At the examination, when he saw the terrible anguish of the young wife, he was half tempted to confess, but dared not, for fear of what might follow; so he kept his own counsel, and for a few years remained in the vicinity of Deerwood, hoping to hear something of the man he had so wronged, and then he went away to the West, wandering up and down with that burden of guilt upon his soul, until at last, knowing that he must die, he returned to Deerwood, and seeking out the farm-house, asked permission to lay his head again beneath its hospitable roof. This done, he acknowledged to the father how he had sinned against the son, and after making an affidavit of his guilt, died a penitent and, it was to be hoped, a better man.
"And now," wrote Mr. Graham in conclusion, "I wish I could convey to you some little idea of the present excitement in Deerwood. Everybody is talking of the disclosure, and of your father, who, were he here, would be a greater lion even than Lafayette in his day. And I wish that he were here. Poor Seth! G.o.d forgive me that I testified against him. I verily believed him guilty up to the hour when Heyward proved him innocent. Oh, if he only could come back to me again, and to the home where your aged grandfather prays continually that his sun may not go down until he has seen once more the face of his boy. Poor old man, it is a touching sight to see his lips move continually, and hear the words he whispers: "G.o.d send him back, G.o.d send him back." You know Aunt Debby always said, "Seth allus was a good boy;" she repeats it now with ten-fold earnestness, as if it were a fact in which everybody concurred.
It may be that your father is dead, and if so he cannot return; but if still living, I am sure we shall see him again, for I shall take means to have the story inserted in the papers far and near, so that it will be sure to meet his eye.
"Meanwhile, Walter, come home as soon as you are able to bear the journey. We want you here to share in our great joy. Leave the business, if it is not arranged, and come. We are waiting anxiously for you, and none more anxiously than Jessie. She has been wild with delight ever since I told her your father was innocent. Mrs. Bellenger, too, shares the general joy, and were yourself and your father here our happiness would be complete."
"We will go, too," cried Walter, "you as Captain Murdock at first, to see if they will know you. Oh, I wish it were now that we were there,"
and Walter"s dark eyes danced as he antic.i.p.ated the meeting between the deacon and his son.
"Yes, we will go," Mr. Marshall answered, and then, after looking over the papers which Mr. Graham had sent, and which contained Heyward"s confession, he sat down by Walter and told of his wanderings since that dreadful night when he left his home, branded as a thief and robber.
"But first," said he, "let me tell you how I chanced to run away. I should never have done it but for Mr. Graham, who begged and entreated me to go."
"Mr. Graham!" exclaimed Walter. "Why, he, I thought, was your bail."
"So he was," returned the father, "but he wished me to come away for all that. He would rather lose all his fortune, he said, than know I was in prison, and sent there on his testimony. So he urged me to leave, contriving a way for me to do so, and even carrying me himself, that stormy night, many miles from Deerwood. I dreaded the State prison. I believe I would rather have been hung, and I yielded to his importunities on one condition only. I knew his father would be very indignant, and that people would censure him severely, too, if it were known he was in my secret, and, as I would not have him blamed, I made him promise to me solemnly that he would never tell that he first suggested my going and then helped me away. He has kept his promise, and it is well. I have ample means, now, for paying him all I owe, and many a time I have thought to send it to him, but I have been dead to all my friends so long that I decided to remain so. I wrote to him from Texas, asking for you all, and learning from him of Ellen"s death, and of your birth. You were a feeble child, he said, and probably would not live. I had never seen you, my son, and when I heard that my darling was gone,-my mother, too,-and that my father and best friend still believed me guilty, I felt a growing coldness toward you all. I would never write home again, I said. I would forget that I ever had a home, and for a time I kept this resolution, plunging into vices of every kind,-swearing, gambling, drinking--"
"Oh father,-father!" said Walter, with a shudder. "You do not tell me true."
"It"s all true, my boy, and more," returned the father, "but I was overtaken at last, by a terrible sickness, the result of dissipation in New Orleans. A sister of charity saved my life, and opened my heart to better things. Her face was like Ellen"s, and it carried me back to other days, until I wept like a little child over my past folly. From that sick bed, I arose a different man, and then for years I watched the Northern papers to see if they contained anything like what we have just read. But they did not, and I said I cannot go home yet. I sometimes saw Mr. Graham"s name, and knew that he was living, but whether you were dead or alive I could not even guess. Here, in California, where I have been for the last ten years, I have never met a single person from the vicinity of Deerwood. At first I worked among the mines, ama.s.sing money so fast as even to astonish myself. At length, weary of the labor, I left the mines and came to the city, where I am known as Captain Murdock, the t.i.tle having been first given to me in sport by some of my mining friends. Latterly I have thought of going home, for it is so long since the robbery, that I had no fears of being arrested, and I was about making up my mind to do so, when chance threw you in my way, and it now remains for you to say when we both shall start."
"At once,-at once," said Walter, who had listened intently to the story, giving vent to an occasional exclamation of surprise. "We will go in the very next steamer. I shall not have a chance to write, but it will be just as well. I wish to see if grandpa or Mr. Graham will recognize you."
Mr. Marshall had no objections to testing the recollections of his father, and he readily consented to go, saying to his friends that as New England was his birthplace he intended accompanying his young friend home.
"I can write the truth back to them," he thought, "and save myself much annoyance."
Thus it was arranged, and the next steamer for New York which left the harbor of San Francisco, bore on its deck the father and his son, both eager and expectant and anxious to be at the end of the voyage.
CHAPTER XVI.-THANKSGIVING DAY AT DEERWOOD.
The dinner table was nicely arranged in the "best room" of the farm-house, and Jessie Graham, with a happy look on her bright face, flitted in and out, arranging the dishes a little more to her taste, smoothing the snowy cloth, pausing a moment before the fire blazing so cheerfully upon the hearth, and then glancing from the window, across the frozen fields to the hillside where a new grave had been made since the last Thanksgiving Day.
"Dear Ellen!" she sighed, "there is no plate for her now,-no chair."
Then, as she remembered an absent one, dearer far than Ellen, she thought, "I"ll make believe _he"s_ here," and seeking Mrs. Howland, who was busy with her turkey, she said: "May I put a plate for Walter? It will please him when he hears of it."
"Yes, child," was the ready answer, and Jessie was hastening off, when a feeble voice from the kitchen corner where the deacon sat, called her back:
"Jessie," the old man said. "Put Seth"s arm-chair next to mine. It is the last Thanksgiving I shall ever see, and I would fancy him with me once more," and as Jessie turned toward the place where the leathern chair stood, she heard the words:
"G.o.d send him back,-G.o.d send him back."
"It is the deacon"s wish," she whispered to her father, who, with Mrs.
Bellenger, was also spending Thanksgiving at the farm-house, and who looked up surprised, as Jessie dragged from its accustomed post, the ponderous arm-chair, and wheeling it into the other room, placed it to the deacon"s right.
The dinner was ready at last, and Mrs. Howland was only waiting for the oysters to boil, before she served them up, when Jessie gave a scream of joy, and dropping the dish of cranberries she held, ran off into the pantry, where, as Aunt Debby affirmed, she hid herself in the closet, though from what she was hiding it were difficult to tell. There was surely nothing appalling in the sight of _Walter_, who, alighting from the village omnibus, now stood upon the threshold, with Captain Murdock.
They had stayed all night in the city, where Walter had learned that Mr.
Graham, Jessie and his grandmother, had gone to Deerwood to spend Thanksgiving Day.
"We shall be there just in time," he said to his father, when at an early hour they took their seat in the cars; but his father paid little heed, so intent was he upon noting the changes which more than twenty years had wrought in the localities with which he was once familiar.
As the day wore on, and he drew near to Deerwood, he leaned back in his seat, faint and sick with the crowd of memories which came rushing over him.
"Deerwood!" shouted the conductor, and looking from the window, he could scarcely believe it possible that this flourishing village was the same he had known among the hills. When he went away _one_ spire alone pointed heavenward, now he counted _four_, while in the faces of some who greeted Walter again he saw the looks of those who had been boys with him, but who were fathers now to these grown-up young men.
"I am old," he sighed, and mechanically entering the omnibus, he folded his arms in moody silence, as they rattled down the street. But when the brow of the hill was reached, and Walter said: "See, father, there"s our orchard," he started, and looked, not at the orchard, nor at the gable roof now fully in view, nor at the maple tree, but down the lane, along the beaten path, to where a tall monument gleamed white and cold in the gray November light.
"That"s her"s,-that"s mother"s," Walter said, following the direction of his father"s eyes; then fearing that his father, by his emotions, should betray himself too soon, he arose and sat by him, taking his hand, and saying tenderly:
"Don"t give way. You have me left, and grandpa, and Aunt Mary, and Jessie,-won"t you try to be calm?"
"Yes, yes," whispered the agitated man, and with a tremendous effort he was calm, as, standing in the well-remembered kitchen, he waited till the noisy outburst had somewhat subsided, and Walter been welcomed home.
But not a single thing escaped the notice of his keen eyes, which wandered round the room taking in each familiar object, and noticing where there had been a change.
There was none in Aunt Debby, he said,-wrinkled, gray, slight and straight as her high-backed chair,-just as he remembered her years ago,-just so she was now-her kerchief crossed as she wore it then,-her spectacles on her forehead,-her ap.r.o.n long, and meeting almost behind, and on the chair-post her satin bag with the knitting visible therefrom.
She was the same, but the comely matron Walter called Aunt Mary, was she the blooming maiden he had left so long ago, and the elegant-looking stranger, with the unmistakable city polish, was that his early friend?
It took him but an instant to think all this, and then his eyes fell upon the old man by the fire,-the man with the furrowed cheek, the bowed form, the silvery hair and shaking limbs,-who, like some giant oak which has yielded to the storms of many a winter, sat there the battered wreck of a once n.o.ble man. That was his father, but he would not call him so just then, and when Walter, turning at last, said: "This is Captain Murdock, the kind friend who took care of me," he went forward, taking first Aunt Debby"s hand, then his sister Mary"s, then Mr. Graham"s, and now there was a slight faltering of manner, while his eyes sought the floor, for they could not meet the gaze fixed so curiously upon him.
"Grandpa, this is Captain Murdock," said Walter, while Captain Murdock advanced a step or so and took the shriveled hand, which had so often rested fondly on his head.
Oh, how Seth longed to kiss that feeble hand; but he dared not, and he was glad that Walter, by his loud, rapid talking, attracted the entire attention, leaving him to sit down un.o.bserved, when the meeting between himself and Mrs. Bellenger was over. At her he had looked rather inquisitively, for she was his Ellen"s mother, and his heart yearned toward her for the sake of his gentle wife.
Meanwhile Walter, without seeming to do so, had been watching for somebody, who, behind the pantry door, was trying to gain courage to come out.
"I"ll look at him, anyway," she said, and Walter glanced that way just in time to see a profusion of raven curls and a shining, round black eye.
"Jessie," called Mr. Graham, who saw them too, "Jessie, hadn"t you better come out and gather up the cranberries you dropped so suddenly when the omnibus drove up?"
"Father, how can you?" and the young lady immediately appeared, and greeted Walter quite naturally.
He evidently was embarra.s.sed, for he hastened to present her to Captain Murdock, who, feeling, intuitively, that he beheld his future daughter-in-law, took both her soft chubby hands in his and held them there, while he said, a little mischievously:
"I have heard much of you, Miss Jessie, from my so-, my friend, I mean,"
he added, quickly, correcting himself, but not so quickly that Jessie did not detect what he meant to say.
One by one she scanned his features, then the deacon"s, then Walter"s, and then, with a flash of intelligence in her bright eyes, turned to the latter for a confirmation of her suspicions. Walter understood her meaning, and with an answering nod, said softly:
"By and by."
"The dinner will be cold," suggested Mrs. Howland, and then the deacon rose, and leaning on his cane, walked into the adjoining room, when he took his seat at the head of the table.
"There"s a chair for you," Jessie said to Walter who, following the natural laws of attraction, kept close to her side. "There"s one for _you_ and him, too, my old playhouse," and she pointed to the leathern chair.