"Of course," said Miss Hannah, "you can have these. I meant them for Millie, but I can cut the west bed for her."
She opened the gate and carried the asters over to the buggy. Miss Delancey took them with a smile that made Miss Hannah remember the date forever.
"Lovely day," commented Jacob genially.
"Yes," said Miss Hannah dreamily. "It reminds me of the day Ralph went away twenty years ago. It doesn"t seem so long. Don"t you think he"ll be coming back soon, Jacob?"
"Oh, sure," said Jacob, who thought the very opposite.
"I have a feeling that he"s coming very soon," said Miss Hannah brightly. "It will be a great day for me, won"t it, Jacob? I"ve been poor all my life, but when Ralph comes back everything will be so different. He will be a rich man and he will give me everything I"ve always wanted. He said he would. A fine house and a carriage and a silk dress. Oh, and we will travel and see the world. You don"t know how I look forward to it all. I"ve got it all planned out, all I"m going to do and have. And I believe he will be here very soon. A man ought to be able to make a fortune in twenty years, don"t you think, Jacob?"
"Oh, sure," said Jacob. But he said it a little uncomfortably. He did not like the job of throwing cold water, but it seemed to him that he ought not to encourage Miss Hannah"s hopes. "Of course, you shouldn"t think too much about it, Miss Hannah. He mightn"t ever come back, or he might be poor."
"How can you say such things, Jacob?" interrupted Miss Hannah indignantly, with a little crimson spot flaming out in each of her pale cheeks. "You know quite well he will come back. I"m as sure of it as that I"m standing here. And he will be rich, too. People are always trying to hint just as you"ve done to me, but I don"t mind them. I know."
She turned and went back into her garden with her head held high. But her sudden anger floated away in a whiff of sweet-pea perfume that struck her in the face; she waved her hand in farewell to her callers and watched the buggy down the lane with a smile.
"Of course, Jacob doesn"t know, and I shouldn"t have snapped him up so quick. It"ll be my turn to crow when Ralph does come. My, but isn"t that girl pretty. I feel as if I"d been looking at some lovely picture. It just makes a good day of this. Something pleasant happens to me most every day and that girl is today"s pleasant thing. I just feel real happy and thankful that there are such beautiful creatures in the world and that we can look at them."
"Well, of all the queer delusions!" Jacob Delancey was e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. as he and his niece drove down the lane.
"What is it all about?" asked Miss Delancey curiously.
"Well, it"s this way, Dorothy. Long ago Miss Hannah had a brother who ran away from home. It was before their father and mother died. Ralph Walworth was as wild a young scamp as ever was in Prospect and a spendthrift in the bargain. n.o.body but Hannah had any use for him, and she just worshipped him. I must admit he was real fond of her too, but he and his father couldn"t get on at all. So finally he ups and runs away; it was generally supposed he went to the mining country. He left a note for Hannah bidding her goodbye and telling her that he was going to make his fortune and would come back to her a rich man.
There"s never been a word heard tell of him since, and in my opinion it"s doubtful if he"s still alive. But Miss Hannah, as you saw, is sure and certain he"ll come back yet with gold dropping out of his pockets. She"s as sane as anyone everyway else, but there is no doubt she"s a little cracked on that p"int. If he never turns up she"ll go on hoping quite happy to her death. But if he should turn up and be poor, as is ten times likelier than anything else, I believe it"d most kill Miss Hannah. She"s terrible proud for all she"s so sweet, and you saw yourself how mad she got when I kind of hinted he mightn"t be rich. If he came back poor, after all her boasting about him, I don"t fancy he"d get much of a welcome from her. And she"d never hold up her head again, that"s certain. So it"s to be hoped, say I, that Ralph Walworth never will turn up, unless he comes in a carriage and four, which is about as likely, in my opinion, as that he"ll come in a pumpkin drawn by mice."
When October had pa.s.sed and the grey November days came, the glory of Miss Hannah"s garden was over. She was very lonely without her flowers. She missed them more this year than ever. On fine days she paced up and down the walks and looked sadly at the drooping, unsightly stalks and vines. She was there one afternoon when the northeast wind was up and doing, whipping the gulf waters into whitecaps and whistling up the inlet and around the grey eaves. Miss Hannah was mournfully patting a frosted chrysanthemum under its golden chin when she saw a man limping slowly down the lane.
"Now, who can that be?" she murmured. "It isn"t any Prospect man, for there"s n.o.body lame around here."
She went to the garden gate to meet him. He came haltingly up the slope and paused before her, gazing at her wistfully. He looked old and bent and broken, and his clothes were poor and worn. Who was he?
Miss Hannah felt that she ought to know him, and her memory went groping back amongst all her recollections. Yet she could think of n.o.body but her father, who had died fifteen years before.
"Don"t ye know me, Hannah?" said the man wistfully. "Have I changed so much as all that?"
"Ralph!"
It was between a cry and a laugh. Miss Hannah flew through the gate and caught him in her arms. "Ralph, my own dear brother! Oh, I always knew you"d come back. If you knew how I"ve looked forward to this day!" She was both laughing and crying now. Her face shone with a soft gladness. Ralph Walworth shook his head sadly.
"It"s a poor wreck of a man I am come back to you, Hannah," he said.
"I"ve never accomplished anything and my health"s broken and I"m a cripple as ye see. For a time I thought I"d never show my face back here, such a failure as I be, but the longing to see you got too strong. It"s naught but a wreck I am, Hannah."
"You"re my own dear brother," cried Miss Hannah. "Do you think I care how poor you are? And if your health is poor I"m the one to nurse you up, who else than your only sister, I"d like to know! Come right in.
You"re shivering in this wind. I"ll mix you a good hot currant drink.
I knew them black currants didn"t bear so plentiful for nothing last summer. Oh, this is a good day and no mistake!"
In twenty-four hours" time everybody in Prospect knew that Ralph Walworth had come home, crippled and poor. Jacob Delancey shook his head as he drove away from the station with Ralph"s shabby little trunk standing on end in his buggy. The station master had asked him to take it down to Miss Hannah"s, and Jacob did not fancy the errand.
He was afraid Miss Hannah would be in a bad way and he did not know what to say to her.
She was in her garden, covering her pansies with seaweed, when he drove up, and she came to the garden gate to meet him, all smiles.
"So you"ve brought Ralph"s trunk, Mr. Delancey. Now, that was real good of you. He was going over to the station to see about it himself, but he had such a cold I persuaded him to wait till tomorrow. He"s lying down asleep now. He"s just real tired. He brought this seaweed up from the sh.o.r.e for me this morning and it played him out. He ain"t strong. But didn"t I tell you he was coming back soon? You only laughed at me, but I knew."
"He isn"t very rich, though," said Jacob jokingly. He was relieved to find that Miss Hannah did not seem to be worrying over this.
"That doesn"t matter," cried Miss Hannah. "Why, he"s my brother! Isn"t that enough? I"m rich if he isn"t, rich in love and happiness. And I"m better pleased in a way than if he had come back rich. He might have wanted to take me away or build a fine house, and I"m too old to be making changes. And then he wouldn"t have needed me. I"d have been of no use to him. As it is, it"s just me he needs to look after him and coddle him. Oh, it"s fine to have somebody to do things for, somebody that belongs to you. I was just dreading the loneliness of the winter, and now it"s going to be such a happy winter. I declare last night Ralph and I sat up till morning talking over everything.
He"s had a hard life of it. Bad luck and illness right along. And last winter in the lumber woods he got his leg broke. But now he"s come home and we"re never going to be parted again as long as we live. I could sing for joy, Jacob."
"Oh, sure," a.s.sented Jacob cordially. He felt a little dazed. Miss Hannah"s nimble change of base was hard for him to follow, and he had an injured sense of having wasted a great deal of commiseration on her when she didn"t need it at all. "Only I kind of thought, we all thought, you had such plans."
"Well, they served their turn," interrupted Miss Hannah briskly. "They amused me and kept me interested till something real would come in their place. If I"d had to carry them out I dare say they"d have bothered me a lot. Things are more comfortable as they are. I"m happy as a bird, Jacob."
"Oh, sure," said Jacob. He pondered the business deeply all the way back home, but could make nothing of it.
"But I ain"t obliged to," he concluded sensibly. "Miss Hannah"s satisfied and happy and it"s n.o.body else"s concern. However, I call it a curious thing."
The Redemption of John Churchill
John Churchill walked slowly, not as a man walks who is tired, or content to saunter for the pleasure of it, but as one in no haste to reach his destination through dread of it. The day was well on to late afternoon in mid-spring, and the world was abloom. Before him and behind him wound a road that ran like a red ribbon through fields of lush clovery green. The orchards scattered along it were white and fragrant, giving of their incense to a merry south-west wind; fence-corner nooks were purple with patches of violets or golden-green with the curly heads of young ferns. The roadside was sprinkled over with the gold dust of dandelions and the pale stars of wild strawberry blossoms. It seemed a day through which a man should walk lightly and blithely, looking the world and his fellows frankly in the face, and opening his heart to let the springtime in.
But John Churchill walked laggingly, with bent head. When he met other wayfarers or was pa.s.sed by them, he did not lift his face, but only glanced up under his eyebrows with a furtive look that was replaced by a sort of shamed relief when they had pa.s.sed on without recognizing him. Some of them he knew for friends of the old time. Ten years had not changed them as he had been changed. They had spent those ten years in freedom and good repute, under G.o.d"s blue sky, in His glad air and sunshine. He, John Churchill, had spent them behind the walls of a prison.
His close-clipped hair was grey; his figure, encased in an ill-fitting suit of coa.r.s.e cloth, was stooped and shrunken; his face was deeply lined; yet he was not an old man in years. He was only forty; he was thirty when he had been convicted of embezzling the bank funds for purposes of speculation and had been sent to prison, leaving behind a wife and father who were broken-hearted and a sister whose pride had suffered more than her heart.
He had never seen them since, but he knew what had happened in his absence. His wife had died two months later, leaving behind her a baby boy; his father had died within the year. He had killed them; he, John Churchill, who loved them, had killed them as surely as though his hand had struck them down in cold blood. His sister had taken the baby, his little son whom he had never seen, but for whom he had prepared such a birthright of dishonour. She had never forgiven her brother and she never wrote to him. He knew that she would have brought the boy up either in ignorance of his father"s crime or in utter detestation of it. When he came back to the world after his imprisonment, there was not a single friendly hand to clasp his and help him struggle up again. The best his friends had been able to do for him was to forget him.
He was filled with bitterness and despair and a gnawing hatred of the world of brightness around him. He had no place in it; he was an ugly blot on it. He was a friendless, wifeless, homeless man who could not so much as look his fellow men in the face, who must henceforth consort with outcasts. In his extremity he hated G.o.d and man, burning with futile resentment against both.
Only one feeling of tenderness yet remained in his heart; it centred around the thought of his little son.
When he left the prison he had made up his mind what to do. He had a little money which his father had left him, enough to take him west.
He would go there, under a new name. There would be novelty and adventure to blot out the memories of the old years. He did not care what became of him, since there was no one else to care. He knew in his heart that his future career would probably lead him still further and further downward, but that did not matter. If there had been anybody to care, he might have thought it worthwhile to struggle back to respectability and trample his shame under feet that should henceforth walk only in the ways of honour and honesty. But there was n.o.body to care. So he would go to his own place.
But first he must see little Joey, who must be quite a big boy now, nearly ten years old. He would go home and see him just once, even although he dreaded meeting aversion in the child"s eyes. Then, when he had bade him good-bye, and, with him, good-bye to all that remained to make for good in his desolated existence, he would go out of his life forever.
"I"ll go straight to the devil then," he said sullenly. "That"s where I belong, a jail-bird at whom everybody except other jail-birds looks askance. To think what I was once, and what I am now! It"s enough to drive a man mad! As for repenting, bah! Who"d believe that I really repented, who"d give me a second chance on the faith of it? Not a soul. Repentance won"t blot out the past. It won"t give me back my wife whom I loved above everything on earth and whose heart I broke.
It won"t restore me my unstained name and my right to a place among honourable men. There"s no chance for a man who has fallen as low as I have. If Emily were living, I could struggle for her sake. But who"d be fool enough to attempt such a fight with no motive and not one chance of success in a hundred. Not I. I"m down and I"ll stay down.
There"s no climbing up again."
He celebrated his first day of freedom by getting drunk, although he had never before been an intemperate man. Then, when the effects of the debauch wore off, he took the train for Alliston; he would go home and see little Joey once.
n.o.body at the station where he alighted recognized him or paid any attention to him. He was as a dead man who had come back to life to find himself effaced from recollection and his place knowing him no more. It was three miles from the station to where his sister lived, and he resolved to walk the distance. Now that the critical moment drew near, he shrank from it and wished to put it off as long as he could.
When he reached his sister"s home he halted on the road and surveyed the place over its snug respectability of iron fence. His courage failed him at the thought of walking over that trim lawn and knocking at that closed front door. He would slip around by the back way; perhaps, who knew, he might come upon Joey without running the gauntlet of his sister"s cold, offended eyes. If he might only find the boy and talk to him for a little while without betraying his ident.i.ty, meet his son"s clear gaze without the danger of finding scorn or fear in it--his heart beat high at the thought.