Wheat and Huckleberries Part 6

The journey to New England was more than a mere interlude for the girls.

It was a distinct pleasure in itself. To watch the low, rich landscape which had lain around them from their infancy change imperceptibly to one different and bolder; the broad fields narrowing; the long, rolling swells lifting into clear-cut hills; the forests of beech and oak, with smooth, sunlighted floors, giving place to woods filled with a bewitching tangle of vines and ferns-all this was a constant delight to travellers as fresh and unsated as ours.

"I like the wide, open stretches better," said Kate once, when they were winding with many turns between the close-set hills. But Esther did not a.s.sent to this. It seemed to her that nature had heaped the measure of her bounty here,-the bounty which is beauty,-not spread it out in even level, and something in her heart responded to the change.

The hills had sharpened to a rugged sternness, the fields were checkered off in little plots by lines of gray stone walls, plots in which men were gathering hay behind oxen instead of horses, when at last they reached the village of Esterly.

They had pa.s.sed a succession of such villages, catching just a glimpse of pretty homes and shaded streets, with always a spire or two lifted above them,-an endless number it seemed to the girls,-but this was the name for which they had been breathlessly waiting, and it was no sooner spoken than they rose unsteadily in their places and turned their faces toward the door.

"They'll be here, of course. I only hope we shall know them," murmured Esther, anxiously.

She need have had no fear. Aside from some functionaries of the station there were but two persons on the platform of the Esterly depot when the Western train drew in, and these two were unmistakable. One of them was an old man, leaning eagerly forward, with his hands clasped on the top of his cane; a small, spare man, with clean-shaven face, and a touch of ruddy color in his cheeks, hair but slightly gray, and bright blue eyes which searched the faces before him without the aid of spectacles. The other was a pet.i.te young lady, in a stylish dress, with a mist of golden hair about her face, and a hat, which seemed to belong exactly with the face, tied in a gauzy mesh of something under her chin. She did not look in the least like a G.o.ddess, she was too slight and genteel; but she was clearly Stella Saxon.

"Grandfather! Stella!" came from the one side in a moment, and "Girls!

Girls!" from the other, as the four met and embraced.

"We knew somebody would be here to meet us," said Esther, when they had taken another breath and a good look at each other; "but I'd no idea it would be you, grandfather."

"Hm," said the old gentleman, evidently enjoying her surprise. "Mebbe you thought I'd be propped up in a big chair waiting for you at the house."

"If you knew the state of mind he's been in since morning!" said Stella.

"We got Uncle Doctor's telegram early, saying you'd be here on this train, and grandfather seemed to regard it as a summons to start for you at once. Mother and I had hard work to hold him back at all, and in spite of us he would start an hour before time this afternoon; actually hurried his horse to get here, too," she added, glancing with a little grimace at the fattest of family horses which was standing before the two-seated carriage at the side of the depot. "I shudder to think what would have happened to him if you hadn't come."

She was saying this last to Esther privately. The old gentleman had started briskly off with Kate to look after the trunks. These were to follow to the farm in a spring wagon, and securing them was a matter involving so little delay at this quiet station that the four were very shortly on their way behind the gray nag, which, after receiving an admonis.h.i.+ng "cluck" at starting off, was allowed to settle to his own jog-trot without further attention. They made a long circuit through the main street of the village, the old gentleman bowing and smiling to every one he met, and obviously eager to attract attention. But as the houses grew more scattering he laid the reins across his lap, put on a pair of spectacles, and for a full minute gazed through them steadily at his granddaughters.

"You look as your mother did at your age; wonderfully like," he said, with his eyes on Esther's face, "and you, too, but not so much," he added more slowly, turning to Kate. He took off his spectacles and returned them to an old-fas.h.i.+oned steel case; then asked, with much deliberation, "And what do you think of your old grandfather?"

"Why, you look just as I thought you did, only so very much younger,"

replied Esther. "I'd no idea you were so strong and active." She paused an instant, then, with a charming eagerness in her voice, added: "You make me think of the 'Farmer of Tilsbury Vale.' You know the poem says,-

"'His bright eyes look brighter, set off by the streak Of the unfaded rose that still blooms on his cheek.'"

The old gentleman made no attempt to conceal his elation. He fairly beamed; and Stella murmured in Esther's ear: "You've done it! His youthful looks are his particular vanity; and to have a fresh quotation brought to bear upon the subject!" She lifted her hands as if in despair of expressing the effect on her grandfather, and settled back in her seat. He had turned to Kate and was plainly waiting for her to speak now.

"Well," said that young lady, regarding him with cheerful scrutiny, "I can't quote any poetry about it. It's always Esther who puts in the fine strokes with that sort of thing; but I must say I think you look mighty young for a man of your age."

In its way this was equally good. Ruel Saxon evidently considered that she had used a very strong expression.

"Well," he said with complacence, "I guess there ain't much doubt but what I do bear my age better 'n most men at my time of life. I guess I'm some like Moses about that. You know it says, 'his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated,' when he got to be a very old man."

There was such evident surprise on the part of his granddaughters at this remark that he added: "To be sure, Moses was a good deal older 'n I am; he was a hundred and twenty years old when that was said of him, and I hain't got to _that_ yet by considerable. But I'm past the time of life that most men get to, a good deal past. I was born in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one, and if I live till the twenty-first day of next June I shall be eighty-nine years old."

He paused to let the statement take full effect, and Stella remarked: "That's the way grandfather always tells his age. He names that year, away back in the last century, and then he tells what his birthday next year will make him. I don't mind his keeping account for himself that way, but he has the same style of reckoning for the rest of us."

"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes, "the women would forget their own ages if it warn't for me and the big Bible. Now Stella here was born in the year-"

"There," cried the girl, "what did I tell you! And isn't it enough to make one feel ancient, the way he rolls out the syllables? Never you mind about me, grandfather. Tell the girls when they were born. I'm sure they've forgotten."

They admitted the fact promptly, but he had not yet exhausted the subject of his own exceptional fortune in withstanding the ravages of age. It was a theme of which he was never weary, largely no doubt from a certain vanity, which time had spared to him in a somewhat unusual measure, along with his physical powers. To have a fresh and interested audience was inspiration enough.

"It's a great blessing to retain one's faculties in old age," he said impressively. "Now I enjoy life, for aught I know, pretty near as much as I ever did; but it ain't so with everybody. There was Barzillai, for instance. He was a younger man, by eight years, than I am, but he must have been terrible hard of hearing, by his own account, and he'd lost his taste so that there warn't any flavor to him in the victuals he ate; though he seems to have been an active enough man in some ways," he added reflectively.

There was a moment's pause during which Deacon Saxon doubtless mused upon his own mercies, and his granddaughters pondered the question, who the unfortunate octogenarian whom he had just mentioned might be. Esther could not remember ever hearing of any relative of that name, and it hardly seemed to have a local flavor. She was glad when Kate, who seldom remained ignorant for want of asking a question, inquired briskly:-

"Who was this Bar-what's his name, that you're talking about?"

"Who was Barzillai?" cried the old man, turning upon the girl an astonished countenance. "Hain't you never heard of Barzillai, the Gileadite, the man who went down to give sustenance to David when he was fleeing before Absalom? Don't you know about _that_, and how David afterwards wanted to take him up to Jerusalem with him, but Barzillai said he was too old, and asked the king to let him stay in his own place? Hain't you read about _him_? Well, I never!"

He paused as in speechless wonder, then e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: "When your mother was your age she could have told all about him and anybody else you could mention out of the Bible. What on airth is she doing that she hain't trained you up to know about it? I hope she hain't stopped reading the scriptures herself, living out there in the West."

"Oh, dear!" cried Kate, quite overwhelmed by this burst, and in her jealousy for her mother indifferent for the moment to the insinuation against her native section. "Mother knows more about the Bible than anybody I ever saw,-except you,-and I've no doubt she told us all about that man when we were little" (she made no attempt now at his name), "but I never could remember those Old Testament folks."

It is doubtful whether Ruel Saxon felt much rea.s.sured as to the training his daughter had given her children by the cheerful manner in which Kate made the last admission. For himself his delight in those "Old Testament folks" was perennial. He had pored over their histories till every incident of their lives was as familiar to him as that of his own neighbors. He had entered so intimately into the thoughts and experiences of those ancient worthies that it was no meaningless phrase when, in his daily prayers, he asked that he might "sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven."

Ruel Saxon was a type of that cla.s.s of men, pa.s.sing away now even from the hills of New England, who from infancy were so steeped in knowledge of the Bible that its incidents formed the very background of their daily thinking, and its language colored their common conversation. It must be confessed that in the Old Testament he found his keenest pleasure, but between the covers of the Old or New there was no spot which was not to him revered and familiar ground. That all scripture was given by inspiration of G.o.d, and was "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, and for instruction in righteousness," was a part of his creed on which no shadow of doubt had ever fallen. The doctrine, according to his lights, he maintained with unction; the instruction he counted himself well qualified to give; and the reproof he felt equally called to administer on all needful occasions.

It was some minutes before he could quite recover from the astonishment of finding himself the direct progenitor of two young people who knew nothing of that worthy Gileadite whose state in old age formed such a striking contrast to his own. Probably he would have delivered a little homily, then and there, on the importance of reading the Bible, had not a turn in the road at the top of a long steep hill brought them suddenly into sight of the old Saxon homestead.

"There 'tis! There's the old place! Should you know it?" he demanded of his granddaughters.

Esther leaned forward from the back seat where she was sitting with Stella and gazed for a moment, almost holding her breath. Then she lifted a pair of moist s.h.i.+ning eyes to her grandfather. "I should know it anywhere," she said, with a thrill in her voice. "It looks just as I have dreamed of it all these years."

Indeed it was a picture which might easily hold its place in a loving memory; an old white house, with a wide stone chimney rising in the middle of a square old-fas.h.i.+oned roof, standing in the shelter of a cl.u.s.ter of elms, so tall, so n.o.ble, and so gracious in their bearing that the special guardians.h.i.+p of Heaven seemed resting on the spot.

Kate had been looking at it steadily too, but she shook her head as she glanced away. "No," she said, "I shouldn't know that I'd ever seen it before; but if you had handed me the reins, grandfather, and told me to find it somewhere on this road, I don't think I should have turned in at the wrong place."

They talked of nothing else as they drove slowly toward it. The motion Ruel Saxon had made-a most unusual one-to apply the lash to Dobbin had been checked by Esther, who declared she wanted to take in the details one by one, and begged him, with feeling, not to go too fast, a request which threw Stella into a state of inward convulsion from which she barely recovered in time to prevent the old gentleman from monopolizing the whole distance with an account of the various improvements he had made on the house, notably the last s.h.i.+ngling and the raising of the door-sills.

"You might tell the girls how you _didn't_ change the windows," she said slyly; but if he was inclined to do this, Esther's exclamation just then prevented.

"Oh, those dear little old-fas.h.i.+oned windows!" she cried. "They're blinking in the suns.h.i.+ne just as they used to. Grandfather dear, I'm so glad you haven't had them changed into something different."

He winced a little at this, and Stella said magnanimously, "It was really my mother's idea. She does complain sometimes of the trouble it is to keep all those tiny little window-panes clean, and so grandfather thought one spring that he'd have some new sashes put in, with a single pane of gla.s.s above and below. They had it all fixed up between them, but I came home just in time to prevent." She gave a shudder, then added: "I've always believed in special providences since then. Why, the change would have been ruinous, simply ruinous! You know if you can't have a lovely new house with everything graceful and artistic, the next best thing is to have one that's old and quaint. I wouldn't have a thing changed about our house for any consideration. I've set my foot down about that." (With all her daintiness she looked as if she could do it with effect.) "But mother and grandfather understand now, and have given their solemn promise never to make the smallest alteration without consulting me."

The old gentleman had been listening to this with his mouth pulled down to an expression of resignation which was clearly not natural to him.

"Well," he said, when she had reached her triumphant conclusion, "I've always been of the opinion that it's best to let women-folks have their way about things in the house. It pacifies 'em, and makes 'em willing to let the men manage things of more consequence. You know Solomon says 'it is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious woman.'"

"That's a fact, grandfather," said Stella, cordially; "and there's no describing how contentious I should be if you set about changing this old house."

They had almost reached it now. A minute more carried them under the elms, straight to the door. It was open, and under the latticed porch, covered with honeysuckles on one side and bitter-sweet on the other, stood Aunt Elsie waiting to receive them. She was a delicate-looking woman, whose quality, as one read it at first glance, was distinctly that of a lady. That she was somewhat precise and old-fas.h.i.+oned came next, in spite of the graceful French twist in her hair and her pretty lavender dress. She kept her place under the lattice, the color rising slightly in her thin cheeks as the girls came up, and her manner of greeting them, though affectionate, had none of the eager warmth of the earlier meeting.

Aunt Elsie Saxon, beside her vivacious daughter, or her still more sprightly father-in-law, seemed a singularly colorless person, but her quiet unresponsive manner covered a stronger individuality than appeared. The war had made her a widow at the very beginning of the struggle. In the bereavement of those first days she had come with her children to the old home for the help and comfort she sorely needed, but the time never came when she could be spared to leave it. And now for many years she had been mistress of the house, bearing with the somewhat erratic humors of Ruel Saxon as a more impulsive woman could hardly have done, and consoled, no doubt, for much that was trying by the certain knowledge that in his heart he loved and leaned upon her.

There was one other member of the family circle, Tom, the sixteen-year-old boy, but he, it appeared, had some pressing duty in the field. At least he did not show himself till supper time, and then he slipped in with the hired man, who, as well as himself, was duly introduced to the cousins. He was a shy, awkward fellow, with a freckled face, and a pair of shrewd observant eyes, in whose glance Kate thought she detected a lurking disdain for the society of girls. She wanted to begin making his acquaintance at once,-by way of punishment, of course,-but his seat was too far from hers at the table, and he was off like a flash when the meal was over.

It seemed to both the girls that this was the longest day they had ever known, but its hours did not outlast the pleasure they brought. Esther could not rest till she had rambled about the place to find the old familiar things, and her delight, as she came upon one after another, knew no bounds. There was the cherry tree, almost strangled by the grape-vine which hung around it in a thick green canopy, under which she had done miniature housekeeping in those childish days, and a fragment of old blue china, trodden in the ground, was a find to bring a joy like that of relic-hunters in a.s.syrian mounds, when they come upon some mighty treasure.

"It was a part of our best tea-set, Stella," she cried. "Don't you remember how I broke one of grandmother's company plates by accident, and after mourning over it a little in her gentle way, she gave us the pieces to play with, so I shouldn't feel too badly?" She wiped the bit on her lace-edged handkerchief and held it for a moment lovingly against her cheek.