Cape Cod Folks Part 40

"A little shower comin' up," Grandma said, but Grandpa shook his head and prophesied "a long, stiddy spell o' weather."

I persuaded my friends not to wait with me for the arrival of the train which, owing to some discrepancy in the matter of time between Wallencamp and West Wallen, would not be due for an hour or more.

I watched them out of sight, the last of my Wallencamp! How deeply, how utterly it had grown into my life, so that now, in spite of the secret, glad exultation I felt at the thought of going home, my heart went running out after that quaint, receding vehicle, and aching sensibly.

On board the train at last, I began to experience something of the sensation of one who awakens from a long sleep to the half-forgotten ways of men and life with a vague, untroubled wonder as to the latest styles in dress; or, like a traveller from a strange country, weary, and way-worn, and out of date, who yet can smile, hugging in his breast the happy secret of boundless wealth in the gold-mine he has discovered far away.

I had neither umbrella, portmanteau, nor shawl-strap; such ordinary paraphernalia of travel I remembered once to have possessed, and tried in vain to recall the particular occasions on which they had been wrecked in Wallencamp. I bore with me my bouquet, my basket of boxberries, some small cedar trees for transplanting, and half of the largest clam-sh.e.l.l the sh.o.r.es of Cape Cod had ever produced; this last a parting gift from Lovell Barlow.

I was far from being troubled with the consciousness of anything quaint or _bizarre_ in my appearance. I felt no mortification on account of these treasures so intrinsically dear to my heart; but Grandma Keeler had insisted on binding a mustard paste on my chest. It was a parting request--I could not have refused--but in the close air of the car the physical torture began to be extreme. Tears fell on the cedar spray at my side, yet was I withal strangely, peacefully happy.

It was raining when I pa.s.sed through Boston. Once more in the din of a city, jolting noisily over the rough, uneven pavements, I found myself wondering continually if the Keelers had reached home, and imagining how the rain was falling gently, quietly, on the roof of the Ark.

At the next stage, at Hartford, I was half afraid that I should meet brother or sister or some member of the family, and so have the complete effect of my "surprise" destroyed; but I saw none of them. There were few pa.s.sengers on board the Newtown-bound train. It was raining still. I was growing more and more glad at heart, and looking out with my arm pressed against the window, when I heard a voice right over me--a soft, pitiful, thrilling exclamation:--

"Great Heavens!"

I looked up and saw John Cable.

He sank slowly down into the seat in front of me and, for a moment, neither of us spoke. I did not mind meeting John. I had not thought of including him in the surprise. The sight of his familiar, friendly face gave me a positive thrill of pleasure, but there was something in his manner that kept me silent.

I said: "I am going to surprise them, John."

There was nothing offensive in the grave, swift glance with which John Cable then took me in, me and my bouquet of wilted wild-flowers and my small cedar trees, only a slow, solemn distinctness in his tone.

"You will succeed," he said. "Undoubtedly you will succeed."

Still I felt no resentment. A gentle, sorrowful perplexity filled my breast.

"Why, do--I--look--very--very--unusual, John?" I questioned, and looking in his face I wondered why, in the old days of careless jest and repartee, he had never seemed so moved.

More words he said, but I could not bear them then, and tears from an inward pain fell on the cedar spray, yet I was glad that I had not grown so unusual that people would never like me any more.

Next, the surprise was a success, as John Cable had predicted, but that was the one point in my career in which my genius had never failed me. My surprises, though inclined to take something of the nature of an acc.u.mulation of calamities, had never lacked the great element of awe-producing wonder.

For the rest, I had known that I should be forgiven and received with the usual _eclat_ of the returned prodigal into the family bosom--but to be held up on successive days as an object of ever-increasing marvel and interest, as one whose words and acts were endowed with a peculiar significance, as the light of the social fireside, the enchanter of small spell-bound audiences! Well, I had been spoiled so early in life that little was needed to complete the wreck. I felt a deeper satisfaction when, as I was meekly beseeching our Bridget's instruction in some particular branch of the culinary art, that majestic female observed, as she folded her arms and looked down on me complacently:--

"There's one thing I like better about you than I used to, miss--you do have to wade through a great deal o' flour to larn a little plain cooking but Job himself couldn't a' be'n no patienter." And it was indeed true that my "Graham gems" never quite reached perfection, though they bore with them marks of earnest and faithful endeavor.

I found new sources of interest everywhere, and in ways which I had formerly regarded with aversion and disdain.

At the "Newtown Ladies' Charitable Sewing Society," I was elevated from among the common st.i.tchers and sewers, for faithfulness in service,--I believe, though malicious fingers would point to the distortion of the legs of little heathens' trousers--to a place on the "cutting circle."

From the cutting circle, it is needless to say, I was speedily exalted to a presidential chair of easeful observation and general vague superintendency.

Later, there was a revival of the "Literary Club." There John Cable and I shone once more amid a group of familiar and undimmed luminaries. John Cable never took up the exact thread of the discourse broken off so abruptly on the day of my return, in the cars, but it was when coming home from the club one evening that he expressed himself to the effect that I had always been a great burden on his mind, ever since the first day he led me to school, and, to be sure, I had shown signs of improvement lately, but there was always a pardonable doubt as to what I might do next, and it was wearing on him, and would I set his mind at rest by allowing him, in some sense, to take the direction of my life into his own hands?

John, though of adverse views, had been heatedly discussing the merits of the Capital Punishment question at the club, so I was not surprised at the unusual grace and flow of his address.

Years have pa.s.sed since that evening. I have been very happy as John's wife. If I wander in my story, be it said that little John is running a model express-train on the floor over my head. Little John, when not dreaming, exercises a vast amount of destructive physical force.

A little more than a year after I left Wallencamp, I heard of Grandma and Grandpa Keeler's death. "Very quiet and peaceful," they said concerning Grandma, but I had known what sort of a death-bed hers would be. Scarcely a week after she had pa.s.sed away, Grandpa Keeler followed her. I had it from good authority that he kept about the house till the last. There was a "rainy spell," and he stood often gazing out of the window "with a lost look on his face," and once he said with a wistful, broken utterance and a pathetic longing in his eyes that did away forever with any opprobrium there might have been in connection with the term, that "it was gittin'

to be very lonely about the house without ma pesterin' on him."

Since then, I have not heard from Wallencamp. It is doubtful whether I ever get another letter from that source. Though singularly gifted in the epistolary art, it is but a dull and faint means of expression to the souls of the Wallencampers--and _they_ will not forget. From the storms that shake their earthly habitations, they pa.s.s to their sweet, wild rest beside the sea; and by and by, when I meet them, I shall hear them sing.