A Son of the Middle Border Part 46

The purchase of this small lot and commonplace house may seem very unimportant to the reader but to me and to my father it was in very truth epoch-marking. To me it was the ending of one life and the beginning of another. To him it was decisive and not altogether joyous.

To accept this as his home meant a surrender of his faith in the Golden West, a tacit admission that all his explorations of the open lands with whatsoever they had meant of opportunity, had ended in a sense of failure on a barren soil. It was not easy for him to enter into the spirit of our Thanksgiving plans although he had given his consent to them. He was still the tiller of broad acres, the speculator hoping for a boom.

Early in October, as soon as I could displace the renter of the house, I started in rebuilding and redecorating it as if for the entrance of a bride. I widened the dining room, refitted the kitchen and ordered new rugs, curtains and furniture from Chicago. I engaged a cook and maid, and bought a horse so that on November first, the date of my mother's arrival, I was able to meet her at the station and drive her in a carriage of her own to an almost completely outfitted home.

It was by no means what I intended it to be, but it seemed luxurious to her. Tears dimmed her eyes as she stepped across the threshold, but when I said, "Mother, hereafter my headquarters are to be in Chicago, and my home here with you," she put her arms around my neck and wept. Her wanderings were over, her heart at peace.

My father arrived a couple of weeks later, and with his coming, mother sent out the invitations for our dinner. So far as we could, we intended to bring together the scattered units of our family group.

At last the great day came! My brother was unable to be present and there were other empty chairs, but the McClintocks were well represented. William, white-haired, gigantic, looking almost exactly like Grandad at the same age, came early, bringing his wife, his two sons, and his daughter-in-law. Frank and Lorette drove over from Lewis Valley, with both of their sons and a daughter-in-law. Samantha and Dan could not come, but Deborah and Susan were present and completed the family roll. Several of my father's old friends promised to come in after dinner.

The table, reflecting the abundance of the valley in those peaceful times, was stretched to its full length and as we gathered about it William congratulated my father on getting back where cranberries and turkeys and fat squashes grew.

My mother smiled at this jest, but my father, still loyal to Dakota, was quick to defend it. "I like it out there," he insisted. "I like wheat raising on a big scale. I don't know how I'm going to come down from operating a six-horse header to sc.r.a.ping with a hoe in a garden patch."

Mother, wearing her black silk dress and lace collar, sat at one end of the table, while I, to relieve my father of the task of carving the twenty-pound turkey, sat opposite her. For the first time in my life I took position as head of the family and the significance of this fact did not escape the company. The pen had proved itself to be mightier than the plow. Going east had proved more profitable than going west!

It was a n.o.ble dinner! As I regard it from the standpoint of today, with potatoes six dollars per bushel and turkeys forty cents per pound, it all seems part of a kindlier world, a vanished world--as it is! There were squashes and turnips and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and mince pie, (made under mother's supervision) and coffee with real cream,--all the things which are so precious now, and the talk was in praise of the delicious food and the Exposition which was just closing, and reports of the crops which were abundant and safely garnered. The wars of the world were all behind us and the nation on its way back to prosperity--and we were unafraid.

The gay talk lasted well through the meal, but as mother's pies came on, Aunt Maria regretfully remarked, "It's a pity Frank can't help eat this dinner."

"I wish Dave and Mantie were here," put in Deborah.

"And Rachel," added mother.

This brought the note of sadness which is inevitable in such a gathering, and the shadow deepened as we gathered about the fire a little later. The dead claimed their places.

Since leaving the valley thirty years before our group had suffered many losses. All my grandparents were gone. My sisters Harriet and Jessie and my uncle Richard had fallen on the march. David and Rebecca were stranded in the foot hills of the Cascade mountains. Rachel, a widow, was in Georgia. The pioneers of '48 were old and their bright world a memory.

My father called on mother for some of the old songs. "You and Deb sing _Nellie Wildwood_," he urged, and to me it was a call to all the absent ones, an invitation to gather about us in order that the gaps in our hearth-fire's broken circle might be filled.

Sweet and clear though in diminished volume, my mother's voice rose on the tender refrain:

Never more to part, Nellie Wildwood Never more to long for the spring.

and I thought of Hattie and Jessie and tried to believe that they too were sharing in the comfort and contentment of our fire.

George, who resembled his uncle David, and had much of his skill with the fiddle bow, had brought his violin with him, but when father asked Frank to play _Maggie, air ye sleepin'_, he shook his head, saying, "That's Dave's tune," and his loyalty touched us all.

Quick tears sprang to mother's eyes. She knew all too well that never again would she hear her best-beloved brother touch the strings or join his voice to hers.

It was a moment of sorrow for us all but only for a moment, for Deborah struck up one of the lively "darky pieces" which my father loved so well, and with its jubilant patter young and old returned to smiling.

It must be now in the Kingdom a-comin'

In the year of Jubilo!

we shouted, and so translated the words of the song into an expression of our own rejoicing present.

Song after song followed, war chants which renewed my father's military youth, ballads which deepened the shadows in my mother's eyes, and then at last, at my request, she sang _The Rolling Stone_, and with a smile at father, we all joined the chorus.

We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

My father was not entirely convinced, but I, surrounded by these farmer folk, hearing from their lips these quaint melodies, responded like some tensely-strung instrument, whose chords are being played upon by searching winds. I acknowledged myself at home and for all time. Beneath my feet lay the rugged country rock of my nativity. It pleased me to discover my mental characteristics striking so deep into this typically American soil.

One by one our guests rose and went away, jocularly saying to my father, "Well, d.i.c.k, you've done the right thing at last. It's a comfort to have you so handy. We'll come to dinner often." To me they said, "We'll expect to see more of you, now that the old folks are here."

"This is my home," I repeated.

When we were alone I turned to mother in the spirit of the builder.

"Give me another year and I'll make this a homestead worth talking about. My head is full of plans for its improvement."

"It's good enough for me as it is," she protested.

"No, it isn't," I retorted quickly. "Nothing that I can do is good enough for you, but I intend to make you entirely happy if I can."

Here I make an end of this story, here at the close of an epoch of western settlement, here with my father and mother sitting beside me in the light of a tender Thanksgiving, in our new old home and facing a peaceful future. I was thirty-three years of age, and in a certain very real sense this plot of ground, this protecting roof may be taken as the symbols of my hard-earned first success as well as the defiant gages of other necessary battles which I must fight and win.

As I was leaving next day for Chicago, I said, "Mother, what shall I bring you from the city?"

With a shy smile she answered, "There is only one thing more you can bring me,--one thing more that I want."

"What is that?"

"A daughter. I need a daughter--and some grandchildren."