THE SON'S RETURN.
When Richard Storms entered his father's house that night it was with
the air of a man who had some just cause of offence against the old
people who had been so long waiting for him. His sharp and rather
handsome features were clouded with temper as he pushed open the
kitchen door and held it while two ugly dogs crowded in, and his first
words were insolently aggressive.
"What! up yet, sulking over the fire and waiting for a row, are you?
Well, have it out; one of the men told me that brute of a horse had
got home with his leg twisted. I wish it had been his neck. Now, what
have you got to say about it?"
The elder Storms started up angrily, but his wife laid a hand on his
shoulder and besought silence with her beseeching eyes. Then she was
about to approach the young man, but one of the dogs snapped fiercely
at her, and when the son kicked him, retreated, grinding a piece of
her dress in his teeth.
"You had better take care, mother! The landlord of the 'Two Ravens'
has had him in training. He's been in a grand fight over yonder, and
killed more rats than you'd want to count. That makes him savage, you
know."
Mrs. Storms shrunk away from the danger, and in great terror crouched
down by the oaken chair from which her husband had risen. The old man
started forward, but before he could shake off the hold of his wife,
who seized his garments in a spasm of distress, Richard had kicked
both dogs through the door.
"Take that for your impudence," he said, fiercely. "To the kennel with
you! it's the only place for such curs. Mother, mother, I say, get up;
the whelps are gone. I didn't expect to find you out of bed, or they
shouldn't have come in."
Mrs. Storms stood up, still shaking with fear, while Richard dropped
into his father's chair and stretched his limbs out upon the hearth.
The old man took another seat, frowning darkly.
"We have been talking about you--father and I," said the old woman,
with a quiver of the passing fright in her voice.
"No good, I'll be sworn, if the old man had a hand in it," answered
the son.
"You are wrong," said the mother, pressing her hand on the young man's
shoulder. "No father ever thought more of a son, if you would only do
something to please him now and then. He was speaking just now of
letting you have more charge of the place."
"Well, that will come when I am my own master."
"That is, when I am dead!" broke in the old man, with bitter emphasis.
"I almost wish for death now. What your mother and I have to live for,
God only knows."
"Hush, John, hush! Don't talk so. Richard will forget his idle ways,
and be a blessing to us yet. Remember how we have spoiled him."
"There, there, mother, let him have it out. There's no use reasoning
with him when his back is up," said the young man, stretching himself
more comfortably and turning a belligerent look on the father.
Mrs. Storms bent over her son, greatly troubled.
"Don't anger your father, Dick. He was planning kindly for you."
"Planning what?--to keep me tied down here all my life?"
"If I have tried to do that," said the old man, "it came from more
love than I felt like talking about. Your mother and I haven't many
pleasures now, and when you are away so much we feel lonesome."
Dick turned in his chair and looked keenly at the old man, amazed by
his unusual gentleness. The lines that seemed hard as steel in his
young face relaxed a little.
"Why couldn't you have talked like that oftener, and made it a little
more pleasant at home? One must have something of life. You know that
as well as I do, father."
"Yes; your mother and I have been making allowances for that. Maybe
things might have been managed for the better all along; but we must
make the best of it now. As your mother says, a well-to-do man's only
son should make something better of himself than a farm drudge; so we
won't quarrel about it. Only be careful that the lass your mother and
I have set our hearts on gets no evil news of you, or we shall have
trouble there."
Richard laughed at this and answered with an air of bravado, "No fear,
no fear. The girl is too fond of me."
"But her father is a skittish man to deal with, once his back is up,
and you will find it hard managing the lass: let him see you with them
terriers at your heels, and he'll soon be off the bargain."
"If you are troubled about that, kick the dogs into the street and
sell the game-chickens, if they crowd mother's bantams out. How can a
dutiful son do more than that?"
"Ah, now you talk like a sensible lad! Make good time, and when you
bring the lass home, mother and I will have a bit of a cottage on the
land, and mayhap you will be master here."
"Is he in earnest, mother?"
"I think he is."
"And you, father?"
"For once I mean that your mother shall take her own way: mine has led
to this."
The old man looked at the clock, and then on the wet marks of the
dogs' feet on the kitchen floor, with grave significance.
Young Storms laughed a low, unpleasant laugh, which had nothing of
genuine hilarity in it.
"You are right, father. We should only have gone from bad to worse. I
don't take to hard work, but the other thing suits me exactly. You'll
see that I shall come up to time in that."
Just then the old clock struck one with a hoarse, angry clang, as if
wrathful that the morning should be encroached upon in that house.
Mrs. Storms took up one of the candles and gave it to her son.
"Good-night, my son," she said, looking from the clock to her husband
with pathetic tenderness in her voice. "Dick, you can kiss me
good-night as you used to when I went to tuck up your bed in the
winter. It'll seem like old times, won't it, husband? Shake hands with
your father, too. It isn't many men as would give up as he has."
The young man kissed his mother, with some show of feeling, and shook
hands with his father in a hesitating way; but altogether his manner
was so conciliatory that it touched those honest hearts with unusual
tenderness.
"You see what kindness can do with him," said Mrs. Storms, as she
stood on the hearth with the other candlestick in her hand, while her
husband raked up the fire. "He has gone up to bed with a smile on his
face."
"People are apt to smile when they get their own way," muttered the
old man, who was half ashamed of his concession. "But I have no idea
of taking anything back. You needn't be afraid of that. The young man
shall have his chance."
A sob was the only answer he got. Looking over his shoulder, as he put
the shovel in its corner, he saw that tears were streaming down the
old woman's face.
"Why, what are you crying about, mother?"
"I am so thankful."
The good woman might have intended to say more, but she broke off
suddenly, and the words died on her lips. The candle she held was
darkened, and she saw that the wick was broadening at the top like a
tiny mushroom, forming that weird thing called a "corpse-light" in
the midst of the blaze.
"What is the matter? What are you afraid of?" said the farmer,
wondering at the paleness in his wife's face.
"Look," she said, pointing to the heavy wick. "It seems to have come
all of a sudden."
"Only that?" said the old man, scornfully, snuffing out the
corpse-light with his thumb and finger.
A shudder passed over the woman as those horny fingers closed on the
corpse-light and flung it smoking into the ashes.
The old man had no sympathy with superstitions, and spoke to his wife
more sharply than was kind, after the double fright that had shaken
her nerves. Perhaps this thought came over him, for he patted her arm
with his rough hand, awkwardly enough, not being given to much display
of affection, and told her that she had for once got her own way, and
mustn't be frightened out of what sleep was left for them between that
and daylight by a smudge of soot in the candle.
"You can't expect candles to burn after midnight without crumpling up
their wicks," he said, philosophically: "so come to bed. The lad is
sound asleep by this time, I dare say."
These kind arguments did not have the desired effect, for the mother's
eyes were full of tears, and her hand quivered under the weight of the
candlestick, spite of all her efforts to conceal it from the
observation of her husband.
In less than ten minutes the farmer was asleep, but his wife, being of
a finer and more sensitive nature, could not rest. Like most
countrywomen of her class, she mingled some degree of superstition
even with her most religious thoughts. Notwithstanding her terror
occasioned by the snarling dog, she might have slept well, for the
scene that had threatened to end in rageful assault had subsided in
unexpected concession; but the funereal blackness in that candle
coming so close upon her fright completely unnerved her. Certain it is
no sleep came to those weary eyes. Close them as she would, that
unseemly light glared upon them, and to her weird imagination seemed
to point out some danger for her son.
At last the poor woman was seized with a desperate yearning of
motherhood, which had often led her to her son's room when the
helplessness of infancy or the perils of sickness appealed to her--a
yearning that drew her softly from her bed. Folding a shawl over her
night dress, she mounted the stairs and entered the chamber where the
young man lay in slumber so profound that he was quite unconscious of
her presence; for neither conscience nor tenderness ever took growth
enough in his nature to disturb an animal want of any kind. But the
light of a waning moon lay upon his face, so the woman fell upon her
knees, and gazing on those features, which might not have seemed in
any degree perfect to another, soothed herself into prayer, and, out
of the tranquillity that brings, into the sleep her nature craved so
much.
The morning light found her kneeling thus, with her cheek resting on
his hand, which, in her tender unconsciousness, she had stolen and
hidden away there.