Fashion and Famine Part 23

She was aroused from this unusual state of abstraction by a slight noise among the dishes, and supposing that the slack old house cat had broken bounds for once, she stamped her foot upon the hearth too gently for much effect, and brushing the tears from her eyes, uttered a faint "get out," as if that hospitable heart smote her for attempting to deprive the cat of a reasonable share in the feast.

Still the noise continued, and added to it was the faint creaking of a chair. She looked around, eagerly arose from her seat, and stood up motionless, with her eyes bent on the table. A man sat in the vacant chair--not the hired man--for his life he dared not have touched that seat. The apartment was full of shadows, but through them all Mrs. Gray could detect something in the outline of that tall figure that made her heart beat fast. The face turned toward her was somewhat pale, and even through the gloom she felt the flash of two dark eyes riveted upon her.

Mrs. Gray had no thought of robbers--what highwayman could be fancied bold enough to seat himself in that chair? She had no fear of any kind, still her stout limbs began to shake, and when she moved toward the table it was with a wavering step. As she came opposite her brother's chair the intruder leaned forward, threw his arms half across the table, and bent his face toward her. That moment the hickory fire flashed up; she rushed close to the table, seized both the large hands stretched toward her, and cried out, "Jacob, brother Jacob--is that you?"

"Well, Sarah, I reckon it isn't anybody else!" said Jacob Strong, holding his sister's hand with a firm grip, though she was trying to shake his over the table with all her might. "You didn't expect me, I suppose?"

It would not do; with all his eccentricity, the warm, rude love in Jacob Strong's heart would force its way out. His voice broke; he suddenly planted his elbows on the table, and covering his face with both hands, sobbed aloud.

"Jacob, brother Jacob, now don't!" cried Mrs. Gray, coming round the table, her buxom face glistening with tears. "I'm sure it seems as if I should never feel like crying again. Why, Jacob, _is_ it you? I can't seem to have a realizing sense of it yet."

Jacob arose, opened his large arms, and gathered the stout form of Mrs.

Gray to his bosom, as if she had been a child.

"Sarah, it is the same heart, with a great deal of love in it yet. Does not that seem real?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Gray, in a soft, deep whisper, "yes, Jacob, that is nat'ral, but I want to cry more than ever. It seems as if I couldn't stop! I always kind of expected it, but now that you are here, it seems as if I had got you right back from heaven."

Jacob Strong held his sister still closer to his bosom, and putting up his hand, he attempted to smooth her hair with a sort of awkward caress, probably an old habit of his boyhood, but his hand fell upon the muslin and ribbons of her cap, and the touch smote him like a reproach. "Oh, Sarah," he said, in a broken voice, "you have grown old. _Have_ I been away so many years?"

"Never mind that now," answered Mrs. Gray, whose kindly heart was moved by the sigh that seemed lifting her from the bosom of her brother. "I have had trouble, and, sure enough, I have grown old, but it seems to me as if I was never so happy as I am now."

Jacob tightened his embrace a moment, and then released his sister.

"Get a light, Sarah, let us look at each other."

Mrs. Gray took a bra.s.s candlestick from the mantel-piece and kindled a light. Her face was paler than usual, and bathed with tears as she turned it toward Jacob. For a time the two gazed on each other with a look of intense interest; an expression of regretful sadness settled on their features, and, without a word, Mrs. Gray sat down the light.

"Is it age, Sarah, or trouble, that has turned your hair so grey?" said Jacob, a moment after, when both were seated at the hearth. He paused, a choking sensation came in his throat, and he added with an effort, "have I helped to do it? was it mourning because I went off and never wrote?"

"No, no, do not think that," was the kind reply, "I always knew that there must be some good reason for it; I always expected that you would come back, and that we should grow old together."

"Then it was not trouble about me?"

"Nothing of the kind; I knew that you would never do anything really wrong; something in my heart always told me that you were alive and about some good work, what, I could not tell; but though I longed to see you, and wondered often where you were, I was just as sure that all would end right, and that you would come back safe, as if an angel from heaven had told me so!"

"Yet I was doing wrong all the time, Sarah," answered Jacob, smitten to the heart by the honest sisterly faith betrayed in Mrs. Gray's speech.

"It was cruel to leave you--cruel not to write. But it appeared to me as if I had some excuse. You were settled in life--and so much older. It did not seem as if you could care so much for me with a husband to think of. I was a boy, you know, and could not realize that two full grown married women really could care much about me."

"You knew when poor Eunice died?" answered Mrs. Gray. "You heard, I suppose, that she was buried by her husband not three months after the fever took him off; and about the baby?"

"No, no, I never heard of it, I was too full of other things. I did not even know that your husband was gone, till a man up yonder called you the Widow Gray, when I inquired if you lived here. The last news I heard was years ago, when your husband left home and settled here on the Island."

"He died that very year," answered Mrs. Gray, with a gentle fall of her voice; "I have been alone ever since--all but little Robert."

"Little Robert--have you a child, then, Sarah? I did not know that!"

"No, it wasn't my child, poor Eunice left a boy behind her, the dearest, little fellow. I wish you could have seen him when he first came here, a nussing baby, not three months old, so feeble and helpless.

In his mother's sickness he hadn't been tended as children ought to be; and he was the palest thinnest little creature. I wasn't much used to babies, but somehow G.o.d teaches us a way when we have the will--and no creature ever prayed for knowledge as I did. Sometimes when the little thing fell to sleep, moaning in my arms, it sounded as if it must wake up with its mother in heaven; but good nussing and new milk, warm from the cow, soon brought out its roses and dimples. He grew, I never did see a child grow like him, when he once took a start--and so good-natured too!"

"But now--where is the boy now?" questioned Jacob.

"He was here this forenoon, almost a man grown. You have been away _so_ long, Jacob. He was here and ate his Thanksgiving dinner. A perfect gentleman, too; I declare, I was almost ashamed to kiss him, he's grown so."

"Then you have brought him up on the place?"

"No, Jacob, we never had a gentleman in our family that I ever heard on, so I determined to make one of Robert."

"And how did you go to work?" questioned Jacob, with a grim smile, "I've tried it myself; but we're a tough family to mould over; I never could do more than make a tolerably honest man out of my share of the old stock."

"Oh, Robert was naturally gifted," answered Mrs. Gray, with great complacency.

"He did not get it from our side of the house, that's certain," muttered Jacob; "the very gates on the old farm always swung awkwardly."

"But his father--he was an 'Otis,' you know--Robert looks a good deal like his father, and took to his learning just as naturally as he did to the new milk. He was born a gentleman. I remember Mr. Leicester said these very words the first time he came here."

Jacob gave a start, and clenching his hand, said, only half letting out his breath--"Who, who?"

"Mr. Leicester, the best friend Robert ever had. He used to come over to the Island to board sometimes for weeks together, for there was deer in the woods then, and fish in the ponds, enough to keep a sportsman busy at least four months in the year. He took a great notion to Robert from the first, and taught him almost everything--no school could have made Robert what he is."

"And this man has had the teaching of my sister's child!" muttered Jacob, shading his face with one hand. "Everywhere--everywhere, he trails himself in my path."

Mrs. Gray looked at her brother very earnestly. "You are tired," she said.

"No, I was listening. So this man, this Mr. Leicester--you like him then? he has been good to you?"

Mrs. Gray hesitated, and bent her eyes upon the fire. "Good--yes he has been good to us; as for liking him I ought to. I know how ungrateful it is, but somehow, Jacob, I'll own it to you, I never did like Mr.

Leicester with my whole heart, I'm ashamed to look you in the face and say this, but it's the living truth: perhaps it was his education, or something."

"No, Sarah, it was your heart, your own upright heart, that stirred within you. I have felt it a thousand times, struggled against it, been ashamed of it, but an honest heart is always right. When it shrinks and grows cold at the approach of a stranger, depend on it, that stranger has some thing wrong about him. Never grieve or blush for this heart warning. It is only the honest who feel it. Vile things do not tremble as they touch each other."

"Why, Jacob, Jacob, you do not mean to say that it was right for me to dislike Mr. Leicester--to dread his coming--to feel sometimes as if I wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h Robert from his side and run off with him! I'm sure it has been a great trouble to me, and I've prayed and prayed not to be so ungrateful. Now you speak as if it was right all the time; but you don't know all; you will blame me as I blame myself after I tell you it was through Mr. Leicester that Robert got his situation with one of the richest and greatest merchants in New York, and that he was paid a salary from the first, though hundreds and hundreds of rich men's sons would have jumped at the place without pay; now, Jacob, I'm sure you'll think me an ungrateful creature."

"Ungrateful!" repeated Jacob with emphasis, "but no matter now; the time has gone by when it would do good to talk all this over. But tell me, Sarah, what studies did he seem most earnest that Robert should understand? What books did they read together? What was the general discourse?"

"I'm sure it's impossible for me to tell; they read all sorts of books, some of 'em are on the swing shelf--you can look at 'em for yourself."

Jacob arose, and taking up a light, examined the books pointed out to him, while his sister stood by, gazing alternately upon his face and the volumes, as if some new and vague fear had all at once possessed her.

There was nothing in the volumes which Jacob beheld to excite apprehension, even in the most rigid moralist. Some of the books were elementary; the rest purely cla.s.sical; a few were in French, but they bore no taint of the loose morals or vicious philosophy which has rendered the modern literature of France the shame of genius.

Jacob drew a deep breath, and replacing the light on the mantel-piece, sat down. His feelings and suspicions were not in the least changed, but the inspection of those books had baffled him. Mrs. Gray sat watching him with great anxiety.

"There is nothing wrong in the books, is there?" she said, at length.

"No!" was the absent reply.

"You could tell, I suppose, for it seemed as if you were reading. It is foreign language, isn't it?"