It was not a letter that went back that very day; it was a cablegram,
and it said:
Jan and Marie are safe with me. Am sending money with
this to the Bank of Holland, for your passage to America.
Come at once. JULIE.
People do not die of joy, or I am sure that Father and Mother Van Hove
would never have survived the reading of that message. Instead it put
such new strength and energy into their weary souls and bodies that two
days later they were on their way to England, and a week later still
they stood on the deck of the Arabia as it steamed into New York
Harbor. Jan and Marie with Uncle Paul and Aunt Julie met them at the
dock, and there are very few meetings, this side of heaven, like the
reunion of those six persons on that day.
The story of that first evening together can hardly be told. First.
Father and Mother Van Hove listened to Jan and Marie as they told of
their wanderings with Fidel, of the little old eel woman, of Father and
Mother De Smet, of the attack by Germans and of the friends they found
in Holland and in England; and when everybody had cried a good deal
about that, Father Van Hove told what had happened to him; then Mother
Van Hove told of her long and perilous search for her children; and
there were more tears of thankfulness and joy, until it seemed as if
their hearts were filled to the brim and running over. But when, last
of all, Uncle Paul told of the plans which he and Aunt Julie had made
for the family, they found there was room in their hearts for still
more joy.
"I have a farm in the country," said Uncle Paul. "It is not very far
from New York. There is a good house on it; it is already stocked. I
need a farmer to take care of the place for me, and trustworthy help is
hard to get here. If you will manage it for me, Brother Georges, I
shall have no further anxiety about it, and shall expect to enjoy the
fruits of it as I have never yet been able to do. Leonie shall make
some of her good butter for our city table, and the children" here he
pinched Marie's cheek, now round and rosy once more "the children shall
pick berries and help on the farm all summer. In winter they can come
back to Uncle Paul and Aunt Julie and go to school here, for they are
our children now, as well as yours."
Father Van Hove rose, stretched out his one hand, and, grasping Uncle
Paul's, tried to thank him, but his voice failed.
"Don't say a word, old man," said Uncle Paul, clasping Father Van
Hove's hand with both of his. "All the world owes a debt to Belgium
which it can never pay. Her courage and devotion have saved the rest of
us from the miseries she has borne so bravely. If you got your just
deserts, you'd get much more than I can ever give you."
In the end it all came about just as Uncle Paul had said, and the Van
Hoves are living in comfort and happiness on that farm this very day.