THE HOLIDAYS.
UNLIKE another young woman who shared Gyp’s taste for solitary and
unexpected rambles, and who was punished by being put to bed until she
was rested, justice descended upon Gypsy, and after the first hour of
enthusiasm over the returned prodigal, she was informed that she must
spend the rest of the day in her own room, while for a week she could
not leave the house nor see any one of the boys who came there. This was
a severe blow to the small sinner for she had been regarding herself as
the lion of the occasion and expected to be petted and admired for her
enterprise, accordingly. However, she knew the firmness of her mother’s
discipline too well to rebel, so, with one longing glance out at the
hill where the boys were coasting, she picked up Mouse and slowly
retired to her room. Once there, she passed the time by telling her
furry companion the story of her wanderings, dwelling with an unkind
emphasis on the beauty and plumpness of the cat and kittens at the farm.
But not even Gyp’s imprisonment punished her half so much as did the
sight of Leon, a week later, when she met him one morning, hopping over
to the recitation hall on crutches. Gyp was a tender-hearted child, and
fond of Leon, so the knowledge that her running away had been, even
indirectly, the cause of his fresh injury nearly broke her small heart;
and she tried, with all sorts of coaxing, wheedling arts, to make amends
for the suffering she had brought him. The few quick steps which Leon
had taken, on that memorable day, had done serious harm to his ankle
that had by no means recovered from the previous sprain, and his using
his foot was now delayed for weeks instead of days. During the time that
Gyp was shut up, he too was a prisoner; but, with no lessons, plenty of
books to read, unlimited dainties sent up the hill by the doctor’s wife
and the boys running in at all hours, a week spent in bed was rather
luxurious than otherwise. It was not quite so much fun when, promoted to
crutches and allowed, after a day or two of experimenting on them about
his room, to slowly work his way over to his classes, he could watch the
fun from a distance without being able to have a share in it. Still, he
was somewhat consoled by the doctor’s assurance that he would be able to
go home for the holidays, and that he would be walking as well as ever,
long before winter was over. With that he was forced to content himself;
and, thanks to a happy, sunny temper, he was enabled to make the best of
a rather bad matter, and bear the trouble with such perfect good-nature
that he won the praise of all the boys and the sincere admiration of his
teachers, even to the phlegmatic Herr Linden who said approvingly, one
day,—
“So, mein sohn, you haf a brave heart.”
“What’s the use of having anything else, I’d like to know, as long as it
can’t be helped,” was Leon’s comment, when he told Harry of the old
German’s praise. “It’s worth all the bother of it to be fed up as I am,
and have all you fellows at my feet, to say nothing of the lieutenant
and old Bony himself. If ’twasn’t quite such splendid coasting, I
shouldn’t be in any hurry to get on my feet again. I do hope daddy’ll
let me come right back after the holidays, though, and not make me wait
till I’m over it.”
A day or two later, several of the cadets were strolling back from the
armory where they had their afternoon drill, now that the storms had
made the parade-ground unfit for use. Leon was with them, for he had
been over to look on, a little enviously, it must be confessed, for the
drill under Lieutenant Wilde had been his delight, and this was the
first time he had seen it since his loss of promotion, a month before.
The boys came slowly along, adapting their pace to his rather uncertain
one. As they reached the steps of Old Flemming, Leon dropped down there
in the warm sunshine. The others followed his example.
“It doesn’t seem as if ’twere almost Christmas; does it?” asked Alex,
turning up his collar to keep out the wind, and then bending down to do
the same by Leon, who sat on the step below him.
During the past month, a strong intimacy had sprung up between the two
cadets, so far apart in age. Next to Harry, Leon adored Alex as a
superior being, and was never quite so happy as when in his society.
Alex, on his side, had been attracted from the first by Leon’s
wide-awake manner and frank, open nature. Then came the boy’s accident,
and Alex had been completely won by his pluck and uncomplaining
endurance. He had been most unselfish with him, giving up many an
out-of-door frolic to stay with him, until even Harry was half-jealous
at times, and laughingly protested that Alex was cutting him out.
“Thanks, old fellow,” said Leon, turning around, as he felt the hand on
his collar. “I don’t feel in any great hurry for vacation; I’m well
enough off here,” he added contentedly.
“You might petition the doctor to keep right on,” suggested Max
wickedly, while he appropriated one of Leon’s crutches to knock down an
icicle near by.
“No,” said Leon meditatively; “I don’t know as I mind going home for a
few days for a change. What are you going to do, Alex?”
“Stay around here, somewhere,” answered Alex. “Vacation’s too short to
make it worth while to go clear to Denver and back.”
“Not go home? H’m!” And Leon thoughtfully drew down his lips and raised
his eyebrows, in unconscious imitation of Mr. Boniface.
“Seems to me this has been an unusually exciting term,” observed Paul.
“With Winslow and the football and Gyp’s getting lost and—”
“The Boniface rebellion,” added Jack, in a lower tone.
“That’s mostly over now,” said Max. “There are a few little sneaks left
that walk over him, but most of the fellows either like him or let him
alone.”
“How he’s changed!” said Paul. “He doesn’t seem like the same man that
came here in September. He was a terror, then.”
“Perhaps the change is in us,” remarked Max, in a sanctimonious
falsetto. “Maybe we’re getting good at last.”
“No danger for you, Max,” said Leon reassuringly.
“We didn’t treat him decently, though,” returned Max, whose loyalty to
Mr. Boniface had dated from the day of their long talk together. “He was
queer and green and cross, and we made him more so.”
“I like old Bony pretty well, now,” said Jack, as he stretched out his
arms along the shoulders of the boys beside him. “He’ll always be too
solemn; but he’s improved immensely, and he’s a first-rate teacher,
anyway.”
“Even if we have been three months in finding it out,” said Alex, as he
rose and then stooped to help Leon to his feet.
Two days before vacation, Leon was sitting in his room, devoting one
last hour to an approaching examination, when Harry came in, with an
envelope in his hand.
“Here’s a letter for you from father,” he said, as he tossed it over to
Leon.
Leon caught it eagerly, tore it open and ran his eye over the contents.
Then he threw it down on the table.
“Good for daddy!” he exclaimed. “Here, Hal, you can read it; I’m going
to find Alex.” And he went hurrying away.
Harry picked up the letter and read the few lines it contained; then his
face grew as bright as Leon’s had done, and he rushed off after his
brother. The note was evidently in reply to one written by Leon, asking
permission to bring Alex home for the holidays; and it brought back a
most cordial invitation from both Mr. and Mrs. Arnold. But little urging
was needed to make Alex consent to so delightful a plan, and, two or
three days later, the Arnolds carried him home to Boston in triumph.
Three jolly stage loads left Hilton that morning, to board the train at
the station eight miles down the valley. Gathered at one end of the car,
the cadets formed a noisy, gay group, now chattering and laughing until
the rest of the passengers smiled in sympathy; now rushing to the door
at a station, to give three ringing cheers for the schoolmate who was
leaving them; now quiet for a moment while some member of the party
pulled the ever-present banjo from its green bag, and played a few
strains of a rollicking college air. It is remarkable the effect a party
of schoolboys going home for the holidays, can have on a carful of
people. Gradually the men leave their politics, the women their novels,
and even the fretful baby, who has been wailing for the past fifty
miles, stops its tired sobbing, while they all gaze with growing
interest on the happy group who are by no means impressed by them in
return. They catch at the names, listen eagerly for the jokes which they
repeat to each other in undertones, and quietly compare notes on their
preferences. On this particular day, opinions were divided, for the
older men declared themselves in favor of roguish Max, the mothers
beamed on steady Alex, the young girls pronounced Louis “so elegant,”
while Leon scarcely relished the verdict of one country dame who
remarked to her daughter, with the full power of her lungs,—
“For my part, I prefer the little lame one, he is so peart.”
Mr. Arnold met the boys at the station, and they drove directly to the
house, to be welcomed there by Mrs. Arnold and Dorothy, her pretty
daughter of eighteen. The next ten days were given up to holiday
merry-making, and the four young people were continually together.
Dorothy, who was enjoying her first winter of social life, would gladly
have drawn Alex into her gay circle, for she was by no means unconscious
of the advantage of introducing a handsome, well-bred escort; but here
Alex stood firm. Nothing would tempt him to forget that Leon was his
host, and to leave him alone, for the sake of pleasures in which he
could have no share. So the days passed in drives and a little
sight-seeing for the sake of Alex, who had never before visited the
city, and the evenings were given up to games and impromptu theatricals
with the young people who dropped in, nearly every night. It was a
pleasant home party, for while Mrs. Arnold petted and coddled Leon as
only a mother can do, and Mr. Arnold and his older son had the long,
quiet talks which so plainly showed the close intimacy between father
and child; in the meantime, Alex and Dorothy had established a frank,
cordial friendship, and indulged in a mild flirtation varied, now and
then, by a merry war of words.
On the last evening of the vacation and as the final frolic of the
holidays, the Arnolds and Alex went to the theatre together. The people
around them smiled sympathetically at their bright faces, as Dorothy
came in, followed by the three cadets, all in full uniform, and the tall
young cadet turned from the daintily-dressed girl, to help the short,
slight lad at his other side.
“I say, Dorry,” remarked Leon, bending across in front of Alex, to speak
to his sister; “I hope you aren’t easily puffed up. ’Tisn’t every girl
here that has a new frock and three elegant young men to take care of
her, and one of them a crippled veteran of the last campaign, at that.”
Dorothy gave him a look of amused scorn.
“Three young men!” she echoed in disdain. “You’d better say two young
men and one little boy. You’re nothing but a child, you know, and only
allowed to be up so late as a special indulgence, just for this once.”
Leon’s answering shot was prevented by the rising of the curtain, and
from that time on, they thought nothing more of themselves or the
audience, as they followed one of the most brilliant young actors of his
day in his changing fortunes, now at the country farm, now in the
excitement of London life, then back to the quiet home once more; now
laughing almost convulsively at the rustic’s struggles to attain the
height of city fashion, and now finding their eyes grow suddenly dim as
he turned from his scoffing friends to welcome his good old mother, in
spite of her strange, eccentric garb. In reality, it was only for two or
three hours that they sat there; but as the curtain fell, it seemed to
them that months had passed since they entered the theatre, and that
they had lived through the scenes which had gone on before them, for
with rare power and skill, the young hero avoided any professional
manner, but with his rich touches of fun, his grandly simple pathos, he
stood in all their eyes, not as an actor, but as a living, human man.
They did not talk much while they were driving home through the quiet,
snowy streets, for they were thinking of the play, and of their parting,
the next morning. But the stir of getting out of the carriage and going
into the house had roused them all, so that four rosy, wide-awake young
people entered the parlor, laughing and talking in a blithe chorus. Mr.
and Mrs. Arnold looked up to greet them, as they came in.
“You ought to have gone, mother,” Harry exclaimed. “It was too funny for
anything. I thought Leon would roll out of his chair, laughing.”
“After all,” added Dorothy, as she went up to the fire; “funny as it all
was, there was a cry under the laugh, till I didn’t know whether ’twas
more funny or sad.”
“Come, Dot, stop your wisdom and give us a song to top off with,”
demanded Harry, who stood leaning against the mantel, looking down on
his pretty sister with evident approval.
“I will,” said she, with her usual readiness; “and I’ll choose this one
because, if anything can teach us to appreciate our homes and parents,
it ought to be the little story we have watched to-night.”
Dorothy spoke with a sweet, gentle seriousness quite unusual with her,
for she was much like Leon in her bright, merry disposition, and
inclined to treat life as one long, happy frolic. Perhaps the tender
passages in the play had touched her girlish heart, perhaps she had some
dim realization of what the future had in store for her. However it
might have been, she threw aside her wraps, drew off her long, light
gloves and, going over to the piano, she sang the simple little song
from “The Water Babies,” which stood as the motto for the play.
“When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.
“When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among;
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.”
“Bee-youtiful, Dorry!” remarked Leon, from the easy chair, where he had
thrown himself down when he came in. “If you’d only just put a little
more feeling into the last part of it, you’d have made me cry.”
“Don’t you mind his impertinence, Dot,” said Mr. Arnold. “I’ll try to
keep him quiet, and you sing something else. No matter if it is late; it
is our last night together for some time.”
So Dorothy sang on, giving them one old favorite after another, as they
were called for; and to Alex, as he stood leaning on the piano with his
chin in his hands, watching the group before him, it seemed that no home
could be happier than this one, where parents and children were bound
together in such pleasant, lasting intimacy. It was only an every-day
home picture, it is true, but one telling an eloquent story of father
and mother love, of respect and honor from the children, well-deserved
and freely given, of perfect understanding and good-will on both sides.
“Now,” said Dorothy mischievously; “I’ll stop, after I have sung one
more for the benefit of the boys.” And turning back to the piano, she
sang “Sweet Home.”
Her face at first was brimming with fun; but the old familiar strains
brought back her former mood and, dropping her tone of exaggerated
sentiment, she sang it as simply and sweetly as a little child, while
her hearers, forgetting to laugh at the trite old lines, took up the
refrain of the last verse, and the sound died away in a happy chorus of
“sweet home.”
No one broke the hush that followed, until Leon said pensively,—
“I know I shall cry myself to sleep to-night, after Dorothy’s harrowing
me up in such style.”
[Illustration: AN EVERY-DAY HOME PICTURE.—Page 176.]
“You’d better take an umbrella up-stairs with you, Dot,” suggested
Harry. “Leon is right over you, you know, and if the ceiling should
leak, you’d get a ducking to pay for your song.”
“I wouldn’t go back, Leon, if I felt so badly about it as all that,”
said his father. “I confess that I hate to have you go, myself; I’d much
prefer to have you here, in charge of Dr. Bruce.”
“Don’t go, Leon,” urged his mother anxiously. “I’m afraid you’ll get a
fall on your crutches, or strain your foot again, in some way. You’d
better stay here at home, till you are over this.”
“Oh, mother,” remonstrated Harry; “Leon is just as well off up there.
We’ll take good care of him, I promise you.”
“One thing is certain,” said his father seriously; “that was the last
game of football that either of my sons will play, with my consent. You
needn’t groan, Leon, I mean just what I say.”
“Yes,” added Dorothy a little inconsiderately; “we’ve had football
enough for one family. This sprain of Leon’s has spoiled all the fun,
this vacation.”
Leon flushed.
“Speak for yourself, if you please, Dorry,” he said almost angrily. “I’m
sorry if I’ve been a drag on you; but, for my part, I’ve never enjoyed
the holidays so much. Have you, daddy?” And forgetting his momentary
temper, he laughed up at his father, who stood thoughtfully studying his
son’s face.
Mr. Arnold roused himself at the question.
“The holidays have been a success, have they, sonny? Well, I’ve hated to
see you hopping around in this way; but I’ve rather enjoyed it, after
all, for if you’d been quite well, you would all have gone gallivanting
off, and left the old people alone at home.”
“This is more fun than gallivanting,” said Leon serenely. “I’ll leave
that till Easter, or till mother and Dot come up to Flemming, next
month. But I think I’ll gallivant to bed now, for I’m uncommonly sleepy.
Come on, boys.”
He picked up his crutches, kissed his father and mother good night in
the same way he had done ever since he was a little boy, and limped
away, laughing and joking with his brother and Alex. As he passed the
door, some impulse made him turn back to add merrily,—
“Good night again, daddy. This is positively the last time.”
How often both the words and the scene came back to him, with the memory
of that evening!
Bright and early the next morning, the lads started on their journey,
for they had prolonged their vacation until the last possible moment.
The whole family drove to the station with them, and as the train rolled
away, the boys’ last glimpse was of handsome, kindly Mr. Arnold, waving
them one parting salute.
The term opened on that morning, and nearly all the boys were back, so
the Arnolds and Alex took the little journey by themselves. It seemed a
short ride to them all, for what with the past vacation and the coming
term, they had so much to talk over that they were all rather surprised
when they came into the familiar station, and saw the old stage waiting
for them.
In spite of the good times they had been enjoying, it was very pleasant
to Leon to go to supper in the great dining-room, and listen to the
uproar of seventy-five boys all talking at once; and when, an hour
later, he and Stanley and Max, with half a dozen others, were gathered
around the fire in Lieutenant Wilde’s room, planning for a sleighing
party, it seemed as if the home he had left that morning, were thousands
of miles and countless weeks away. It was not that he cared less for his
home than other boys do; but this happy school life had already become
so familiar to him that he dropped back into it just as naturally as,
ten days before, he had settled into his old home corner.
But when at last he fell asleep, on that first night of the opening
term, he found himself at home again, lying on the sofa, with his father
by his side. And his father bent over and said something to him. What
the words were, he knew not, nor yet the meaning; but he felt a strange,
deep sadness creep over him, and then his father’s face faded away from
his sight, and he was left alone.
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