“Yes, mother, he will come. Of course he will come!” And the girl turned
her drawn and anxious young face towards the cottage door, just as if
her blind mother could see the action.
It is probable that the old woman divined the longing glance from the
change in the girl's tone, for she, too, half turned towards the door.
It was a habit these two women had acquired. They constantly looked
towards the door for the arrival of one who never came through the long
summer days, through the quiet winter evenings; moreover, they rarely
spoke of other things, this arrival was the topic of their lives. And
now the old woman's life was drawing to a close, as some lives do,
without its object. She herself felt it, and her daughter knew it.
There was in both of them a subtle sense of clinging. It was hard to
die without touching the reward of a wondrous patience. It was cruel
to deprive the girl of this burden, for in most burdens there is a
safeguard, in all a duty, and in some the greatest happiness allotted to
human existence.
It was no new thing, this waiting for the scapegrace son; the girl had
grown up to it, for she would not know her brother should she meet him
in the street. Since sight had left the old mother's eyes, she had fed
her heart upon this hope.
He had left them eighteen years before in a fit of passionate resentment
against his father, whose only fault had been too great an indulgence
for the son of his old age. Nothing had been too good for dear
Stephen--hardly anything had been good enough. Educated at a charity
school himself, the simple old clergyman held the mistaken view that no
man can be educated above his station.
There are some people who hold this view still, but they cannot do so
much longer. Strikes, labour troubles, and the difficulties of domestic
service, so called gentleman farmers, gentleman shopkeepers and lady
milliners--above all, a few colonies peopled by University failures,
will teach us in time that to educate our sons above their station is to
handicap them cruelly in the race of life.
Stephen Leach was one of the early victims to this craze. His father,
having risen by the force of his own will and the capabilities of his
own mind from the People to the Church, held, as such men do, that he
had only to give his son a good education to ensure his career in life.
So everything--even to the old parson's sense of right and wrong--was
sacrificed to the education of Stephen Leach at public school and
University. Here he met and selected for his friends youths whose
futures were ensured, and who were only passing through the formula
of an education so that no one could say they were unfit for the snug
Government appointment, living, or inheritance of a more substantial
sort, that might be waiting for them. Stephen acquired their ways
of life without possessing their advantages, and the consequence
was something very nearly approaching to ruin for the little country
rectory. Not having been a University man himself, the rector did not
know that at Oxford or Cambridge, as in the army, one may live
according to one's taste. Stephen Leach had expensive tastes, and he
unscrupulously traded on his father's ignorance. He was good-looking,
and had a certain brilliancy of manner which “goes down” well at the
'Varsity. Everything was against him, and at last the end came. At last
the rector's eyes were opened, and when a narrow-minded man's eyes are
once opened he usually becomes stony at heart.
Stephen Leach left England, and before he landed in America his father
had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good
grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her
widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was
in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old lady's
faith never wavered.
“He will come, Joyce,” she would say; “he will surely come.”
And somehow it came to be an understood thing that he was to come in
the afternoon when they were all ready for him--when Joyce had clad
her pretty young form in a dark dress, and when the old lady was up and
seated in her chair by the fire in winter, by the door in summer. They
had never imagined his arrival at another time. It would not be quite
the same should he make a mistake and come in the morning, before Joyce
had got the house put right.
Yet, he never came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce
suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both
knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs.
Leach was bedridden. Still she said--
“He will come, Joyce! He will surely come.”
And the girl would go to the window and draw aside the curtain, looking
down the quiet country road towards the village.
“Yes, mother, he will come!” was her usual answer; and one day she gave
a little exclamation of surprise and almost of fear.
“Mother,” she exclaimed, “there is some one coming along the road.”
The old lady was already sitting up in bed, staring with her sightless
orbs towards the window.
Thus they waited. The man stopped opposite the cottage, and the two
women heard the latch of the gate. Then Joyce, turning, saw that her
mother had fainted. But it was only momentary. By the time she reached
the bed her mother had recovered consciousness.
“Go,” said the old lady, breathlessly; “go and let him in yourself.”
Downstairs, on the doorstep, the girl found a tall man of thirty or
thereabouts with a browner face than English suns could account for. He
looked down into her eager eyes with a strange questioning wonder.
“Am I too late?” he asked in a voice which almost seemed to indicate a
hope that it might be so.
“No, Stephen,” she answered. “But mother cannot live much longer. You
are just in time.”
The young man made a hesitating little movement with his right hand and
shuffled uneasily on the clean stone step. He was like an actor called
suddenly upon the stage having no knowledge of his part. The return
of this prodigal was not a dramatic success. No one seemed desirous of
learning whether he had lived upon husks or otherwise and with whom he
had eaten. The quiet dignity of the girl, who had remained behind to
do all the work and bear all the burden seemed in some subtle manner to
deprive him of any romance that might have attached itself to him. She
ignored his half-proffered hand, and turning into the little passage,
led the way upstairs.
Stephen Leach followed silently. He was rather large for the house, and
especially for the stairs; moreover, he had a certain burliness of walk,
such as is acquired by men living constantly in the open. There was
a vaguely-pained look in his blue eyes, as if they had suddenly
been opened to his own shortcomings. His attitude towards Joyce was
distinctly apologetic.
When he followed the girl across the threshold of their mother's bedroom
the old lady was sitting up in bed, holding out trembling arms towards
the door.
Here Stephen Leach seemed to know better what to do. He held his mother
in his arms while she sobbed and murmured out her joy. He had no words,
but his arms meant more than his lips could ever have told.
It would seem that the best part of happiness is the sharing of it with
some one else.
“Joyce,” was the first distinct word the old lady spoke, “Joyce, he has
come at last. He has come! Come here, dear. Kiss your brother. This is
my firstborn--my little Steve.”
The young man had sunk upon his knees at the bedside, probably because
it was the most convenient position. He did not second his mother's
proposal with much enthusiasm. Altogether he did not seem to have
discovered much sympathy with the sister whom he had left in her cradle.
Joyce came forward and leaned over the bed to kiss her brother while the
old lady's hands joined theirs. Just as her fresh young lips came within
reach he turned his face aside, so that the kiss fell on barren ground
on his tanned cheek.
“Joyce,” continued the old lady, feverishly, “I am not afraid to die
now, for Stephen is here. Your brother will take care of you, dear, when
I am gone.”
It was strange that Stephen had not spoken yet; and it was perhaps just
as well, because there are occasions in life when men do wisely to keep
silent.
“He is strong,” the proud mother went on. “I can feel it. His hands are
large and steady and quiet, and his arms are big and very hard.”
The young man knelt upright and submitted gravely to this maternal
inventory.
“Yes,” she said, “I knew he would grow to be a big man. His little
fingers were so strong--he hurt me sometimes. What a great moustache!
I knew you had been a soldier. And the skin of your face is brown and
a little rough. What is this? what is this, Stephen dear? Is this a
wound?”
“Yes,” answered the Prodigal, speaking for the first time. “That is a
sword cut. I got that in the last war. I am a colonel in the Chilian
army, or was, before I resigned.”
The old lady's sightless eyes were fixed on his face, as if listening
for the echo of another voice in his deep quiet tones.
“Your voice is deeper than your father's ever was,” she said; and all
the while her trembling fingers moved lovingly over his face, touching
the deep cut from cheek-bone to jaw with soft inquiry. “This must have
been very near your eye, Stephen. Promise me, dear, no more soldiering.”
“I promise that,” he replied, without raising his eyes.
Such was the home-coming of the Prodigal. After all, he arrived at the
right moment in the afternoon, when the house was ready. It sometimes
does happen so in real life, and not only in books. There is a great
deal that might be altered in this world, but sometimes, by a mere
chance, things come about rightly. And yet there was something wrong,
something subtle, which the dying woman's duller senses failed to
detect. Her son, her Stephen, was quiet, and had not much to say for
himself. He apparently had the habit of taking things as they came.
There was no enthusiasm, but rather a restraint in his manner, more
especially towards Joyce.
The girl noticed it, but even her small experience of human kind had
taught her that large, fair-skinned men are often thus. They are not “de
ceux qui s'expliquent,” but go through life placidly, leaving unsaid and
undone many things which some think they ought to say and do.
After the first excitement of the return was over it became glaringly
apparent that Stephen had arrived just in time. His mother fell into
a happy sleep before sunset; and when the active young doctor came a
little later in the evening he shook his head.
“Yes,” he said, “I see that she is asleep and quiet--too quiet. It is a
foretaste of a longer sleep; some old people have it.”
For the first time Joyce's courage seemed to give way. When she had
been alone she was brave enough, but now that her brother was there,
woman-like, she seemed to turn to him with a sudden fear. They stood
side by side near the bed; and the young doctor involuntarily watched
them. Stephen had taken her hand in his with that silent sympathy which
was so natural and so eloquent. He said nothing, this big, sun-tanned
youth; he did not even glance down at his sister, who stood small,
soft-eyed, and gentle at his side.
The doctor knew something of the history of the small family thus
momentarily united, and he had always feared that if Stephen Leach did
return it would only kill his mother. This, indeed, seemed to be the
result about to follow.
Presently the doctor took his leave. He was a young man engaged in
getting together a good practice, and in his own interest he had been
forced to give up waiting for his patients to finish dying.
“I am glad you are here,” he said to Stephen, who accompanied him to the
door. “It would not do for your sister to be alone; this may go on for a
couple of days.”
It did not go on for a couple of days, but Mrs. Leach lived through that
night in the same semi-comatose state. The two watchers sat in her room
until supper-time, when they left their mother in charge of a hired
nurse, whose services Joyce had been forced to seek.
After supper Stephen Leach seemed at last to find his tongue, and he
talked in his quiet, almost gentle voice, such as some big men possess,
not about himself or the past, but about Joyce and the future. In a
deliberate business-like way, he proceeded to investigate the affairs
of the dying woman and the prospects of her daughter; in a word, he
asserted his authority as a brother, and Joyce was relieved and happy to
obey him.
It is not in times of gaiety that friendships are formed, but in sorrow
or suspense. During that long evening this brother and sister suddenly
became intimate, more so than months of prosperous intercourse could
have made them. At ten o'clock Stephen quietly insisted that Joyce
should go to bed while he lay down, all dressed, on the sofa in the
dining-room.
“I shall sleep perfectly; it is not the first time I have slept in my
clothes,” he said simply.
They went upstairs together and told the nurse of this arrangement.
Joyce remained for some moments by the bedside watching her mother's
peaceful sleep, and when she turned she found that Stephen had quietly
slipped away. Wondering vaguely whether he had intentionally solved her
difficulty as to the fraternal good-night, she went to her own room.
The next morning Mrs. Leach was fully conscious, and appeared to be
stronger; nevertheless, she knew that the end was near. She called her
two children to her bedside, and, turning her blind eyes towards them,
spoke in broken sentences.
“I am ready now--I am ready,” she said. “Dears, I am going to your
father--and... thank God, I can tell him that I have left you together.
I always knew Stephen would come back. I found it written everywhere in
the Bible. Stephen--kiss me, dear!”
The man leant over the bed and kissed her.
“Ah!” she sighed, “how I wish I could see you--just once before I die.
Joyce!” she added, suddenly turning to her daughter, who stood at
the other side of the bed, “tell me what he is like. But--I know .. I
KNOW--I feel it. Listen! He is tall and spare, like his father. His hair
is black, like--like his father's--it was black before he went away. His
eyes, I know, are dark--almost black. He is pale--like a Spaniard!”...
Joyce, looking across the bed with slow horror dawning in her face,
looked into a pair of blue eyes beneath tawny hair, cut short as
a soldier's hair should be. She looked upon a man big, broad,
fair--English from crown to toe--and the quiet command of his lips and
eyes made her say--
“Yes, mother, yes.”
For some moments there was silence. Joyce stood pale and breathless,
wondering what this might mean. Then the dying woman spoke again.
“Kiss me,” she said. “I... am going. Stephen first--my firstborn! And
now, Joyce... and now kiss each other--across the bed! I want to hear
it... I want... to tell... your... father.”
With a last effort she raised her hands, seeking their heads. At first
Joyce hesitated, then she leant forward, and the old woman's chilled
fingers pressed their lips together. That was the end.
Half an hour afterwards Joyce and this man stood facing each other in
the little dining-room. He began his explanation at once.
“Stephen,” he said, “was shot--out there--as a traitor. I could not tell
her that! I did not mean to do this, but what else could I do?”
He paused, moved towards the door with that same strange hesitation
which she had noticed on his arrival. At the door he turned, to justify
himself.
“I still think,” he said gravely, “that it was the best thing to do.”
Joyce made no answer. The tears stood in her eyes. There was something
very pathetic in the distress of this strong man, facing, as it were, an
emergency of which he felt the delicacy to be beyond his cleverness to
handle.
“Last night,” he went on, “I made all the necessary arrangements for
your future just as Stephen would have made them--as a brother might
have done. I... he and I were brother officers in a very wild army. Your
brother--was not a good man. None of us were.” His hand was on the door.
“He asked me to come and tell you,” he added. “I shall go back now....”
They stood thus: he watching her face with his honest soft blue eyes,
she failing to meet his glance.
“May I come back again?” he asked suddenly.
She gave a little gasp, but made no answer.
“I will come back in six months,” he announced quietly, and then he
closed the door behind him.