The Gold Brick Part 14

THE WAY-SIDE MEETING.

A footpath intersected the highway some few rods below Mrs. Mason's cottage, and ran off among the hills that lay behind Castle Rock. At this point, Thrasher paused. He had only reached town that day, and his first visit had been to the white cottage. Now, he thought of his parents, who lived on a farm among those hills, and of another person whose home he must pa.s.s in going there.

"I must see her, of course," he said, mentally; "but not at once. I have no heart for another scene. But the old folks--that will be all joy--no rebukes or entreaties ever came from that quarter. They will be hurt, too, if I sleep at a tavern, and the homestead so near."

With these affectionate thoughts urging him forward, he turned up the foot path and walked slowly on, wondering at the tender feelings that rose and swelled in his heart as he drew near the family home.

You would not have believed that the man who walked so quietly along the greensward with the moonlight on his face, could have been the same person who stood on the deck of that brig and superintended the number of lashes that should be dealt on the back of a human being. Once or twice, as his glance fell on some familiar object, a sweet brier bush, perhaps, or a cl.u.s.ter of tall mulleins that had grown by the footpath since he was a child, his eyes would fill with tears. There was something holy and homelike in the stillness that made a child of this cruel man.

The footpath led Thrasher into the Bungy road. He had mounted one hill and was descending into the valley which lay between it and another, when he saw some dark object sitting on a pine stump, from which he had gathered moss years before. His step was smothered on the sward, and the night wind, which made a rustling sound among the leaves of a neighboring wood, rendered his approach inaudible.

It was a woman shrouded in a cloak, but the light was so clear that he could see the outlines of her person, though her face was bent down and her limbs were drawn together as if she suffered from cold or sorrow.

Thrasher's heart told him at once who the woman was, and the knowledge made a coward of him. He hesitated, turned to go back, but resumed his course again, ashamed of so much weakness. The woman's face was bent down, her hands were locked around her knees, and he could hear the swell of her sobs as she rocked to and fro, as if the motion gave relief to some great pain.

Thrasher stood close by the unhappy creature, but she was lost in grief and did not look up.

"Katharine!"

She started to her feet with a cry that haunted his memory years after, and stood before him, shaking in all her limbs. Why did she not fling her arms about his neck as she had done at parting? Why did she shrink and gather the cloak so timidly around her? Did the shadow of some great wrong fall upon her with its sundering power?

"Katharine, you know me, but don't seem glad that I have come."

"Not glad--oh, my heart is dumb with joy! I thought--I feared that you were dead, Nelson, and the idea was driving me crazy. I was trying to pray when you came up."

She stole timidly toward him and held out her hand.

"Is it real--are you alive and here? Oh how good you are, coming to our house the first moment to see me, for I know well enough you did want to see me--while I was doubting if you would care about me after being away so long, and wondering what I should do. You are not changed, Nelson; you love me yet as well--better than ever."

There was something in the girl's manner that Thrasher did not understand. She seemed frightened, and shrunk from approaching him. This was so unlike the childlike affection with which she had hitherto met him, that he stood looking upon her in surprise, mingled with a little irritation.

"Why, Katharine, what is the matter? You are so changed--it may be the moonlight, but your face seems thinner and less rosy."

She turned her eyes upon him with a wan smile, but did not answer at once.

"You have changed, perhaps, and found some one you like better."

There was something in his tones that stung her; a hopeful questioning as if he wished rather than dreaded this change. She looked at him reproachfully, and her blue eyes floated in tears.

"Oh, Nelson!"

The words were uttered in a very low voice, but in their quietness lay deep pathos. She moved close to his side and laid one hand on his shoulder, waiting for him to return the caress. He placed his arm lightly, and it seemed half reluctantly, about her waist. She felt the chill at her heart.

"_You_ are changed!" she said, in a loud, clear voice, that sounded to his ear like a challenge. "You come here not to meet, but to abandon me."

Thrasher tightened his arm around her.

"Is this the way I abandon you?" he said.

She withdrew herself quietly from his arms, and fixing her eyes on his face gave him a long, sorrowful look.

The moonlight lay full on his features. His dark eyes looked into hers; a smile, half mocking, half pleasant, hung on his lip. He was a tall, handsome man, and the moonlight refined his face into remarkable beauty.

"Are you trying me, Nelson?" she said, half returning the smile.

"Don't--don't--I have trouble enough without that."

"Trouble--was there ever a girl of your age without it, I wonder? Come, take my arm, and as we walk along you shall tell me what great misfortune sent you here crying and rocking yourself like an old woman turned out of doors."

Katharine tried to laugh and took his arm, leaning on it with that half caressing, half dependent grace which a woman who loves from her soul a.s.sumes unconsciously. Formerly, when her arm touched his, he had, at a time like this, taken the willing hands in his clasp, but the touch of Ellen Mason's fingers thrilled his nerves even yet, and Katharine's hand drooped helplessly over his arm.

"Now tell me what this great, great trouble is?" he said, walking forward.

"Wait until we get into the shadow of the woods, and I will," she replied, in a low choked voice.

They walked on in dead silence, entered the shadow of the wood, paused in the darkest spot, and talked earnestly together. When they came in the moonlight again, Thrasher looked pale and angry. He walked fast, sometimes forcing her on beyond her strength, and cutting up the silk weed and mulleins in his path with fierce dashes of his walking-stick.

Katharine made no resistance, for a cold, dead silence, which shut out all joy, had fallen on her.

They came to a little brown house, under the shelter of a hill, and half covered with morning-glories--a pretty, rustic place in which Katharine lived alone with her mother. A board fence ran along the front yard, hedging in some lilac bushes and a huge s...o...b..ll bush. A flower bed ran along each side of the walk, from the gate to the door. All this looked pretty and cool, in its night dew, and Thrasher recognized the familiar objects with something like a pang.

Katharine withdrew her arm from his at the gate; she tried to speak, and ask him to go in, for a light shone through one of the windows, and the old lady was evidently waiting for Katharine to come home before she went to bed; her lips trembled, but refused to utter the invitation; he read it in her eyes, however, and shook his head.

"Not to-night--another time we will talk this over."

They parted with these words, and Thrasher walked on at a more rapid pace than he had yet used. Katharine watched him mournfully as he disappeared, then, with a deep sigh, she entered the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OLD HOME AND THE OLD PEOPLE.

A little way over the hill from Mrs. Allen's dwelling, stood a low, red farm house which covered a good deal of ground, and possessed many pleasant surroundings, such as marked the more thrifty cla.s.s of farmers in those days. Rows of stiff, Lombardy poplars stood in lines before the house, looking more like mammoth umbrellas, verdant in color, and shut up for the season, than any thing else. Tall, cinnamon roses clambered up the front, while a whole forest of lilac and s...o...b..ll bushes cast their shadows on the rich sward of the door yard. At the back was a fine apple orchard which filled the air all around with the delicate perfume of its blossoms in the spring-time, and gave out a rich, fruity odor in the autumn. A well sweep pencilled its slender shadow along the plantain leaves that grew rank at the back door, and beyond that, the distant outlines of a cider-mill could be imperfectly seen through the orchard boughs.

Every thing seemed natural to the stern man, as he drew near the homestead. He could not remember a time when the old place did not look thrifty and comfortable, as it appeared then. A few dry branches bristled here and there among the poplars, speaking of progressive age, like gray hairs in the head of a strong man, but they were scarcely perceptible in the moonlight, and Thrasher could see no change since the years of his boyhood.

The family sitting room was back of the house, and through the windows a gleam of light shot along the gra.s.s. Thrasher pa.s.sed through the yard, and, pausing beneath the window, looked in. The paper blind was partly rolled up, and he thus commanded a view of the entire room.

Two old people sat together on the hearth, where a few embers lay smouldering. A round, cherry wood stand stood between them, from which towered a ma.s.sive bra.s.s candlestick, supporting the only light that burned in the room.

The old lady was knitting. What a sweet, benign expression slept on her face! How softly the white hair was folded under her cap! The pure, healthy bloom on her cheek was something wonderful. It made you in love with the beauty of old age.

The old man was reading aloud; the great family bible lay open before him, and his deep, reverential voice could be distinctly heard through the imperfectly closed window. As Thrasher looked, the old man removed the spectacles from his eyes, and laid them on the page he had been reading, while he listened smilingly to some observation that his wife had made, but which, with her lower and softer tones, Thrasher had lost.

"How many times have we read this chapter together, Eunice--so many that neither you nor I can remember them; but every reading brings out something new--something more holy than we ever found before. Isn't that your experience?"

"Yes," answered the old lady, taking a seamst.i.tch with serene precision as she spoke. "It seems to me, husband, that one never learns really what is in the Bible till old age comes on. When we were young, I can remember being so tired when the morning chapter was read, and full of other thoughts, that I am sorry to remember now. That is the reason I always had so much charity for our Nelson. Poor child, he never could sit still through a whole chapter--boy or man!"