in lots of
blue sky and plants, and a few good, honest horses, cows, dogs and
cats--who have no underlying motives and are never suspicious or
jealous, and have no regrets over anything they've done."
"But don't you like the city, Pearl?" Mary asked. "Don't you wish we
all lived there? I do, you bet."
"I am glad my people live right here, Mary, out in the open, where
there's room to breathe and time to think. O, I like the city, with
its street cars weaving the streets together like shuttles; I love
their flashing blue and red and green lights, as they slide past the
streets, clanging their bells, and with faces looking out of the
windows, and every one of the people knowing where they are going. I
like the crowds that surge along the streets at night, and the good
times they are having. I like it--for a visit. It's a great place to
go to--if you have your own folks with you--I think I'd like it--on a
wedding trip--or the like of that.
"But I want to see everything 'round home," said Pearl quickly. "Is
the garden all up, and what did you sow, and where are the hens set,
and did the cabbage plants catch?"
"You bet they did," said Mary proudly. "I transplanted them, and I put
them in close. Pa said I would need to take out every second one, but
I said we'd try them this way for once. You know the way cabbages
sprawl and straggle all over the place--all gone to leaves. Well, mine
won't, you bet, they'll heart up, because there's nothing else for
them to do. Pa admits now its the best way. They've got no room to
grow spraddly and they're just a fine sight already. Cabbages are just
like any one else; it doesn't do to give them too much of their own
way, and let them think they own the earth."
When breakfast was over, Pearl, Mary and Mrs. Watson went out into
the hazy blue sunshine. The ravine below the house was musical with
thrushes and meadow-larks. The blossoms had gone, and already the wild
cherries and plums were forming their fruit. Cattle fed peacefully on
the river banks, and some were cropping the volunteer growth of oats
that had come on the summer fallow. The grain was just high enough to
run ripples of light, as the gentlest of breezes lazily passed.
Pearl remembered the hopes and visions that had come to her the first
day she and her father had come to the farm, and through all its
dilapidation and neglect, she had seen that it could be made into a
home of comfort and prosperity, and now the dream had come true. The
Watson family were thriving; their farm had not failed them; comforts,
and even a few luxuries were theirs, and Pearl's heart grew very soft
and tender with a sense of gratitude.
It was not too good to be true, she thought, as she looked at the
comfortable home, the new barn and the populous farmyard spread out
under the quivering sunshine.
"It was not too good to be true," thought Pearl. "I can't complain,
even if some of my dreams have failed me--and maybe--who knows?"
"It's got to come right," she thought it so hard, she looked up to see
if Mary or her mother noticed. But they were busy with a hidden-away
nest, just found in the willow windbreak.
The news of the neighborhood was given to her by Mary.
"The Paines are putting up a new house, Pearl, and Mrs. Paine has some
real nice clothes, and they seem to be getting on far better."
"That's good," said Pearl, and then added, with such deep conviction,
as if she were trying to convince some one, she said:
"There's nothing too good to be true."
At noon, when all the family had been fed, and the horses were resting
in the well-bedded stalls--John Watson gave himself and his horses a
two hours' rest in the heat of the day--when every one was present,
Pearl told them something of her adventures on the six weeks of her
absence. Especially did she tell the young brothers of the lonesome
little boy who had no playmates, but who loved his mother so much he
would not let her know that he was lonely.
Patsey had a solution of the difficulty:
"Take me back, when you go, Pearl, and I'll play with him, and let him
fly my kite n' everything."
"O, he isn't lonely now," Pearl said, "thank you all the same--but I'm
going to bring him over in the holidays, for he needs to play with
boys of his own age."
"Danny better not run over him, and stand on his neck, though--he
ain't used to it--the way we are," Patsy said, but was promptly
advised to forget it, and let Pearl go on with the story, by Danny
himself, to whom the subject was growing painful.
"His grandfather and grandmother came out when we did," Pearl said,
"and they're staying at Purple Springs, and Jim and his grandfather
are together all the time. Mrs. Gray--her real name is Mrs. Graham
now--doesn't want her boy brought up in the city, and his grandfather
is tired of the city too, so they're all living in the brown house,
and every day's a picnic day."
"But oh! say we did have one of the grandest picnics a week after we
got home from the city. On Mrs. Graham's farm there's a little stream
which runs down to the river, and we got it cleaned out, and a big,
long table made, and seats and all. Jim and his grandfather did the
work--he was brought up on a farm, and can do anything. And the two
women cooked for days, and I went round and asked every one to come to
the picnic--and I told them who Mrs. Gray was, and all about it."
"Told each one in a secret, I suppose, and told them not to tell,"
said her father, smiling.
"I hope you rubbed it in, good and plenty," said Mary, "about them
bein' so mean and full of bad thoughts."
"I did my best," said Pearl, "especially with some of them who had had
so much to say, and they were keen to come, I tell you, to meet the
Premier. That's what he'll always be called, too, and he sure looked
that day when he sat at the head of the table, with the sunshine
dappling the long table, with its salads and jellies and plates of
sliced ham, and all the people sitting around kind of humble and
sheepish. He wore his Prince Albert coat and his silk hat. He didn't
want to--he thought it wasn't the thing for a picnic, but I held him
up to it, for I didn't want the people to see him in his corduroy
hunting suit. I know how impressed they would be with the fine
clothes, and I was determined they should have every thrill.
"So he put on all his good clothes, even to his gray spats. I had to
argue a long time to get them on him. He said they looked foppish, but
I just got the button-hook and put them on him while he was arguing,
and asked him who thought of this picnic anyway! and he just laughed
and said he guessed he had to pass under the rod.
"And after all the people had been introduced, and the men were
standing back, pretty hot and uncomfortable in their white shirts, he
got up and asked every one to have a seat at the table, for he wanted
to say a few words before we began to eat.
"You could have heard a leaf fall, it was so still, and then he told
them all about his son, and how he didn't understand him, and never
made a chum of him, and how he was so taken up with politics he forgot
to be a father to his own boy. And he told about his son's marriage,
and the whole story, right up to the time I went to see him in the
city."
"'It's not easy telling this,' he said, 'but I put my daughter-in-law
in wrong in this neighborhood, and I am going to make it right if I
can. She is a noble, brave woman,' he said, 'and I am proud of her. I
lost the election,' he continued, 'but I am glad of it, for in losing
it, I found a daughter and a grandson,' and then he put his hand on my
shoulder and said, 'and here's the deepest conspirator in the country,
who managed the whole thing. This is the girl who made fun of me, and
lambasted me, but who brought my daughter-in-law and me together,
and when she runs for the Legislature, I promise I will get out and
campaign for her.'
"Every one laughed then, and the people crowded up around him, and
Annie, and you never saw so many people laughing and crying at the one
time in your life.
"We had a big boiler of coffee on the little tin stove in the trees,
and I grabbed off the white pitchers, and the biggest girls from the
school helped serve, and we got the people all started in to eat, for
it doesn't do to let people's feelings go too far.
"When they had quieted down a little, and were nearly through eating,
the minister, who was at the other end of the table, got up and said
he had an idea he wanted to pass on.
"'I'm ashamed,' he said--and I know he was--'of the way this community
has treated Mrs. Gray and Jimmy,'--he didn't seem able to call her
anything else either. 'On behalf of the district of Purple Springs, I
apologize. We'll show our apology in something better than words, too,
I hope,' he said, kind of swallowing his Adam's apple. 'We denied her
child the right to play with our children, through our stupid and
cruel thoughtlessness, now let us apologize by doing something for all
the children of this neighborhood. This is a beautiful spot, a natural
park; let us make it the Jim Gray Playgrounds, with swings, and
sand-pile and acting bars and swimming pool, with a baseball ground up
on the hill; where all our children, young people and old people too,
can gather and be young and human and sociable together.'
"The people broke out into cheers and cries of 'We'll do it!' It
seemed to relieve them.
"'And let us hold our church service here on Sundays, too, when the
weather is fine. Our religion has been too stuffy, too mouldy, too
damp, too narrow. It needs the sunshine and the clear air of heaven to
sweeten it and revive it. I feel it today, that God is in the sunshine
more than in the narrow limits we have tried to set upon Him.'
"'We sometimes deplore the tendency of our young people to go to the
city,' he continued, 'but I don't know as I blame them. We've been
living dull, drab lives for sure. Let us liven things up a bit, and
give our people something to look forward to during the week, and
something pleasant to remember. It's the utter dreariness of life that
kills people--not hard work.'
"And then," said Pearl, "I could see the people wanted to sing or cry,
or dance, or something, to work off their emotions; so I signalled to
Bessie Cowan, who is one of our best singers, to start a hymn that the
children sing every morning. They knew it well, and the people had
learned it from them. I never heard anything like it. It flashed up
through the highest branches of the trees, into the blue air. I am
sure God heard it, and was pleased:
"God is in His temple
Let the earth keep silent."
"Little Jim knew it too, and his voice was sweeter than all the rest.
It seemed easy for every one to talk or sing or laugh--or do whatever
they wanted to do. It was wonderful to see people come out of their
hard brown husks and be natural and neighborly."
"Sure, and it was more like a revival meetin' than a picnic, Pearlie,"
said her father, laughing.
"It was that, pa," she answered, "and like a term in a reform school
for some of them. There had been a big quarrel among them about a
road-scraper, and the next day every one was offering to wait, instead
of grabbing at it the way they had been; and the women who had fallen
out over a sleeve pattern and fought rings round, and called each
other everything they could name, made it up right there.
"Before they parted, they agreed to have the services there on
Sunday--that's tomorrow, and the ex-Premier is going to speak after
the service on 'How to Build a Community.' All the women are baking,
and everybody will bring their visitors, instead of staying home from
church the way they've been doing, and the children can play in the
sand-pile, and sail their boats on the little creek, and it looks as
if Purple Springs has experienced a change of heart."
"Don't you think there's a danger of leadin' them to thinkin' too
light of the Lord's day, Pearlie, picknicking that way," asked her
mother anxiously, "and maybe makin' them lose their religion?"
"O, I'm not worried about that neighborhood losing its religion, ma,"
said Pearl. "Any neighborhood that could treat a stranger the way
they did! But I do believe the sunshine and blue sky, the flowers and
birds, and the getting together, along with the words of the sermon
and the hymns they'll sing, will make them a lot more human. I never
can think it would hurt God's feelings a bit to see children playing,
and neighbors happy together on His day.
"They want us all to come; if you don't think it's too far to drive
with the whole family, and I've been training the children all week to
sing--it looks like a good time."
"We'll go!" cried Danny and Patsey, with one voice, and with brotherly
unity prevailing--for once.