“Day after to-morrow--day after to-morrow,” said Old Man Shaw, rubbing
his long slender hands together gleefully. “I have to keep saying it
over and over, so as to really believe it. It seems far too good to be
true that I’m to have Blossom again. And everything is ready. Yes,
I think everything is ready, except a bit of cooking. And won’t this
orchard be a surprise to her! I’m just going to bring her out here as
soon as I can, never saying a word. I’ll fetch her through the
spruce lane, and when we come to the end of the path I’ll step back
casual-like, and let her go out from under the trees alone, never
suspecting. It’ll be worth ten times the trouble to see her big, brown
eyes open wide and hear her say, ‘Oh, daddy! Why, daddy!’”
He rubbed his hands again and laughed softly to himself. He was a tall,
bent old man, whose hair was snow white, but whose face was fresh and
rosy. His eyes were a boy’s eyes, large, blue and merry, and his mouth
had never got over a youthful trick of smiling at any provocation--and,
oft-times, at no provocation at all.
To be sure, White Sands people would not have given you the most
favourable opinion in the world of Old Man Shaw. First and foremost,
they would have told you that he was “shiftless,” and had let his bit
of a farm run out while he pottered with flowers and bugs, or rambled
aimlessly about in the woods, or read books along the shore. Perhaps it
was true; but the old farm yielded him a living, and further than that
Old Man Shaw had no ambition. He was as blithe as a pilgrim on a pathway
climbing to the west. He had learned the rare secret that you must take
happiness when you find it--that there is no use in marking the place
and coming back to it at a more convenient season, because it will not
be there then. And it is very easy to be happy if you know, as Old Man
Shaw most thoroughly knew, how to find pleasure in little things. He
enjoyed life, he had always enjoyed life and helped others to enjoy it;
consequently his life was a success, whatever White Sands people might
think of it. What if he had not “improved” his farm? There are some
people to whom life will never be anything more than a kitchen garden;
and there are others to whom it will always be a royal palace with domes
and minarets of rainbow fancy.
The orchard of which he was so proud was as yet little more than the
substance of things hoped for--a flourishing plantation of young trees
which would amount to something later on. Old Man Shaw’s house was on
the crest of a bare, sunny hill, with a few staunch old firs and spruces
behind it--the only trees that could resist the full sweep of the winds
that blew bitterly up from the sea at times. Fruit trees would never
grow near it, and this had been a great grief to Sara.
“Oh, daddy, if we could just have an orchard!” she had been wont to say
wistfully, when other farmhouses in White Sands were smothered whitely
in apple bloom. And when she had gone away, and her father had nothing
to look forward to save her return, he was determined she should find an
orchard when she came back.
Over the southward hill, warmly sheltered by spruce woods and sloping
to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that all the slack
management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it. Here Old Man
Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish, watching and tending it
until he came to know each tree as a child and loved it. His neighbours
laughed at him, and said that the fruit of an orchard so far away from
the house would all be stolen. But as yet there was no fruit, and when
the time came for bearing there would be enough and to spare.
“Blossom and me’ll get all we want, and the boys can have the rest, if
they want ‘em worse’n they want a good conscience,” said that unworldly,
unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw.
On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare fern in
the woods and dug it up for Sara--she had loved ferns. He planted it
at the shady, sheltered side of the house and then sat down on the old
bench by the garden gate to read her last letter--the letter that was
only a note, because she was coming home soon. He knew every word of
it by heart, but that did not spoil the pleasure of re-reading it every
half-hour.
Old Man Shaw had not married until late in life, and had, so White
Sands people said, selected a wife with his usual judgment--which, being
interpreted, meant no judgment at all; otherwise, he would never have
married Sara Glover, a mere slip of a girl, with big brown eyes like a
frightened wood creature’s, and the delicate, fleeting bloom of a spring
Mayflower.
“The last woman in the world for a farmer’s wife--no strength or get-up
about her.”
Neither could White Sands folk understand what on earth Sara Glover had
married him for.
“Well, the fool crop was the only one that never failed.”
Old Man Shaw--he was Old Man Shaw even then, although he was only
forty--and his girl bride had troubled themselves not at all about White
Sands opinions. They had one year of perfect happiness, which is always
worth living for, even if the rest of life be a dreary pilgrimage, and
then Old Man Shaw found himself alone again, except for little Blossom.
She was christened Sara, after her dead mother, but she was always
Blossom to her father--the precious little blossom whose plucking had
cost the mother her life.
Sara Glover’s people, especially a wealthy aunt in Montreal, had
wanted to take the child, but Old Man Shaw grew almost fierce over the
suggestion. He would give his baby to no one. A woman was hired to look
after the house, but it was the father who cared for the baby in the
main. He was as tender and faithful and deft as a woman. Sara never
missed a mother’s care, and she grew up into a creature of life and
light and beauty, a constant delight to all who knew her. She had a way
of embroidering life with stars. She was dowered with all the charming
characteristics of both parents, with a resilient vitality and activity
which had pertained to neither of them. When she was ten years old she
had packed all hirelings off, and kept house for her father for six
delightful years--years in which they were father and daughter, brother
and sister, and “chums.” Sara never went to school, but her father saw
to her education after a fashion of his own. When their work was done
they lived in the woods and fields, in the little garden they had made
on the sheltered side of the house, or on the shore, where sunshine and
storm were to them equally lovely and beloved. Never was comradeship
more perfect or more wholly satisfactory.
“Just wrapped up in each other,” said White Sands folk, half-enviously,
half-disapprovingly.
When Sara was sixteen Mrs. Adair, the wealthy aunt aforesaid, pounced
down on White Sands in a glamour of fashion and culture and outer
worldliness. She bombarded Old Man Shaw with such arguments that he had
to succumb. It was a shame that a girl like Sara should grow up in a
place like White Sands, “with no advantages and no education,” said Mrs.
Adair scornfully, not understanding that wisdom and knowledge are two
entirely different things.
“At least let me give my dear sister’s child what I would have given my
own daughter if I had had one,” she pleaded tearfully. “Let me take
her with me and send her to a good school for a few years. Then, if she
wishes, she may come back to you, of course.”
Privately, Mrs. Adair did not for a moment believe that Sara would want
to come back to White Sands, and her queer old father, after three years
of the life she would give her.
Old Man Shaw yielded, influenced thereto not at all by Mrs. Adair’s
readily flowing tears, but greatly by his conviction that justice to
Sara demanded it. Sara herself did not want to go; she protested and
pleaded; but her father, having become convinced that it was best for
her to go, was inexorable. Everything, even her own feelings, must give
way to that. But she was to come back to him without let or hindrance
when her “schooling” was done. It was only on having this most clearly
understood that Sara would consent to go at all. Her last words, called
back to her father through her tears as she and her aunt drove down the
lane, were,
“I’ll be back, daddy. In three years I’ll be back. Don’t cry, but just
look forward to that.”
He had looked forward to it through the three long, lonely years that
followed, in all of which he never saw his darling. Half a continent
was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed vacation visits, under some
specious pretense. But every week brought its letter from Sara. Old
Man Shaw had every one of them, tied up with one of her old blue hair
ribbons, and kept in her mother’s little rose-wood work-box in the
parlour. He spent every Sunday afternoon re-reading them, with her
photograph before him. He lived alone, refusing to be pestered with kind
help, but he kept the house in beautiful order.
“A better housekeeper than farmer,” said White Sands people. He would
have nothing altered. When Sara came back she was not to be hurt by
changes. It never occurred to him that she might be changed herself.
And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was coming
home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt’s pleadings and reproaches and
ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and
start for home a week later. Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a
state of beatitude, making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the
bench in the sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at
the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction that all
was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do save count the hours
until that beautiful, longed-for day after to-morrow. He gave himself
over to a reverie, as sweet as a day-dream in a haunted valley.
The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red
roses--they were as vivid as herself, with all her own fullness of life
and joy of living. And, besides these, a miracle had happened in Old Man
Shaw’s garden. In one corner was a rose-bush which had never bloomed,
despite all the coaxing they had given it--“the sulky rose-bush,”
Sara had been wont to call it. Lo! this summer had flung the hoarded
sweetness of years into plentiful white blossoms, like shallow ivory
cups with a haunting, spicy fragrance. It was in honour of Sara’s
home-coming--so Old Man Shaw liked to fancy. All things, even the sulky
rose-bush, knew she was coming back, and were making glad because of it.
He was gloating over Sara’s letter when Mrs. Peter Blewett came. She
told him she had run up to see how he was getting on, and if he wanted
anything seen to before Sara came.
“No’m, thank you, ma’am. Everything is attended to. I couldn’t let
anyone else prepare for Blossom. Only to think, ma’am, she’ll be home
the day after to-morrow. I’m just filled clear through, body, soul, and
spirit, with joy to think of having my little Blossom at home again.”
Mrs. Blewett smiled sourly. When Mrs. Blewett smiled it foretokened
trouble, and wise people had learned to have sudden business elsewhere
before the smile could be translated into words. But Old Man Shaw had
never learned to be wise where Mrs. Blewett was concerned, although she
had been his nearest neighbour for years, and had pestered his life out
with advice and “neighbourly turns.”
Mrs. Blewett was one with whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was
to render happiness to other people a personal insult. She resented Old
Man Shaw’s beaming delight in his daughter’s return, and she “considered
it her duty” to rub the bloom off straightway.
“Do you think Sary’ll be contented in White Sands now?” she asked.
Old Man Shaw looked slightly bewildered.
“Of course she’ll be contented,” he said slowly. “Isn’t it her home? And
ain’t I here?”
Mrs. Blewett smiled again, with double distilled contempt for such
simplicity.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re so sure of it, I suppose. If ‘twas
my daughter that was coming back to White Sands, after three years of
fashionable life among rich, stylish folks, and at a swell school, I
wouldn’t have a minute’s peace of mind. I’d know perfectly well that
she’d look down on everything here, and be discontented and miserable.”
“YOUR daughter might,” said Old Man Shaw, with more sarcasm than he had
supposed he had possessed, “but Blossom won’t.”
Mrs. Blewett shrugged her sharp shoulders.
“Maybe not. It’s to be hoped not, for both your sakes, I’m sure. But I’d
be worried if ‘twas me. Sary’s been living among fine folks, and having
a gay, exciting time, and it stands to reason she’ll think White Sands
fearful lonesome and dull. Look at Lauretta Bradley. She was up in
Boston for just a month last winter and she’s never been able to endure
White Sands since.”
“Lauretta Bradley and Sara Shaw are two different people,” said Sara’s
father, trying to smile.
“And your house, too,” pursued Mrs. Blewett ruthlessly. “It’s such a
queer, little, old place. What’ll she think of it after her aunt’s?
I’ve heard tell Mrs. Adair lives in a perfect palace. I’ll just warn you
kindly that Sary’ll probably look down on you, and you might as well be
prepared for it. Of course, I suppose she kind of thinks she has to come
back, seeing she promised you so solemn she would. But I’m certain she
doesn’t want to, and I don’t blame her either.”
Even Mrs. Blewett had to stop for breath, and Old Man Shaw found his
opportunity. He had listened, dazed and shrinking, as if she were
dealing him physical blows, but now a swift change swept over him. His
blue eyes flashed ominously, straight into Mrs. Blewett’s straggling,
ferrety gray orbs.
“If you’re said your say, Martha Blewett, you can go,” he said
passionately. “I’m not going to listen to another such word. Take
yourself out of my sight, and your malicious tongue out of my hearing!”
Mrs. Blewett went, too dumfounded by such an unheard-of outburst in mild
Old Man Shaw to say a word of defence or attack. When she had gone Old
Man Shaw, the fire all faded from his eyes, sank back on his bench.
His delight was dead; his heart was full of pain and bitterness. Martha
Blewett was a warped and ill-natured woman, but he feared there was
altogether too much truth in what she said. Why had he never thought of
it before? Of course White Sands would seem dull and lonely to Blossom;
of course the little gray house where she was born would seem a poor
abode after the splendours of her aunt’s home. Old Man Shaw walked
through his garden and looked at everything with new eyes. How poor and
simple everything was! How sagging and weather-beaten the old house! He
went in, and up-stairs to Sara’s room. It was neat and clean, just as
she had left it three years ago. But it was small and dark; the ceiling
was discoloured, the furniture old-fashioned and shabby; she would think
it a poor, mean place. Even the orchard over the hill brought him no
comfort now. Blossom would not care for orchards. She would be ashamed
of her stupid old father and the barren farm. She would hate White
Sands, and chafe at the dull existence, and look down on everything that
went to make up his uneventful life.
Old Man Shaw was unhappy enough that night to have satisfied even Mrs.
Blewett had she known. He saw himself as he thought White Sands folk
must see him--a poor, shiftless, foolish old man, who had only one thing
in the world worthwhile, his little girl, and had not been of enough
account to keep her.
“Oh, Blossom, Blossom!” he said, and when he spoke her name it sounded
as if he spoke the name of one dead.
After a little the worst sting passed away. He refused to believe long
that Blossom would be ashamed of him; he knew she would not. Three years
could not so alter her loyal nature--no, nor ten times three years. But
she would be changed--she would have grown away from him in those three
busy, brilliant years. His companionship could no longer satisfy her.
How simple and childish he had been to expect it! She would be sweet
and kind--Blossom could never be anything else. She would not show open
discontent or dissatisfaction; she would not be like Lauretta Bradley;
but it would be there, and he would divine it, and it would break his
heart. Mrs. Blewett was right. When he had given Blossom up he should
not have made a half-hearted thing of his sacrifice--he should not have
bound her to come back to him.
He walked about in his little garden until late at night, under the
stars, with the sea crooning and calling to him down the slope. When
he finally went to bed he did not sleep, but lay until morning with
tear-wet eyes and despair in his heart. All the forenoon he went about
his usual daily work absently. Frequently he fell into long reveries,
standing motionless wherever he happened to be, and looking dully before
him. Only once did he show any animation. When he saw Mrs. Blewett
coming up the lane he darted into the house, locked the door, and
listened to her knocking in grim silence. After she had gone he went
out, and found a plate of fresh doughnuts, covered with a napkin, placed
on the bench at the door. Mrs. Blewett meant to indicate thus that she
bore him no malice for her curt dismissal the day before; possibly
her conscience gave her some twinges also. But her doughnuts could
not minister to the mind she had diseased. Old Man Shaw took them up;
carried them to the pig-pen, and fed them to the pigs. It was the first
spiteful thing he had done in his life, and he felt a most immoral
satisfaction in it.
In mid-afternoon he went out to the garden, finding the new loneliness
of the little house unbearable. The old bench was warm in the sunshine.
Old Man Shaw sat down with a long sigh, and dropped his white head
wearily on his breast. He had decided what he must do. He would tell
Blossom that she might go back to her aunt and never mind about him--he
would do very well by himself and he did not blame her in the least.
He was still sitting broodingly there when a girl came up the lane. She
was tall and straight, and walked with a kind of uplift in her motion,
as if it would be rather easier to fly than not. She was dark, with a
rich dusky sort of darkness, suggestive of the bloom on purple plums,
or the glow of deep red apples among bronze leaves. Her big brown eyes
lingered on everything in sight, and little gurgles of sound now and
again came through her parted lips, as if inarticulate joy were thus
expressing itself.
At the garden gate she saw the bent figure on the old bench, and the
next minute she was flying along the rose walk.
“Daddy!” she called, “daddy!”
Old Man Shaw stood up in hasty bewilderment; then a pair of girlish arms
were about his neck, and a pair of warm red lips were on his; girlish
eyes, full of love, were looking up into his, and a never-forgotten
voice, tingling with laughter and tears blended into one delicious
chord, was crying,
“Oh, daddy, is it really you? Oh, I can’t tell you how good it is to see
you again!”
Old Man Shaw held her tightly in a silence of amazement and joy too deep
for wonder. Why, this was his Blossom--the very Blossom who had gone
away three years ago! A little taller, a little more womanly, but his
own dear Blossom, and no stranger. There was a new heaven and a new
earth for him in the realization.
“Oh, Baby Blossom!” he murmured, “Little Baby Blossom!”
Sara rubbed her cheek against the faded coat sleeve.
“Daddy darling, this moment makes up for everything, doesn’t it?”
“But--but--where did you come from?” he asked, his senses beginning to
struggle out of their bewilderment of surprise. “I didn’t expect you
till to-morrow. You didn’t have to walk from the station, did you? And
your old daddy not there to welcome you!”
Sara laughed, swung herself back by the tips of her fingers and danced
around him in the childish fashion of long ago.
“I found I could make an earlier connection with the C.P.A. yesterday
and get to the Island last night. I was in such a fever to get home that
I jumped at the chance. Of course I walked from the station--it’s only
two miles and every step was a benediction. My trunks are over there.
We’ll go after them to-morrow, daddy, but just now I want to go straight
to every one of the dear old nooks and spots at once.”
“You must get something to eat first,” he urged fondly. “And there ain’t
much in the house, I’m afraid. I was going to bake to-morrow morning.
But I guess I can forage you out something, darling.”
He was sorely repenting having given Mrs. Blewett’s doughnuts to the
pigs, but Sara brushed all such considerations aside with a wave of her
hand.
“I don’t want anything to eat just now. By and by we’ll have a snack;
just as we used to get up for ourselves whenever we felt hungry.
Don’t you remember how scandalized White Sands folks used to be at our
irregular hours? I’m hungry; but it’s soul hunger, for a glimpse of all
the dear old rooms and places. Come--there are four hours yet before
sunset, and I want to cram into them all I’ve missed out of these three
years. Let us begin right here with the garden. Oh, daddy, by what
witchcraft have you coaxed that sulky rose-bush into bloom?”
“No witchcraft at all--it just bloomed because you were coming home,
baby,” said her father.
They had a glorious afternoon of it, those two children. They explored
the garden and then the house. Sara danced through every room, and then
up to her own, holding fast to her father’s hand.
“Oh, it’s lovely to see my little room again, daddy. I’m sure all my old
hopes and dreams are waiting here for me.”
She ran to the window and threw it open, leaning out.
“Daddy, there’s no view in the world so beautiful as that curve of sea
between the headlands. I’ve looked at magnificent scenery--and then I’d
shut my eyes and conjure up that picture. Oh, listen to the wind keening
in the trees! How I’ve longed for that music!”
He took her to the orchard and followed out his crafty plan of surprise
perfectly. She rewarded him by doing exactly what he had dreamed of her
doing, clapping her hands and crying out:
“Oh, daddy! Why, daddy!”
They finished up with the shore, and then at sunset they came back
and sat down on the old garden bench. Before them a sea of splendour,
burning like a great jewel, stretched to the gateways of the west.
The long headlands on either side were darkly purple, and the sun left
behind him a vast, cloudless arc of fiery daffodil and elusive rose.
Back over the orchard in a cool, green sky glimmered a crystal planet,
and the night poured over them a clear wine of dew from her airy
chalice. The spruces were rejoicing in the wind, and even the battered
firs were singing of the sea. Old memories trooped into their hearts
like shining spirits.
“Baby Blossom,” said Old Man Shaw falteringly, “are you quite sure
you’ll be contented here? Out there”--with a vague sweep of his
hand towards horizons that shut out a world far removed from White
Sands--“there’s pleasure and excitement and all that. Won’t you miss it?
Won’t you get tired of your old father and White Sands?”
Sara patted his hand gently.
“The world out there is a good place,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve had
three splendid years and I hope they’ll enrich my whole life. There are
wonderful things out there to see and learn, fine, noble people to meet,
beautiful deeds to admire; but,” she wound her arm about his neck and
laid her cheek against his--“there is no daddy!”
And Old Man Shaw looked silently at the sunset--or, rather, through the
sunset to still grander and more radiant splendours beyond, of which the
things seen were only the pale reflections, not worthy of attention from
those who had the gift of further sight.