THE OLD HOME
There was nothing that could depress Winn just now any more than to
visit his boyhood home. It had been twelve years since he left the
hillside farm, and to return to it, even for a few days and on the
errand that called him, was melancholy in the extreme. Then his trip to
Rockhaven had not helped his feelings. He had gone there expecting to
find Mona, and believing that a few words of explanation would set
matters right. He had even planned what to say and how to say it, and in
the fulness of his faith in himself and her, believed that she would
easily overlook what he now knew was a cruel neglect on his part. Just
why he had let his own discouragement rule him so long and in such a
way, he could not now understand. And the more he thought of it and saw
his own conduct as it was, the worse it seemed. Perhaps she had never
received the letter! Perhaps also she had written, and it had failed to
reach him. And when he recalled the parting, and that all her happiness
and life, almost, seemed to rest on his promise to return, he almost
cursed his own stupidity.
Verily, a pearl of great price had been cast at his feet, and he had
been too witless to pick it up.
And now she was here in the city, and had been for months. And other men
might be looking into her winsome eyes, and whispering of love!
And with these self-reproaches and jealous surmises for company, Winn
sped onward toward his boyhood home.
It was dark ere a slow-moving stage landed him at the village tavern and
a cheerless supper.
And the next day's visit to the spot!
The only redeeming feature seemed to be that it was warm and the sun
shone--one of those first spring days that come the last of March, and
with it the early-arriving bluebirds. They were there when Winn reached
the now deserted farmhouse, where a snow-drift still lingered against
its northern side and patches of the same winter pall draped each stone
wall. The brook which crossed the meadow in front was a brimming
torrent; the barn shed across the road was filled with a confusion of
worn-out vehicles, broken and rusted farming tools half buried in snow,
a drift of which remained in the empty barn, the door of which had
fallen to earth: the fences had great gaps in them; gates were missing;
and ruin and desolation were visible on all sides.
The house that had once been "Home, Sweet Home," to Winn was the most
lugubrious blotch of all. It had grown brown and moss-covered with time
and the elements, missing window-panes were replaced with rags, bushes
choked the dooryard, and, as he peered into what had once been the "best
room," snow lay on the floor and strips of paper hung from the walls.
How small the house seemed to what it once had! The old well-sweep had
been used to patch the garden fence, the woodshed roof had fallen in,
and a silence that seemed to crawl out of that old ruin brooded over it.
This was his boyhood home, and on it lay the burden of three years'
taxes and a mortgage!
And as Winn looked into windows and then entered, crossing floors
gingerly, lest they give way and pitch him into the cellar, he felt that
it would be a mercy to the world to set the old rookery on fire and
remove it from human sight.
The solitary note of joy about it was a bluebird piping away in the
near-by orchard, and for that bird's presence there, Winn felt grateful.
Then he wandered over the orchard, searching for the tree that had
borne seek-no-further apples, and another where he had once met a colony
of angry hang-legs while climbing to rob a bird's nest. He failed to
reach the nest, but those vicious wasps reached him easily enough, and
as Winn recalled the incident he smiled--the first time that day.
For two hours he roamed about the farm, now hunting for the tree where
he had shot his first squirrel, and then the thicket in which he had
once kept a box-trap set for rabbits. He followed the brook up to the
gorge, sauntered through the chestnut grove and back to where a group of
sugar maples and a sap house stood, thankful that the familiar rocks yet
remained and that the trees had not been cut away, and for the
bluebirds, chirping a welcome.
Then he left the scenes of his boyhood days, so happy in memory, and as
he drove away, turned for a last look at the old brown house, feeling
much as one does after visiting an ancient graveyard where ancestors lie
buried.
He had a week's leave of absence from his duties, now ahead of him, and
he went cousining. He also hunted up a few old schoolmates, putting
himself in touch with their rustic lives and talking over school days.
Then he returned to the city, feeling that luck had dealt unfairly by
him and that he was more out of place than ever.
And now began a period in Winn's life which he never afterward recalled
without a chill of dread. To no one did he confide his feelings, for no
one, he felt, could understand them. It was not exactly a love-lorn fit
of despondency, and yet it was, for Mona was ever present in his
thoughts. He avoided Jack Nickerson, hating to listen to his inevitable
sneering, and kept away from Ethel Sherman. He hunted for news items, as
duty called him, visiting the stock exchange, the theatre, the court
rooms, and the morgue. And while he looked for news, recording simple
drunks and their penalties, suicides and their names and history, and
the advent of theatrical stars with equal indifference, he scanned the
crowded streets and all public places, ever on the watch for one fair
face. Often he would stand on a corner for an hour, watching the passing
throng, and then at a theatre entrance until all had departed. And
though he was one of that busy throng of pushing people, a spectator of
careless, laughing humanity crowding into and out of playhouses, he was
not of them. Instead was he a disappointed, discouraged man, whose
ambitions had come to naught and whose hopes were in shadow. He was
moody and silent at home and aimless at his work, and as the days went
by with never one glimpse of the face he now longed to see more than all
else in the world, he grew utterly hopeless.
How many times had he lived over those summer days on Rockhaven, how
often fancied himself in the cave listening to the artless words and
simple music of that child of nature, and how he cursed his own
stupidity and lack of appreciation, need not be specified.
With him, as with us all, the blessings that had been his seemed to
brighten and grow dearer as they took flight.
And of Mona or her whereabouts, not one word or hint had reached him.