The Return of Peter Grimm Part 44

"Then, good-night to you, my darling," he said in the old tender voice that had comforted her childish griefs and shared her childish delights in the bygone days. "Good-night, my darling. Love can never say 'good-bye.' I am going, little girl. I am leaving you here in your dear home that shall always be yours. Here, in the years that are to come, the way will lie clear before you. May pleasure and peace go with you, little girl of mine."

Her eyes were luminous. There was a half-smile on her lips. Peter Grimm's own eyes reflected her smile as he stroked her hair and continued to look down into her rapt face as though to impress its every detail upon his memory.

"Here on sunny, blossoming days," he went on, "when you look out on my old gardens, as a happy wife, all the flowers and trees and shrubs shall bloom enchanted to your eyes. For, love gives a heaven-light to everything. And when the home we love is our own, it becomes doubly fair."

The light in her eyes grew brighter and he stooped to brush his lips to her forehead.

"All that happens, happens again," he went on in that same caressing voice as though loath to leave her, and seeking to prolong his stay at her side. "And when, as a mother, you explain each leaf and bud, and the miracle of the growing flowers to your own little people, you will sometimes think of the days when you and I walked through the gardens and the leafy lanes together, and how I taught you all those things--even as you shall be teaching your own children. Yes,--all that happens, happens again and has happened before. You will teach them, just as I taught you. And so I shall always linger in your heart. Here, in our home, everything will keep on reminding you of me. Not in sadness nor in gloom. But as a wonderful, golden memory. You will forget only the part of me that was stubborn and unreasonable and ill-tempered--and you will remember me only as I _wished_ to be. That is one of the gifts of G.o.d to those who have left this world. Their dear ones remember them only as kind, as loving, as good. Their faults fade from the memory and the _good_ ever glows more and more brightly."

He paused. And still he could not leave the happy girl as she sat there in her blissful, fireside reverie.

"I shall be waiting for you, Katje," he said. "And I shall be knowing all of your life, its joys, its happy toil and its sweet rest, its lights and its pa.s.sing shadows. I shall love your children with all my whole heart. And I shall be their grandfather just as though I were here. I shall be everywhere about you and yours, Katje. Always. In the stockings at Christmas, in the big, busy, teeming world of shadows, just outside your threshold; or whispering to you in the stillness of the night. And, as the years drift on, you can never know what pride I shall take in your middle life--the very best age of all! After the luxuries and the eager gaieties and the vanities and the possessions and the hot strife for gain cease to be important, we return to very simple things.

For then, sunset is at hand, and the peace of Home calls to us far more clearly than the roar of the outer world. The evening of life comes bearing its own lamp."

Her face had grown graver, but still was radiant. The Dead Man smiled as he said:

"Then, as a little old grandmother--a little old child whose bedtime is drawing near, I shall still see you; happy to sit out in the sunlight of another day; asking no more of life than a few hours still to be spent with those you love;--telling your grandchildren how much more brightly the flowers used to blossom when _you_ were young.--All that happens, happens again.

"And then, one glad day, glorified, radiant, young once more--divinely young,--you will come to us. And your mother and I shall take you in our arms again. Oh, what a meeting it will be! To _you_, many happy years away. To _us_, only a brief hour of waiting. We shall meet so perfectly then--the flight of Love to Love. And now," bending down once more and kissing her, "good-night, my own little girl."

She rose, half-dazzled by the brightness that filled her soul. Pausing to bury her face for a moment in the bowl of roses, she murmured:

"Dear, _dear_ Oom Peter!"

Then, slowly, smilingly, she made her way up the stairs to her own room.

The Dead Man's eyes followed her every light step. The Dead Man's hand was raised in unspoken benediction. Marta bustled in from the kitchen on her nightly round of window-locking and door-barring. As she pa.s.sed the big wall clock, she stopped, sighed right lugubriously, and proceeded to wind the ancient timepiece by the simple old-time process of drawing down its pulley chain.

"Poor old Marta!" said Peter Grimm quizzically, as she departed. "Every time she thinks of me, she winds my clock. We're not quite forgotten after all, it seems. Good-night, old friend! There are a few tears ahead of you. But there is plenty of suns.h.i.+ne beyond them."

He glanced about the room, his eyes resting at last on Willem's door in the gallery above. The door swung open, and Dr. McPherson appeared on the threshold. In one hand he held a candle-stick. In the hollow of his right arm lay Willem, a Dutch patchwork bedquilt wrapped around him.

"All right, laddie," McPherson was saying in a voice whose softness would have amazed the Batholommeys. "Since you want so badly to sleep downstairs, you shall. The sofa by the fire is just as snug as your own bed. What Mistress Batholommey will say to my giving in to a sick little boy's whim, I don't know. But we don't care. Do we, Willem? And," he added, reaching the living-room and carrying the child across to the sofa, "if you want to be down here, and if you won't be happy anywhere else, here you shall be."

He laid Willem gently on the couch and covered him with the quilt.

"How do you feel, now?" he asked.

"I'm sleepy," answered Willem. "It's good to be in this room. I'll sleep finely here. Could--could I have a drink of water, please?"

The doctor crossed to the sideboard. The ice-water pitcher was empty.

McPherson took up a gla.s.s.

"I'll find you some," said he. "I suppose I'll never learn my way around the labyrinths of this old house. But if I can't get to the nearest faucet, I'll wake Marta and ask her to help me. Lie still. I'll be back in a minute."

He picked up the lighted candle again, and started off on his quest. As he left the room he pa.s.sed close by Peter Grimm.

"Good-night, Andrew," said the Dead Man. "I'm afraid the world will have to wait a little longer for the Big Guesser. The secret you've delved for so long and so loudly was in your own hands this evening. And you didn't know what to do with it."

The doctor left the room without hearing him. But Willem heard.

Starting up on the couch, the boy cried:

"Oh, Mynheer Grimm! _Where_ are you? I knew you were down here--That's why I wanted to come."

"Here I am," answered the Dead Man, moving forward into the range of the anxiously wandering blue eyes.

"Oh!" gleefully exclaimed the child. "I _see_ you now! I _see_ you now!"

"Yes? At last?"

"Oh, you've got your hat!" went on the boy excitedly. "It's off the peg.

You're going!"

"Yes, Willem," replied the Dead Man. "I'm going."

"Need you go right away, Mynheer Grimm?" coaxed the child. "Can't you wait just a _little_ while?"

"I'll wait for _you_, dear lad," returned Peter Grimm.

"Oh, can I go with you?" asked the boy in glad surprise. "Thank you, Mynheer Grimm! I couldn't find the way without you."

"Oh, yes, you could, Willem. G.o.d's signal light is the surest thing in all the universe. But I'll wait for you, just the same."

The boy's drowsiness, overcome for the moment by his sight of the Dead Man's loved face, had crept in upon him once more. He lay back on the couch with a happy little sigh.

And at once he was off in the wonder-aisles of dreamland--a dreamland full of circuses, of impossibly funny and friendly clowns, of street parade glories, of marvellous animals and thrilling equestrian feats.

"Sleep well," said Peter Grimm. "I wish you the very pleasantest of dreams a boy could have in _this_ world."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Sleep well," said Peter Grimm. "I wish you the very pleasantest of dreams a boy could have in _this_ world"]

The doctor's step sounded presently in the adjoining kitchen. As though awakened by it, Willem opened his eyes and sat up. The fever flush was gone from his cheeks, the fever glaze from his look. The la.s.situde that had weighted every joint in his sick little body had fled, to be replaced by a strange, glorious buoyancy.

With a glad shout, Willem sprang up and raced across the floor into Peter Grimm's outstretched arms.

"_Huge moroche_, Mynheer Grimm!" he cried. "Oh, I am _well_! I never was so well before. It's wonderful to be like this."

"You are happy, too?"

"Oh! _Happy?_ It's like school being over!"

"Good!" laughed Peter Grimm. "It will always be like that now. Come!

Let's be off."

He lifted the exalted, eager boy lightly from the floor, and swung him to a perch on his shoulder.

"_Uncle Rat has come to town!_" sang Willem, too rapturously happy to keep still.

"Ha-_H'M_!" he and Peter Grimm chorused as they moved toward the door.