Part 53 (1/2)

”Well, I guess not, Miss Jarney,” he said, with a sneer, looking away from her. ”I see, Miss Jarney--I am not blind--that you have set your cap for that young man in your father's office.”

”You are disrespectful, Mr. Cobb; leave me at once,” she replied, with some scorn for the first time exhibiting itself in her bearing. She arose and left him sitting there alone, with his pipe as his only comforting companion. After recovering from this jolt, as Star predicted, he gathered up his belongings, together with his valet, and vanished.

Imagine such a union of hearts! There are plenty of them founded upon the rock of riches. Yes; imagine it! See this young man Cobb, and know his worth! His face was like that of a well bred bull terrier, with a pipe between its lips, and a red cap upon its head. He had a pair of dull-gray pants on his hind legs, and they were turned up, with a pair of yellow shoes sticking out below the turn-ups. Around the middle of his body was a yellow belt fastened by a silver buckle, and above the belt was a silken white s.h.i.+rt, with turn-down collar, and around the collar was a red necktie, in which stuck a scarabee pin. And he called himself a man worthy of Edith.

He had been to Harvard, she to Va.s.sar. She had learned to write a grammatical sentence and spell in the good old Websterian way. She could sing and play on the piano; and converse on the economic questions of the day with the perspicacity of a Stowe. She read the poets down through the catalogue of famous men and women, and the novelists of the cla.s.s of d.i.c.kens and Hawthorne. She knew of the painters, the musicians, the theologians, and could talk intelligently on them all.

Him? He had learned a lot of things. He could flip the Harvard stroke with the ease of a Cook. He could make a touchdown without breaking sixteen ribs of an adversary. He could twirl the pigskin like an artist of the green cloth. He could take the long jump, or the long hike, with the grace of a giraffe. He could dance like a terpsichorian dame. He could drink whiskey, champagne and beer, smoke cigaretts, play cards. He could talk with the profundity of an a.s.s and write with the imbecility of an ox. Yes, indeed, he had all the refinements of a college education--the kind confined to the male gender. The only virtue he had was his prospective inheritance from his father--money.

And he wanted Edith to marry him! Pooh!

CHAPTER x.x.x.

FOR JOHN IS COMING HOME.

There is a little frame house sitting, in the shade of maples and oaks, by the roadside to the south aways from Chalk Hill. It is a leaning building, to some extent, in many ways, by reason of its age. A crooked little chimney heaves up on the exterior of one end, by reason of its insecure foundation. s.h.i.+ngles curl, up, as if in dotage, by reason of the sun. Weather boarding warp and twist and turn, grayed by the wash of years, by reason of their antiquity. Windows peep out, with little panes, and rattle in the wind, by reason of their frailty. Wasps and bees, in season, build their mud nests beneath curling s.h.i.+ngle and behind twisting board; bats fly out, at eventide, from unseen holes in the gables; and swallows chatter and circle round the chimney top in the twilight of the summer days. An ancient porch, with oaken floor, hangs against the front wall, and the woodbine and morning glory creep and twine and bloom around its slanting columns. A gate swings out at the end of the path leading from the door to the highway. Flowers--the rose, the marigold, the bouncingbetty, the wild pink, the primrose, all as old-fas.h.i.+oned as the people who dwell here--border the pathway. A paled patch of ground stands to one side, as sacred as the Garden of Gethsemane. In the rear a gnarled and aged orchard has but recently shed its snowy burden of bloom, with lingering scents still in the air; and beyond and around, fence-enclosed fields are greening with growing crops, and still beyond are dark forests and open fields and noisy ravines.

Evening is coming on. The sun has gone down over the mountain top.

Shadows have disappeared into the gray of fading light. Odors of night are ascending from the cooling earth. The robins are rendering the last stanza of their solemn doxology to the dying day. The whippoorwills send forth their melancholy praises to the approaching darkness through the wooded chancel of their shadowy choir loft. And frogs swell their throats in grave ba.s.s tones to the melody of country life at this time of departing day.

A gray-haired farmer, in rough garb, sits on the porch, smoking his pipe, and by his side sits his patient, loving wife. On the top step of the porch sits their young daughter, reading her fate, perhaps, in the evening stars, the while glancing up the road, and listening for the click of horses' feet on the stones. But no sound is heard before night comes on. The mother rises, goes in, and lights the oil lamp, and sets it by a window for the expected visitor to see. For John is coming home.

”They are late in getting here,” says the mother, as she descends from the porch, and goes down the path to the gate. She looks up the road through the shadows; then returns, and sits down by her daughter on the steps.

The father relights his pipe, clanks down to the gate, in his heavy boots, looks up the road through its shadows; then returns. ”They are late,” he says, and resumes his seat.

”I wonder what is keeping them,” says the daughter, with an expectant hush in her sweet voice, as she rises, and goes down to the gate. She looks up the road through its shadows; then returns, and sits down.

Listen!

John is coming home.

They hear the clank of horses' hoofs, the rattling wheels, the rhythm of a lively trot; then indistinct voices far in the distance.

John is coming home. The son who went away the year before--the brother--is coming home. The father's boots clank on the porch as he impatiently walks back and forth. The mother rises, and shades her eyes, and peers up the roadway through the shadows. The sister rises, with a dancing heart, and flutters down to the gate, like an angel in the darkness.

For John is coming home. Home! His only place of sweet rememberance.

It is an age, it seems, before the team draws up and John leaps out to catch his sister in his arms.

”Come into the light, Anne, that I may see your face, for I know you are growing so handsome,” said John, putting his arm around his sister, and went laughing with her toward the house. Could he have seen those blushes, in the darkness, because of his brotherly praising of her!

”How is mother?” was his greeting to his mother, as he kissed her at the foot of the steps. And, with her clinging to him on one side and Anne on the other, he ascended the steps to the porch.

”Where is father?” asked John, not seeing him in the darkness, standing just ahead of them. ”Oh, here he is!” John exclaimed, as he released himself from his mother and sister, and grasped his father's rough hand.

”Come into the light and let me see you all,” said John, after the formalities of greeting had been performed, to the satisfaction of all around.

The light brought forth a revelation for them all, as light does for everything. The family now saw in John a new being in outward appearance, but still the same loving son and brother. John now saw his father and mother a little older, it appeared, perhaps, from anxiety over his absence, or it may have been their strenuous toil was showing plainer on them. He also saw in his sister, a simple country maiden in the rusticity of young beauty.