HOME-LOVING HEARTS
Mother Jess and Laura were coming home. Perhaps Father Bob had dropped
a hint that their presence was needed in the white house at the end of
the road; perhaps, on the other hand, they were just ready to come.
Elliott never knew for certain.
Father Bob met the train, while all the Cameron boys and girls flew
around, making ready at home. The plan had developed on the tacit
understanding that since they all wished to, it was fairer for none of
them to go to the station.
Priscilla and Prince were out watching. "They're coming!" she
squealed, skipping back into the house. "Trudy, Elliott, everybody,
they're coming!" And she was out again, darting in long swallow-like
swoops down the hill. From every direction came Camerons, running;
from house, barn, garden, young heads moved swiftly toward the little
car chug-chugging up the hill.
They swarmed over it, not giving it time to stop, jumping on the
running-board, riding on the hood, almost embracing the car itself in
the joy of their welcome. Elliott hung back. The others had the first
right. After their turns--
Without a word Aunt Jessica took the girl into her arms and held her
tight. In that strong, tender clasp all the stinging ache went out of
Elliott's hurt. She wasn't frightened any longer or bewildered or
bitter; she didn't know why she wasn't, but she wasn't. She felt just
as if, somehow or other, things were going to be right.
She had this feeling so strongly that she forgot all about dreading to
meet Laura--for she had dreaded to meet Laura, she was so sorry for
her--and kissed her quite naturally. Laura kissed Elliott in return
and said, "Wait till I get you up-stairs," as though she meant
business, and smiled just as usual. Her face was a trifle pale, but
her eyes were bright, and the clear, steady glow in them reminded
Elliott for the first time of the light in Aunt Jessica's eyes. She
hadn't remembered ever seeing Laura's eyes look just like that. How
much did Laura know, Elliott wondered? She wouldn't look so, would
she, if she had heard about Pete? But, strangely enough, Elliott
didn't fear her finding out or feel nervous lest she might have to
tell her.
And after all, as soon as they got up-stairs, it came out that Laura
did know about Pete, for she said: "I'm glad, oh, so glad, that
wherever Pete is now, he got across and had a chance really to do
something in this fight. If you had seen what I have seen this last
week, Elliott--"
The shining look in Laura's face fascinated Elliott.
All at once she felt her own words come as simply and easily as
Laura's. "But will that be enough, Laura--always?"
"No," said Laura, "not always. But I shall always be proud and glad,
even if I do have to miss him all my life. And, of course, I can't
help feeling that we may hear good news yet. Now--oh, you blessed,
blessed girl!"
And the two clung together in a long close embrace that said many
things to both of them, but not a word aloud.
How good it seemed to have Mother Jess and Laura in the house! Every
one went about with a hopeful face, though, after all, not an inch had
the veil of silence lifted that hung between the Cameron farm and the
world overseas. Every one, Elliott suspected, shared the feeling she
had known, the certainty that all would be well now Mother Jess was
home. It wasn't anything in particular that Mother Jess said or did
that contributed to this impression. Just to see her face in a room,
to touch her hand now and then, to hear her voice, merely to know she
was in the house, seemed enough to give it.
They all had so much to say to one another. The returned travelers
must tell of Sidney, and the Camerons who had stayed at home had tales
of how they had "carried on" in the others' absence. Tongues were very
busy, but no one forgot those who weren't there--not for a minute. The
sense of them lived underneath all the confidences. There were
confidences _en masse_, so to speak, and confidences _à deux_.
Priscilla chattered away into her mother's ear without once stopping
to catch breath, and Bruce had his own quiet report to make. Perhaps
Bruce and Priscilla and the rest said more than Elliott heard, for
when Aunt Jessica bade her good-night she rested a hand lightly on the
girl's shoulder.
"You dear, brave little woman!" she said. "All the soldiers aren't in
camp or over the seas."
Elliott put the words away in her memory. They made her feel like a
man who has just been decorated by his general.
She felt so comforted and quiet, so free from nervousness, that not
even the telephone bell could make her jump. It tinkled pretty
continuously, too. That was because all the next day the neighbors who
didn't come in person were calling up to inquire for the returned
travelers. Elliott quite lost the expectation that every time the
telephone buzzed it meant a possible message for her.
She had lost it so completely that when, as they were on the point of
sitting down at supper, Laura said, "There's the telephone again, and
my hands are full," Elliott remarked, "I'll see who it is," and took
down the receiver without a thought of a cable.
"This is Elliott Cameron speaking.... Yes--yes. Elliott Cameron. All
ready." A tremor crept into the girl's voice. "I didn't get that....
Just received my message? Yes, go on.... Repeat, please.... Wait a
minute till I call some one."
She wheeled from the instrument, her face alight. "Where's Bruce?
Please, somebody, call--oh, here you are!" She thrust the receiver
into his hands. "Make them repeat the message to you. It's from
Father. Pete was a prisoner. He's escaped and got back to our lines."
Then she slipped into Aunt Jessica's waiting arms.
Supper? Who cared about supper? The Camerons forgot it. When they
remembered, the steaming-hot creamed potato was cold and the salad was
wilted, but that made no difference. They were too excited to know
what they were eating.
To make assurance trebly sure there were more messages. Bob cabled of
Pete's escape through the Hun lines and the government wired from
Washington. The Camerons' happiness spilled over into blithe
exuberance. They laughed and danced and sang for very joy. Priscilla
jigged all over the house like an excited brown leaf in a breeze. None
of them, except Father Bob, Mother Jess, and Laura, could keep still.
Laura went about like a person in a trance, with a strange, happy
quietness in her ordinarily energetic movements and a brightness in
her face that dazzled. There was no boisterousness in any one's
rejoicing, only a gentleness of gaiety that was very wonderful to see
and feel.
As for Elliott, she felt as though she had come out from underneath a
great dark cloud, into a place where she could never again be anything
but good and happy. She had been coming out ever since Aunt Jessica
reached home, but she hadn't come out the same as she went in. The
Elliott Aunt Jessica and Laura had left in charge when they went to
Camp Devens seemed very, very far away from the Elliott whose joy was
like wings that fairly lifted her feet off the ground. Smiles chased
one another among her dimples in ceaseless procession across her face.
She didn't try to discover why she felt so different. She didn't care.
The dimples, of course, were the very same dimples she had always had,
and at the moment the girl was entirely unconscious of their
existence, though as a matter of fact those dimples had never been
busier and more bewitching in all Elliott Cameron's life.
"I suppose," Mother Jess said at last, "we shall have to go to bed, if
we are to get Stannard off in the morning."
Going to bed isn't a very exciting thing to do when you are so happy
you feel as though you might burst with joy, but by that time the
Camerons had managed to work out of the most dangerous stage, and
inasmuch as Stannard's was an early train, going to bed was the only
sensible thing to do. So they did it.
What was more remarkable, the last sleepy Cameron straggled down to
the breakfast-table before the little car ran up to the door to take
Stannard away. They were really sorry to see him go and he acted as
though he were just as sorry to go, which would seem to indicate that
Stannard, too, had changed in the course of the summer. He looked much
like the long, lazy Stannard who had rebelled against a vacation on a
farm, but his carriage was better and his figure sturdier, and his
hands weren't half so white and gentlemanlike. Underneath his lazy
ease was a hint of something to depend on in an emergency. Perhaps
even his laziness wasn't so ingrained as it used to be.
They all went out on the veranda to say good-by and waved as long as
the car was in sight.
"Sorry you're not going, too?" Bruce asked Elliott.
"Oh, no! I wouldn't go for anything."
"For a girl who didn't want to come up here at all," he said softly,
"you're doing pretty well. Decided to make the best of us, didn't
you?"
She looked at him indignantly. "Indeed, I didn't! I wouldn't do such a
thing. Why, I just _love_ it here!" Then she saw the twinkle in his
eye. "You tease!"
"I'm going away, myself, next week, S. A. T. C. I can't get any nearer
France than that, it seems, just yet. Father Bob says he can manage
all right this winter and he has a notion of something new that may
turn up next spring. He says, 'Go,' and so does Mother Jess. So--I'm
going."
Elliott stole a quick glance at the firm, clear-cut face, chiseled
already in lines of purpose and power.
"I'm glad," she said, "but we shall--miss you."
"Shall _you_ miss me?"
"Yes."
"I'd hate to think that you wouldn't."
Elliott always remembered the morning, three days later, when Bruce
went away. How blue the sky was, how clear the sunshine, how glorious
the autumn pageant of the hills! Beside the gate a young maple burned
like a shaft of flame. True, Bruce was only going to school now, but
there was France in the background, a beckoning possibility with all
that it meant of triumph and heroism and pain. That idea of France,
and the fiery splendor of the hills, seemed to invest Bruce's strong
young figure with a kind of glory that tightened the girl's throat as
she waved good-by from the veranda. She was glad Bruce was going, even
if her throat did ache. Aches like that seemed far less important than
they used to. She waved with a thrill coursing up her spine and a shy,
eager sense of how big and wonderful and happy a thing it was to be a
girl.
With a last wave to Bruce turning the curve of the road Mother Jess
stepped back into the house.
"Come, girls," she said. "I feel like getting very busy, don't you?"
Elliott followed her contentedly. Others might go, but she didn't
wish to, not while Father was on the other side of the ocean. It made
her laugh to think that she had ever wished to. That laugh of pure
mirth and happiness proved the completeness of Elliott Cameron's
evacuation.
"What is the joke?" Laura asked, smiling at the radiant charm of the
dainty figure enveloping itself in a blue apron.
"Oh," said Elliott lightly, "I was thinking that I used to be a queer
girl."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Camerons of Highboro, by Beth B. Gilchrist