Wheat and Huckleberries Part 26

There were longer letters from Stella, letters of the chatty, personal sort, with a generous sprinkling of family news. Mr. Hadley was calling often. If he had sustained any disappointment that the cousins were not in Boston together, he was apparently consoling himself with the company of the one who was left. They were going to art lectures and symphony concerts together, and the married sister had called.

"It's precisely what ought to happen," Esther said to herself more than once; and the smile in her eyes as she said it suggested that there was no vagueness in her mind as to what the happening should be. Sometimes when the smile was gone a wistful look came in its place, but if she had any regrets or longings of her own, she told them to no one.

The spring vacation in the schools came with the Easter, early that year. Esther laid plans valiantly at the outset for work to be accomplished in the s.p.a.ce between terms, but she had grown thoroughly tired of her needle on the afternoon of the second day, when her father announced suddenly that he was going to drive out to the farm. There were matters connected with the spring planting to be talked over with Jake Erlock.

"What do you say to my going with you?" she exclaimed, dropping her work. "It's ever so long since I went out there, and I feel just like it."

There was nothing Dr. Northmore enjoyed more than having one of his daughters with him when he took a long drive. "That's a capital idea,"

he said. "Get your things on quick."

Spring was coming along the track of the wide straight road by which they took their way to the pretty uplands which were the doctor's pride and care.

Here and there broad fields of wheat were already showing a tender green from the springing of the grain which had lain all winter under frost and snow, and between them new-ploughed fields sent up a pleasant smell, the wholesome smell of the kindly earth turning itself again to the sun and the rain.

The little gray house, set back from the road, wore its old shy look, and the occupant, who greeted them as they drove up to the door, seemed like one who, in his solitary wintering, might have sat asleep on his hearth, coming out half timidly now to greet the warmth and stir of the world. He lost his air of uncertainty as he saw his callers, and welcomed them to his kitchen, which was orderly as ever, setting chairs for them about his fire with a bustling hospitality. Esther did not keep her place long. A few kindly inquiries, a polite listening to his report of the winter, and then she left the two men together, and slipped away for a stroll by herself through the orchard and along the edge of the field where the threshing had gone on so blithely in the summer past.

The straw-stack was there to remind of it still, not fair and golden now, but gray and weather-beaten from the winter storms. It had grown smaller with the pa.s.sing months, and a great hollow had been worn in its side by the browsing cattle. On the soft matted floor of this inner shelter lay two calves, one with its pretty, fawn-like head resting on the dark red neck of the other. They turned soft wondering eyes to the girl as she looked in upon them, and a sitting hen, so near the color of the straw that at first she did not see her, ruffled warningly from her nest in the side.

She did not disturb them in their quiet retreat, but sat down for a little while in the warm friendliness beside their open door, and thought half-dreamily of that day that was gone. What a bustle of work had filled the place! She could see the puffing engine sending up its quick black breath against the sky, and the great crimson machine, like a chariot, at its back, with Morton Elwell at the front, a charioteer holding the car of plenty on its way, amid a score of sunburnt outriders. How confident he had looked as he stood there in his workman's dress, bare-armed and bare-throated, how strong and steady!

She smiled at her own fancy. And then the rest of the picture faded, leaving the one figure alone; but it was not at the threshing she saw him now, it was at home, at school, on the playground, and everywhere her comrade, her champion, her friend. Had he been something more in those old days, and was he still? Ah, if she could be sure of _that_!

The letters had lost the old boyish freedom in these last months. She had complained once that Morton Elwell took too much for granted. He was taking nothing now.

Her father's voice calling from the house roused her at last from her revery, and they were off again for home. He was thinking too busily of his summer plans to talk, and she, wrapped in her own thoughts, was glad of the silence. But she broke it suddenly as they drew near the substantial brick house which belonged to the Elwells, almost at the end of the ride.

"Suppose you let me out here, father," she said. "I haven't been in to see Mrs. Elwell for weeks, and I've been thinking all the afternoon how good she was to us last summer at the threshing. I want to go in and thank her for it over again. I'll come home by myself in a little while."

She hesitated a moment whether or not to go in by the back way in the old familiar fashion, then, for some reason, walked to the front door and rang the bell. The mistress herself opened it, her hands a little floury, and a clean gingham ap.r.o.n over her afternoon dress.

"Well, upon my word!" she exclaimed, starting at the sight of her caller. "If we weren't talking about you, Esther Northmore, this blessed minute! Come in, come in. Who do you think is here?"

She had not time to guess. She had not time to speak the name which rose with wondering incredulity to her lips when the owner of it himself came hurrying through the hall to meet her.

"You!" she cried, fairly springing to meet Morton Elwell. "Why, how does this happen?"

"It's vacation for me too," he said, beaming at her in the most radiant manner. "And-yes, I'll own it. It was a genuine fit of homesickness that brought me. I've been struggling with it all winter, but it was simply too much for me when there actually came a halt in the school work. I _had_ to come. There was no other way."

"Think of it," said Mrs. Elwell, who looked so happy that there was almost a halo round her head; "think of his taking that journey and coming home for a week's vacation, when he could hardly afford a day off for us all last summer."

"It does seem as if I'd grown to be something of a spendthrift, doesn't it?" said the young man. "But you can't hold yourself down all the time.

You have to break loose now and then. And let me tell you,"-they had reached the sitting room now, and he was sitting between them, looking from one to the other like a happy child-"let me tell you that I've taken the Lisper scholarship, and that means my tuition all the rest of my course. Don't you think I could afford to give myself a glimpse of home when I wanted it so desperately?"

They cried, "Oh!" in concert, Mrs. Elwell, whose ideas were a little vague in regard to scholarships, prolonging hers as if to cover the comments she ought to make, and Esther adding, with the color sweeping over her face, "Why, that is splendid, perfectly splendid! I can't tell you how glad I am."

"And won't you have to work your way any more?" asked Mrs. Elwell, when she could get her breath.

"Oh, yes. I shall have to turn an honest penny for myself now and then,"

said her nephew, smiling. "Tuition doesn't cover all the expenses by a good deal, but it's a big help. Why, I feel quite like a nabob."

The name, with its sudden reminder of the one to whom Tom Saxon had mockingly given it in the summer, made Esther laugh. Morton Elwell, with his brown hands and common suit of clothes, did not look the character in the least.

"Well, I'm glad you are _not_ a nabob," she said, meeting his eyes, and then demurely dropping her own. "Please don't go on to be one so fast that we can't keep up with you. There are some of us that like the old ways and have to go slow."

His face kindled, and he was on the point of saying something, when his aunt spoke. "Now you children just make yourselves at home," she said, rising, "and I'll go on and get the supper. I was just fixing to make some biscuits when you came, Esther. You'll stay to supper, of course."

"Oh, I must go home in a minute," said the girl. For the first time in her life she felt a sudden timidity in the thought of a _tete-a-tete_ with Morton Elwell. "Mother'll expect me."

"Now what makes you talk like that?" said Mrs. Elwell, in an injured tone. "Doesn't she know where you are? Of course she won't expect you.

She knows I wouldn't let you go home before supper. Why, you never used to do that way, and it's ever so long since you were here."

The logic was unanswerable, and Esther settled back in the chair from which she had half risen. "She'll stay, Aunt Jenny," said Morton, and he added, smiling at Esther, "weren't you just saying that some of us liked the old ways?"

She took refuge in them swiftly when they were left alone. He must tell her all about himself, about college, what he had done to gain that scholarship, and what else he had done. She was all sympathy, all interest, with all the old responsiveness in her face, and he yielded himself to the warmth and joy of it as one yields to spring sunshine after the cold. She grew easier after the first, and presently there was no chance for embarra.s.sment nor for confidences left; for the senior Elwell, with Morton's young cousins, came into the room, and then the talk grew general, though with Morton still at the centre, as was the newcomer's right, and indeed his necessity with Esther leading him on.

She was at her best-winsome, adroit, and determined if there was family pride in this uncle of his, it should bestir itself now. She had grown even prettier than she used to be, her manners even more charming, the young man said to himself, and the bounding happiness in her heart might well have made it true. For there had been a moment, just that moment before the others came into the room, when she had caught sure knowledge of the thing she had longed to know.

He had been telling her of an oratorical contest in which he had borne a part, and, with a sudden tenderness in his voice, had said, "I wished a hundred times, while I was preparing my speech, that I could go over it with you. Do you remember how you always used to let me orate to you when I had anything on hand for the rhetoricals? It must have been an awful bore, but somehow I never felt as if I could go on the stage without your help."

"And you see you didn't need it after all," she said, looking away. "You won the medal without me."

"Oh, but it wasn't without you," he said, leaning toward her and speaking low, "for I was thinking all the time what you would say if I won."

Ah, he could not have said a word like that if some other girl had stolen her place away!

The talk was over at last, and the supper too, the good substantial supper which was always spread at the Elwells'. She could go now. There was no formality to insist that having eaten she must stay still longer, and she wanted Morton to herself. She was quite ready for it now, and he would go home with her of course.

They had come back, with all the new meaning of it for each, to the old frankness and freedom, and yet as they took the familiar path across the fields, in the gathering dusk, it was not easy to speak the thought that filled both their hearts. They talked for a little while of indifferent things-of the lengthening days, of the buds swelling on the willows, of the new buildings rising on a neighbor's place. Then, all at once the moon, the friendly moon, so kind in all its wanderings to the needs of lovers, rose up in the sky. It was a new moon, and they saw it at the same moment over their right shoulders.

"We must wish a wish, as we used to when we were children," said Esther, gayly.

There could never be another moment like this. He stood suddenly still, and his eyes looked into hers. "Esther," he said, "it seems to me I have only one wish in the world, it is so much dearer than all the others. If I could know, if I could surely know-" and then he stopped. That swelling at his throat which had choked him once before mastered his voice again, not from fear now, but hope.

She waited an instant, then, as her hand slipped into his, whispered, "Do you mean me, Mort? Oh, _do_ you mean me?"

It had never taken any one so long to cross that field as it did those two to cross the little s.p.a.ce that was left. There was no bar to speech now, and there was so much to say! He said to her presently, with a note of perplexity in his voice, "Esther, I have never understood why you gave up going to Boston this winter. You certainly wanted very much to go at first."

"Things changed after grandfather died," she said. She hesitated a moment, then took refuge in the formula she had used so often to the others, but with a clause she had not whispered before, as she added, "Somehow I knew there was nothing I really wanted except to come home-and have _you_ come too."

He murmured something rapturous. But he was not quite satisfied yet.

After a little he said, "Esther, do you remember telling me once that if you had half a chance you'd live a different life from the common workaday sort; you'd have culture, and leisure, and travel, and all those things? You did have a chance, didn't you?"

She flushed. "No one offered it to me," she said. "Perhaps no one ever would. At any rate-" her voice sounded nervous but happy-"if 'twas 'half a chance,' I ran away from the other half. I didn't want anything but you, Mort. I shall have whatever you have, and that's enough."

He threw back his head and drew a long breath. "Oh, I mean to do so much for you," he said. "It seems to me I can accomplish anything now."

There was the murmur of excited talking in the sitting room at the Northmores' when they opened the door at last. "Well, of all the strange things she ever did, I call that the strangest," the doctor was saying in the tone of one grappling with a mystery.

The two young people looked at each other wondering. Then Esther said, in a merry whisper, "He doesn't mean me. He'll think I've done the most sensible thing in the world."