FOR JOHN IS COMING HOME.
There is a little frame house sitting, in the shade of maples and oaks,
by the roadside to the south aways from Chalk Hill. It is a leaning
building, to some extent, in many ways, by reason of its age. A crooked
little chimney heaves up on the exterior of one end, by reason of its
insecure foundation. Shingles curl, up, as if in dotage, by reason of
the sun. Weather boarding warp and twist and turn, grayed by the wash of
years, by reason of their antiquity. Windows peep out, with little
panes, and rattle in the wind, by reason of their frailty. Wasps and
bees, in season, build their mud nests beneath curling shingle and
behind twisting board; bats fly out, at eventide, from unseen holes in
the gables; and swallows chatter and circle round the chimney top in the
twilight of the summer days. An ancient porch, with oaken floor, hangs
against the front wall, and the woodbine and morning glory creep and
twine and bloom around its slanting columns. A gate swings out at the
end of the path leading from the door to the highway. Flowers--the rose,
the marigold, the bouncingbetty, the wild pink, the primrose, all as
old-fashioned as the people who dwell here--border the pathway. A paled
patch of ground stands to one side, as sacred as the Garden of
Gethsemane. In the rear a gnarled and aged orchard has but recently shed
its snowy burden of bloom, with lingering scents still in the air; and
beyond and around, fence-enclosed fields are greening with growing
crops, and still beyond are dark forests and open fields and noisy
ravines.
Evening is coming on. The sun has gone down over the mountain top.
Shadows have disappeared into the gray of fading light. Odors of night
are ascending from the cooling earth. The robins are rendering the last
stanza of their solemn doxology to the dying day. The whippoorwills send
forth their melancholy praises to the approaching darkness through the
wooded chancel of their shadowy choir loft. And frogs swell their
throats in grave bass tones to the melody of country life at this time
of departing day.
A gray-haired farmer, in rough garb, sits on the porch, smoking his
pipe, and by his side sits his patient, loving wife. On the top step of
the porch sits their young daughter, reading her fate, perhaps, in the
evening stars, the while glancing up the road, and listening for the
click of horses' feet on the stones. But no sound is heard before night
comes on. The mother rises, goes in, and lights the oil lamp, and sets
it by a window for the expected visitor to see. For John is coming home.
"They are late in getting here," says the mother, as she descends from
the porch, and goes down the path to the gate. She looks up the road
through the shadows; then returns, and sits down by her daughter on the
steps.
The father relights his pipe, clanks down to the gate, in his heavy
boots, looks up the road through its shadows; then returns. "They are
late," he says, and resumes his seat.
"I wonder what is keeping them," says the daughter, with an expectant
hush in her sweet voice, as she rises, and goes down to the gate. She
looks up the road through its shadows; then returns, and sits down.
Listen!
John is coming home.
They hear the clank of horses' hoofs, the rattling wheels, the rhythm of
a lively trot; then indistinct voices far in the distance.
John is coming home. The son who went away the year before--the
brother--is coming home. The father's boots clank on the porch as he
impatiently walks back and forth. The mother rises, and shades her eyes,
and peers up the roadway through the shadows. The sister rises, with a
dancing heart, and flutters down to the gate, like an angel in the
darkness.
For John is coming home. Home! His only place of sweet rememberance.
It is an age, it seems, before the team draws up and John leaps out to
catch his sister in his arms.
"Come into the light, Anne, that I may see your face, for I know you are
growing so handsome," said John, putting his arm around his sister, and
went laughing with her toward the house. Could he have seen those
blushes, in the darkness, because of his brotherly praising of her!
"How is mother?" was his greeting to his mother, as he kissed her at
the foot of the steps. And, with her clinging to him on one side and
Anne on the other, he ascended the steps to the porch.
"Where is father?" asked John, not seeing him in the darkness, standing
just ahead of them. "Oh, here he is!" John exclaimed, as he released
himself from his mother and sister, and grasped his father's rough hand.
"Come into the light and let me see you all," said John, after the
formalities of greeting had been performed, to the satisfaction of all
around.
The light brought forth a revelation for them all, as light does for
everything. The family now saw in John a new being in outward
appearance, but still the same loving son and brother. John now saw his
father and mother a little older, it appeared, perhaps, from anxiety
over his absence, or it may have been their strenuous toil was showing
plainer on them. He also saw in his sister, a simple country maiden in
the rusticity of young beauty.
"Anne, will you let me kiss you again?" asked John, as he stood in
admiration over her by the lamp, holding her hand, after his mother and
father had gone to complete the supper that had been almost ready for
hours waiting for him.
Anne tip-toed up to her brother, at his request, and put up her sweet
lips to his.
"And how has my little sister been all these months?" he asked, patting
her on the cheek.
"Very well, John; I hope you have been a good boy," she answered.
"Sister wouldn't expect anything else of me, would she?" he asked,
kissing her again.
"Oh, no, indeed, John," she replied, with wide eyes.
"And have you been good?" he asked.
"Very, John," she responded.
"No beaus yet, I hope?" he asked, in his teasing way he always had with
her.
"Why, no, John!" and she blushed, not that she had a beau, but through
maiden coyness. "You are the only one I've got, John."
Supper was then announced. James, who brought John from town, came in
after putting away the horses. And they all sat down in happy reunion
once more. For John was home.
"What was the cause of your delay, John?" asked Michael Winthrope, the
father.
"Oh, by the way, father, I must tell you about it," answered John,
laughing heartily, and looking slyly at James, who was now dressed in
his best clothes, and presented as good an appearance as John himself.
"I have two lady friends, who--"
"Why, John!" exclaimed the mother, looking over her glasses.
"Wait, mother; will you hear my story?" said John, turning a happy smile
upon his mother. "As I was going to say, I have two lady friends
stopping at the Summit House. One is the daughter of my employer; the
other her cousin. They saw us, as we were coming by, and, of course, we
saw them. Knowing them as I do, I could not come on without the
formality of greeting them. I introduced James to them, mother; and what
do you think?--"
"Now, John, you mustn't be too severe on me," said James, modestly, "for
I don't pretend to your polish since you went away."
"Never mind, James; you are a capital fellow, after all--but, mother,
James and sister here"--turning to Anne--"saw them the other day, and
they are--they think he and sister cannot be beaten as--roving
mountaineers--no, they didn't say that sister"--turning to his sister
again--"They did say they would come out to see us, if you will drive in
for them."
"Law, me, John; we have no place here to entertain such grand people.
What do you mean?" asked the mother, holding up her spoon, and shaking
it with a remonstrative motion as emphasis to her thoughts.
"Wait, mother; wait, and hear me out, before remonstrating any further,"
said John, cheerfully. "They wouldn't accept my invitation; but they
want sister to drive our old rig in for them, and extend the invitation
to spend the day with us. They thought it would be so romantic to go on
a lark with little sister"--turning to her again with such a fond look
that Anne beamed under his countenance. "Will you go, sister?" he asked.
"Shall I, mother?" asked Anne.
"If John says so. What do you say, James?" asked the mother.
"That is up to John," responded James.
"And father?" asked the mother.
"Whatever John says about it," replied the father.
"Now, everything is up to you, sister," said John. "Are you going?"
"Why, of course, brother," she answered. "When?"
"Tomorrow," replied John.
So it was settled. That night, as John lay down to sleep in his old bed,
so pure and white, in a little room up stairs, he heard again, above the
screeching insects, the booming frogs, the wailing owls, that old sweet
song that carried him into the slumberous land of nowhere--"Good bye!
Good bye!"--as on so many nights before.
In the night, when the house was still, a gray-haired man, in night
clothes and carrying a lighted lamp, softly stole into John's room. John
lay with his face upturned, his eyes closed, and his lips parted in a
sleeping smile. The father stood over him a moment, bent down and
touched his lips to his son's brow. "He is a good boy yet," he said to
himself, and softly stole away.
Anne was singing, as she went about her work, when John awoke in the
morning; and life was astir on every hand. The pigs were squealing in
their sty; the calves were bawling in their pens; ducks were squawking
in their pond; chickens were cackling in the barn yard, and the sun was
shining everywhere. John dressed himself and descended the narrow
stairway, with tousled head and open shirt front. The mother was milking
the cows, James was in the field, and the father was in the barn. Anne
was preparing breakfast.
"Now, I may see you in the sunlight, sister," said John, as he sauntered
into the old-fashioned kitchen, and stood before her, with folded arms,
and half yawning yet from sleep, as she was spreading the cloth upon the
table. "I didn't know I had such a dear little sister," he said, as he
put his arm about her and kissed her on the lips.
"You are such a fine brother, John, that I am almost in love with you,"
she returned, as she lovingly left an imprint of a kiss on his cheek;
then leaving him to pursue her work.
"Whose love would I want more than yours, Anne?" he asked, in his
laughing manner.
"Oh, I don't know, John; maybe you have a girl better than me to love
you," she replied.
"I shall never place any one above my dear little sister," he said
thoughtfully; "but--for no one can be your equal--except--one."
"Is it one of those, John, whom I am going after this morning?" asked
Anne, rattling the skillet on the stove. "One of those whom brother
James and I met on the road a short time ago?"
"One of those, Anne--the rich man's only child--but I am too poor for
her," he answered, regretfully.
"Is she as good as you, brother--and me?" asked Anne, distributing the
plates around the table. She was innocent yet of the ways of the world;
but was feeling the first calling of young maidenhood.
"She is very good, Anne; very good; but no better than you," he
returned, with the same uncertain cloud of perplexity that overcast him
so often before, still pervading him like a wave of blinding light that
comes to obscure the vision, at times, by reason of its intensity of
purpose.
"She is very fine looking, John--both of them, John. Which one is it you
mean?"
"The smaller of the two."
"Oh, the one with the bluest eyes, who took fright at us and ran."
"That is just like Edith, to run."
"I know I could love her, John."
"You are anticipating, sister."
"Why, who couldn't love you, John?" asked Anne, looking up at him, with
some doubts as to what he meant.
"That is a sister's opinion, child," said John.
"A sister's opinion of her brother is better than any one else's. Maybe
she does love you, John. Did you ever ask her?"
"Maybe she does," said John, going toward the door and looking out over
the garden fence and into the fields, and dreamily into the distance;
"but she is too rich to accept me, sister," he said, turning about. "How
soon will breakfast be ready?"
"As soon as you wash your face," she answered.
John, heeding this hint, went to a basin on a bench in the yard, which
forcibly recalled the old days. How refreshing it was to him to soap and
souse his face into the cold water! And how inconveniently unpleasant it
was, after such soaping and sousing, to rush with blinded eyes, and
water trickling down the neck beneath the shirt collar, to the kitchen
and fumble, like a blind man, for the towel. But it was home to John.
The rattling wheels and squeaking springs of the old rig could be heard
far up the road after Anne, dressed in a clean white frock and wearing a
pink sun-bonnet, had left the front gate on her mission, guiding the old
farm horses on their sure and steady gait.
Oh, John, John! If there is anything worth while, it is Edith's love,
the love that never dies. Blind man, as you are, and too considerate of
high state, and too proud of your own, you are the only one to make her
sweet soul happy. Bestir yourself, John, and come out of the fog of
self-consciousness that has kept you in obscurity so long as to your
final intentions. High state and low state are all the same to the Cupid
that has engaged you so relentlessly. High caste and low caste do not
count for him. Come and see the right, and see the light. She is only
mortal, you are only mortal. Money is nothing to her; money is nothing
to you. Love is all to her; love is all to you. It is the man and woman,
after all, that makes happiness supreme. Come!
John has donned the garb of a mountaineer, which gives him a wild
romantic bearing. It is the garb of his former self. This is the one in
which Edith, secretly, wished to see him in, sometimes; and she shall
have her wish fulfilled. He wears a gray slouch hat; a check shirt,
opened in the front and turned up at the sleeves; a pair of blue
overalls, with bed-ticken suspenders, and high boots. Typical! He is in
his elements now, for his vacation period. He wishes Edith, when she
comes, to see him as he once was. It is not vanity; it is pride of home.
He wishes her to see life as it really is in a well directed loving
home, where toil is the simple reward of living. He wishes her to see
what life is to these people of the hills, how they thrive, and how they
bear their burdens. He wishes her to see all this in contrast to her own
life, and how love and duty can go on perpetually in a humble home, as
well as in a mansion.
Work must not cease on the farm, at this season, except in case of
sickness or death; visitors must make themselves at home during the work
hours, and be entertained only at meal time, or go their way. The wheels
of industry must go on there as noisily, ever grinding, as the wheels
of industry, ever grinding, in the city. But there are rare occasions,
even in both instances, when surcease is had for a spell to meet the
call of recreation. And this was one of those rare occasions on the
farm. For Edith and Star were coming, and a half holiday was cut out for
their especial pleasure. James would cease his ploughing the corn at
noon. The father would knock off duty at eleven to help mother get up
the feast, and then smoke his pipe thereafter, perhaps, as his company.
Thus it was planned.
After Anne had gone, John roamed about the place, speculating on the
tender association everything had for him. He went through the house
from garret to cellar, and beheld, with warming heart, how dear the old
things were, and how different they were to the things in the mansion on
the hill. Here was everything still that he knew in his boyhood days,
and he saw with a thrill of regret, but not remorse, for it was still
his home any time he wished to abide therein. And no one could gainsay
him that privilege.
But how would Edith look upon all this, and not be struck by the simple
evidence of his lowly origin? Ah, the comparison is too great, he
thought, as he went into the garden, where he first learned the secrets
of plant life; and then into the orchard, where he first saw the
wonderfulness of the fruiting time; and then into the old barn, where
was taught him the nature of domesticated animals; and then into the
fields, where he had ploughed and sowed and reaped. How different from
his life for the past year! How different!
Edith could see nothing of interest in such bucolic surroundings, he
thought. She would come, and see, and go, and want to forget him. It is
well, he thought, that she sees it now, and of her own coming.