Volume 9 — Chapter IX.

When they arrived at the Wiltshire depot, Dick and Mary were still undecided what step to take next; for neither of them favored the idea of asking at once for Dr. Heremore, feeling certain that the probabilities of his being alive would vanish the moment that such an inquiry was proposed.

It was a nice enough town, with fine breezes from the sea blowing through its streets, and a quaint look about the houses that made Dick, at least, feel as if they were in a foreign land. Dick and Mary stood on the depot platform together, undecided still.

"Let us walk a little way up and see what we can see," Mary proposed.

All that they found at first were a few lumber-wagons, a market-wagon, and now and then a group of boys playing; but finally they came upon a store, at the door of which several long-limbed countrymen were talking and chewing tobacco. I should have said "chewing and talking;" for the chewing was much more vigorously prosecuted than the talking. The presence of the strangers, one a lady in a plain but very stylish dress, attracted some attention; the men surveyed them in a leisurely, undazzled way, hardly making room for them to pass; for, having seen the sign POST-OFFICE in the window of this store, Dick and Mary concluded to enter and make inquiries. The afternoon sun streamed in upon the floor; the flies buzzed at the windows; and a man, with his hat on and his chair tilted back, was at the back of the store. He made no sign of changing his position when he first saw the strangers, not because Mr. Wilkes was any less well disposed toward "the ladies" than a city merchant would be, but because country people fancy it is more dignified to show indifference than politeness. In time, however, he tilted down his chair, freed his great mouth from its load of tobacco, and lounged up to the counter where Mary and Dick were standing.

"I want to ask you a question," Dick answered to the storekleeper's look; "I suppose you know this town pretty well?" Dick was so afraid of the answer that he did not know how to put a direct question in regard to Dr. Heremore.

"Rather," was the laconic reply, with no change of the speaker's countenance.

"Do you know if a Dr. Heremore lived here once, twenty-five years or so ago?"

"I wasn't here in them days," for Mr. Wilkes was a young man who did not care to be old.

"I did not suppose you did know, of your own knowledge; I thought you might have heard."

"I suppose you have come to see him?"

"Or to hear of him," added Dick.

"Come from Boston or York, I suppose?"

"From New York," answered Dick; "can you tell us who is likely to give us information?"

"About the old doctor?" asked Mr. Wilkes in the same impassive manner.

"Yes," said Dick, rather impatiently.

"I suppose you are relations o' his?"

"We came to get information, not to give it," Dick replied in a quiet tone but inwardly vexed.

"Well," answered the storekeeper, not in the least abashed by this rebuke, "there's an old fellow lives up yonder, who knows pretty much everything's been done here for the last forty years; you'd better go to him; if any one knows, he does. Better not be too techy with him, I can tell you, if you want to find out anything; people as wants to take must give too, you know. That there road will take you straight to the house; white house, first on the left after you come to the meeting house."

"Thank you; and the name?"

"Well, folks usually calls him 'The Governor' round here; you, being strangers, can call him what you please."

"Will he like a stranger's calling?"

"Oh! tell him I sent you—Ben Wilkes—and you are all right."

"Thank you!" Mary and Dick replied and turned away. "Ben Wilkes," who, during this conversation, had seated himself on the counter, the better to show his ease in the strangers' society, which—Mary's especially—secretly impressed him very much, looked leisurely after them as they passed out of the store; then took out some fresh tobacco, and returned to his chair.

"I don't like to go," said Mary, "it may be some joke upon us."

"I am afraid it is," answered Dick; "but, after all, what can happen that we need mind? If it is a gentleman to whom he has sent us, no matter how angry he is, he will see that you are a lady, and you will know how to explain it; if he has sent us to one who is not, I guess I shall be able to reply to him."

Their walk was a very long one, but the meeting-house at last came in sight, and next it, though there was a goodly space between, was a large white house, irregular and rambling, with very nicely kept shrubbery around.

Dick opened the gate with a hand that was a little nervous; but Mary whispered as their feet crunched the neatly bordered gravel walk to the low porch, "It is all right, I am sure; there is an old gentleman by the window."

"Will you be spokesman this time?" asked Dick.

Mary nodded, and as the path was narrow and they could not well walk side by side, she was in front, so that naturally she would be the first to meet the old gentleman. A very fine old gentleman he was; a large man with a fine head, and, as his first words proved, a remarkably full, sweet voice. Seeing a lady coming toward him, he rose at once from his arm-chair, closed his book and advanced a step or two to greet her. Mary was one of those women toward whom courteous men are most courteous from the first glance; and this old gentleman, who moved toward her with all the grace and ease of a vigorous young man, was one of those men to whom gentle women are gentler, from the first, than to others.

"Good-evening," he said, as Mary looked up to him with a smile at at once pleasant and deferential. "Good-evening," and as she did not say more than these words, the gentleman continued, "I will not say, 'Come in,' for it is too pleasant out of doors for that; but let me give you chairs."

"Thank you, sir, we are strangers, but, we hope, not intruders," she replied.

"Certainly not," he answered. "It is a great pleasure for me to receive my old friends, and a pleasure to me to make new ones; and strangers, even if they remain strangers, bring with them great interest to the quiet lives of us old people." This he said in a tone not in the least formal, or as if "making a speech," and still looking more at Mary than at her brother. They were not yet seated, and no expression but that of kindly courtesy crossed his face while looking into the sweet, gravely smiling one before him; his tones were hardly altered when he added, "I have waited for you these many long years, Mary; but I never doubted you would come at last. You must not play tricks upon my old heart; it has suffered too much to be able to sustain its part as it did in old times."

Mary drew back a step, at this strange address, but she could not withdraw her eyes from his, as in tender, gentle tones he spoke the last words. Dick stood closer to her, but said nothing.

"Indeed, you mistake," Mary said, with great earnestness; "I have told you the truth, I am really a stranger, although you have called me by my name, Mary. I am Mary Brandon, and this—"

"Is your husband. Well, Mary, are you not my daughter? If you were changed, why come to see me? I heard you were changed. I spent four years in Paris and Rome, following up the trace given me in New York, and then I came back disappointed but not despairing. 'Mary will not die without sending for me or coming to me,' I said; and I have taken care always to be ready for you. I never thought you could come to me with coldness or indifference. I was prepared for almost anything—to see you poor and broken-hearted; no shame, no sin, no sorrow that would part us. I did not think to see you come back beautiful, happy, rich," a glance at her dress, "and without a word of greeting."

"Dr. Heremore?" said Dick, not because he believed or thought it, but because the words came forced by some inward power greater than his knowledge.

"Well, Charles," answered the old gentleman, sadly but composedly, turning at this name, "can you explain it?"

And then Mary understood it all. The years were nothing to him who had waited for his child's return, She was in his arms before Dick had recovered from his first bewilderment, now, by this act of hers, trebly increased.

"Ah my child! if I spoke severely, it was only because I could not bear the waiting. I knew your jokes of old, darling; but when one has waited so long for the dear face one loves, the last moments seem longer than all the years. I will ask no questions. I see you two are together, and it is all right. You can tell me all at your leisure. Now, Mary, I must kill the fatted calf. Even though you and Charles have not returned as prodigals," he added as if he would not, even in play, risk hurting them.

"Not yet, please," said Mary. "Let us have it all to ourselves for a few minutes." And they seated themselves on the sunny porch, the old gentleman's delight now beginning to show itself in the nervous way he moved his hands, and his disjointed sentences. Mary took off her hat at once, and threw it, with rather more of gayety than was quite natural to her, upon one of the short branches, looking like pegs, which had been left in the pillars of the porch.

"You haven't forgotten the old ways—eh, Mary?" Dr. Heremore asked, as he saw the movement. "I remember well how proud you were the day you first found you could reach that very peg, and you are as much a child as you were that day, is she not, Charles?"

"Pretty nearly," answered Dick, who could not fulfil his part with Mary's readiness.

"How deliciously fresh everything looks!" exclaimed Mary.

"You should have seen it in June. I never saw the roses thicker. O pet, how I did wish for you, then! The time of roses was always your time."

"And I love them as much as ever!" exclaimed Mary, telling the truth of herself. "Next year, if I am alive, I will be here with them; we will have jolly times looking after them. I have learned a great deal about flowers lately, but I shall never love roses like yours." This indeed, Mary felt to be true.

"Flora has had to be replaced," said her grandfather observing her eyes resting on a statue in the garden in front. "I will show you the alterations I have made, and a few are improvements. But you must have something to eat now. I cannot let you go a minute longer. You came up by the boat, I presume?"

"Yes, and had a hearty dinner," Mary answered, having a dread of a servant's entering, and getting things all wrong again, "To eat now will only spoil our appetite for tea, and I want you to see what an appetite I have."

"Perhaps you are too tired to go around the garden?"

"Tired! No, indeed."

"I am afraid it will not interest you much, Charles," the old gentleman said to Dick. "You never did care much about the little place."

"Oh! I assure you, I would be delighted to see it all," Dick answered, eagerly; but Mary had noticed the constraint in her grandfather's voice whenever he addressed the supposed Charles, and said quickly:

"Oh! we don't want you, you don't know a rose from a sunflower; pick up a book and read till we come back."

"This way, dear; have you forgotten?" Dr. Heremore said, looking at her in a perplexed manner as naturally enough she turned away from the house. "This way, dear, you lose the whole effect if you go around. Come through the house. There, dear old Mary," he added, smilingly handing her a glass of wine which he poured out from a decanter on the sideboard in the dining room. "Drink to 'The Elms' and no more jokes upon old hearts."

"To our happy meeting and no more parting," added Mary, drinking her wine with him. He poured out a glass for Dick, or Charles, as he thought him, and, rather formally, carried it to him It was very clear that "Charles" was no favorite.

All through the trim garden, and then through the whole house, Mary followed her grandfather, her heart, as it may be believed, full of love for the tender father of her lost mother. She stood in the room which that mother had occupied, and could not speak a word as she gazed reverently around. It was a thorough New England bedroom—a high mahogany bedstead, a long narrow looking-glass with a landscape painted on the upper part, in a gilt frame, a great chintz-covered arm-chair by the bed, a round mahogany table, with a red cover and a Bible, a stiff, long-legged washstand in the corner, a prim chest of drawers under the looking-glass between the windows, composed the furniture of the room; a badly painted picture of a young girl in the dress of a shepherdess, and a pair of vases on the mantel, were the only ornaments; a crimson carpet and white window-curtains were plainly of a later date than the furniture.

"I have had to alter some things," said Dr. Heremore, as they came out of the room, "but I got them as much like the old ones as I could, that you might feel at home here. Your baggage should be here by this time, should it not? How did you send it?" "We left it at the station," answered Mary. "You know we were not sure—not certain sure that we should find you."

"I suppose not, I suppose not. These have been long years, Mary, but they have not changed us, after all. But I must send for your trunks. I suppose Charles has the checks."

"We brought but very little with us," Mary said, considerably embarrassed, and, seeing the change in his countenance, she hastened to add, "But now that it is all right and we have found the way, we will stay with you until you turn us out; at least, I will."

"Then you will send for more things, and how about the children?" with the same perplexed look at her. Mary knew not what to say. Was it not better to tell him the real truth at once? How could she go on with this deception, as innocent as any deception can be, and yet how break down his joy in its very midst? Silently she stood beside him, at a hall window, looking upon the prospect he had pointed out to her, considering what answer to make him. He, too, was silent; for a long time the two stood there, and then it was the doctor who spoke first.

"Mary, your children must be men and women now. I had forgotten how long it was; but I remember you were here last the year the meeting-house over there was put up, and I just was thinking that was over twenty years ago. Richard was a few months old, then. Mary, don't deceive me. Tell me the truth."

Mary turned sadly toward him, and laid her hands in his.

"Grandpapa, I will," was all she said.

It was a great blow to him, but something had been hovering confusedly before his mind ever since they came out together, and now it was clear. He turned abruptly away from her at the first shock, then came to her more kindly than ever. "Forgive me, dear," he apologized with mournful courtesy; "I did not mean to be rude, but it is a great shock. You are very like her, very like her, but I should have known at once that those years could not have left her a girl like you. I will not ask more—your mother—"

"My father is living," Mary said, with tears streaming down her face, as he stopped, "and that is my brother down-stairs."

"Is he your only brother? have you sisters?" he asked.

"We are your only grandchildren," she answered; and he understood that his child was dead, and another woman had filled her place.

"You are a noble girl," he said, with lingering tenderness in every word. "We will go down now. I will greet Richard, and then, dear, you will let me be alone for a little while. I shall have to send for your things, you know."

"If it is any trouble—" began Mary.

"None, I will see about it at once."

They went down, and he greeted Richard, then went away slowly, still begging them to excuse him for the inattention to them. Soon after, a barefooted boy of twelve or fourteen or so went whistling down the road past the house, staring at them as he went by; an hour after, the same boy returned with their bags; these were taken up-stairs by a thin, severe-looking, very neatly-dressed woman, who quickly and with only a word or two showed them their rooms, and told them that, as soon as they were dressed, tea would be ready.

Mary dressed in her mother's room with a sense of that mother's spirit around her. She fortunately had brought a dress with her, so that she was able to make a slight change. Then slowly and with great reverence she went down the stairs, meeting Dick in the hall, to whom she whispered, "O Dick! how I love him; but I am afraid it will kill him; the purpose for which he has lived these twenty years is taken from him. Can we give him another?"

"It may be that you can," Dick replied, looking tenderly into her sweet face, all aglow with the bright soul-life which had been kindled so actively in the last hours. "If you can, Mary, try it; do not think of anything else; stay with him, do anything you think right and good for him; he deserves more from us than—" Dick hesitated, not willing to speak unkindly of Mr. Brandon, who certainly had been a father to Mary—"than any other."

"I will try," Mary answered speaking quickly and in a low voice. "If it seems best that I should stay a little while, you will explain to papa? But perhaps, after all, it will be you who will be able to replace her best."

"We shall see," Dick said, and then Dr. Heremore was seen coming toward them, with less lightness in his step than they had noticed before; otherwise there was but little change, except that his voice was more mournfully tender than at first.

"It is a long time since I saw that place filled," he said, arranging a chair for Mary before the tea-urn. "And it is very sweet to me to see your bright young face before me; a long time since I have had so strong an arm to help me," he added, as Dick eagerly offered him some little assistance, "and I am very grateful for it."

There were no explanations that night; he talked to Dick and Mary as to very dear and honored guests, of everything likely to interest them, and was won by their eager attention to tell them many little things about his house and grounds, which were his evident pride and pleasure, all in the same subdued, courteous way that had attracted them from the first. There seemed, in the beginning, a far greater sympathy between Mary and him than he had with Dick, which was the reason, undoubtedly, why he devoted his attention more especially to his grandson, whose modest replies, given with a heightened color and an evident desire to please, were very winningly made.

"I have two noble grandchildren," he said to them as they stood up to say good-night. "My daughter, short as her life was, did not come into the world for a small purpose; she did not live for little good; she has sent me two to love and esteem, and to win some love from them, I trust—yes, I believe."

The next day, he set apart a time and then there were full explanations from both sides. Dick's story we know already. Dr. Heremore's can be told in a few words. His daughter married, when very young and on a short acquaintance, a gentleman who was spending his summer holidays in the vicinity of Wiltshire, and, immediately upon her marriage, had gone to N—— to reside; they remained there until Richard was a month old, when his daughter made him a long—her last—visit; from there to New York, whence a letter or two was all that came for some little time; then one written evidently in great depression of spirits. Dr. Heremore, on receipt of this, went at once to New York to see her, only to hear that she had gone with her husband to Europe. A little further inquiry proved to his satisfaction that Mr. Brandon was in the South, and that his wife was not with him; his letters were unanswered, and his alarm was every day greater and more painful. At last, he followed a lady—described to be somewhat of his daughter's appearance, bearing the same name, who had joined a theatrical company, though of this last he was not aware for a long time—to Europe. As he had said before, he came back disappointed but not despairing, to hear of Mr. Brandon's death—the same false report, perhaps intentionally circulated, which his daughter had heard. Her letters to him, of which she spoke in her letter to Dick, were lost while he was away searching for her. He had not been rich, then; but coming home, he had resumed his practice, and lived patiently awaiting news of her, energetically laboring to secure a small fortune for her should she ever come to claim it. This little fortune he would divide at once, he said, between her two children; for "what," he argued with them, "what is the use of hoarding it to give to you later when, I trust, you will not need it half as much? A few hundreds in early youth are often worth as many thousands in after-years."

"That will do for Dick," Mary conceded, "because it would be a great thing for him to have a little start just now; and besides, there's Somebody Else for him to think of; but I will take my share in staying here. You will not drive me away?"

"Your father?"

"Papa would—it's a shabby thing to say—be very willing to have me away, in his present circumstances. He has been wishing and wishing for Fred and Joe constantly ever since they went; but for me—he thinks girls are a sort of nuisance, I know he does; and will be very grateful to you if you divide the burden with him."

"But if—just as I got used to loving you, there should be another Somebody Else besides Dick's? How about this out of civilization place, then?"

Mary grew very red indeed, but answered readily, "Oh! that's a long way off; and besides, he may not think this out of civilization, you know."

So it was settled. One of the clerks who had been from early boyhood in Ames and Narden's store had been long intending to start out on his own account, and Dick was very sure that they could fulfill their olden dream of partnership, now that Dr. Heremore was willing to give them a start. Dick went down to New York the day after this conversation, and there was a long talk between the members of the firm, and the two clerks, which culminated in a dinner and the agreement that all was to go on as it had been going, until the first of May, when there would be a new bookseller's firm in the New York Directory, to wit, BARNES AND HEREMORE.

After a brief conversation with Mr. Brandon, Dick hurried to Carlton, and was not long making his way to the shadowy lane. To her honor and glory be it said, Trot was the first to see him; and without waiting for a greeting, not even for the expected "dear 'ittle Titten," ran with all speed into the house, crying, "Thishter! Thishter! Mr. Dit ith toming!" at the top of her voice; and Rose, all blushing at being caught "just as she was," had no time to utter a word before "Mr. Dit," was beside her. There was great rejoicing over Dick; the children pulled him in every direction, to show him some new thing he had not yet seen, until he began to tell the story of his adventures, when they stood around in perfect silence. Mrs. Alaine and Mrs. Stoffs wiped their eyes between their smiles and their exclamations of delight; old Carl once held his pipe in one hand and forgot to fill it for nearly a minute, so absorbed was he; but Rose alone did not say a word of congratulation when Dick's good fortune and his brightened future were announced. I even think she had a good cry about it, after a little talk with Dick by herself, that evening, so hard it is to leave one's home.

"There's not a thing to wait for now," Dick had said, with beaming eyes; and poor Rose's ideas of "youth," and "time to get ready," and all that sort of remark, were put aside without the least consideration. "We will have a little house of our own," Dick continued, "we will not go to boarding, as some people do; you are too good a housekeeper for that, I am sure; and as New York has no houses for young people of moderate means, we will have a home of our own near the city. Shall we not, Rose?"

Dick was a very busy young man for a couple of months after this. One thing Dr. Heremore did that seemed hard, but not so very unnatural, and of which no one who has never felt a wrong to some one dearly loved should judge. He begged that he might never see Mr. Brandon, nor be asked to hold any communication with him. He gave Mary a certain sum of money, which he wished her to use for her father and step-brothers; but beyond that, he left Mr. Brandon to help himself.

After attending to all his grandfather's requests and suggestions, Dick, as he had been invited to do, returned to Wiltshire to give an account of his management, and to take up some things for Mary's use. He was on his way to the boat when he suddenly started and exclaimed, "Mr. Irving!" for no less a person than his "Sir Launcelot" was standing beside him. Mr. Irving, not recognizing him, bowed slightly and passed on, and Dick began to be relieved that Mary was so far away; perhaps, after all, it was a great deal better.

But another surprise was in store for Dick, who—an inexperienced traveller even yet, and always in advance of time—had gone on and waited long before the boat prepared to leave; for at the last moment a carriage drove rapidly to the pier, and a gentleman sprang from it in time to catch the boat. It was "Sir Launcelot."

"Mr. Heremore, I believe," he said to Dick, when they met somewhat later on the boat. "I called on Mr. Brandon to-day, just after you met me, to pay my respects to him on my return from Europe. I found him in a different business from that in which I had left him, and very reserved. I asked after the ladies of his family, who, he told me, were at your grandfather's and his father-in-law's, in Maine, adding that there was a long story, which I had better come to you to hear, if you had not already left. I have business in Maine, so followed you up."

So they made acquaintance; and the new-found relationship with Mary was explained, as also the reverses Mr. Brandon had met with.

"His wife dead, too, you tell me! How shocked he must have been at my questions of her! How like him not to give me a hint!" exclaimed Mr. Irving.

The new friendship progressed well, as it often will between two gentlemen, one of whom is in love with the other's sister, although there was a wide difference between their characters. Mr. Irving was many years older than Dick, as his finished manners and his manly presence attested, without the aid of a few gray hairs on his temples, not visible, and half a dozen or so in his heavy moustache, very visible and adding much to his good looks, in the eyes of most of the ladies who saw him. It seemed as natural to Dick that this travelled man, so polished, so princely as he was, should be just the one to please his high-bred sister, and he captivated by her, as that he himself should belong to Rose and she to him. Consequently he did not put on any of the airs in which brothers, especially when they are very young, delight to appear before their sister's admirers.

Dick had even tact enough, when they reached Dr. Heremore's house —for, of course, Mr. Irving's "business in Maine" did not interfere with his accompanying Dick to Wiltshire—to be, very busy with the carriage and trunks, while Mr. Irving opened the little gate, and announced himself to the young lady on the porch. When Dick, a few minutes after, greeted his sister, he had no need, though Mary's color did not come as readily as Rose's, to say with Sir Lavaine:

"For fear our people call you lily maid, In earnest, let me bring your color back."

I think that Dr. Heremore, though the very soul of courtesy, looked rather sadly upon Mr. Irving; but he was not long left in any uncertainty in regard to that gentleman's wishes; for the very next day his story was told; how he had known and loved Mary from her very earliest girlhood, but that he was afraid of his greater age, and, anxious that she should not be influenced by their long acquaintance and the advantages his ripened years had given him over admirers more suited to her in age, he had gone to Europe, but lacked the courage to remain half the time he had allotted, and now was back, and—"

"And, ah! yes, I understand; I am to lose her," said her grandfather sadly. "I knew I could not keep her."

"Giving her to me will not be losing her. We talked about it last night, and we are both delighted with this place; and as I am bound to no especial spot, (Mr. Irving was an author,) and she loves none half so much as this, we can well pitch our tent here."

But when further acquaintance had enabled the man of "riper years" to take a place in Dr. Heremore's life which neither Mary nor Dick could fill, it was settled that the old house was large enough for the three; and as Mr. Irving was wealthy, healthy, and wise, the sun of Mary's happiness shone very brightly.

There's nothing more for me to say except that Dick went down to Carlton still once again, and that in its church there is a little altar of the Blessed Virgin, whereon Rose had the unspeakable delight—so precious to every pious heart—of laying a beautiful veil—Mary's gift to her "sweet little sister"—which Trot looks critically at every Sunday, and may be a little oftener, and puzzles her small head wondering if its delicate texture—the veil's—will stand the wear and tear of the years that must pass before she can replace it with hers; which always makes uncle Carl laugh. And Rose has persuaded Mary to dedicate her own in the same way, and Mary has laughingly complied, a little shame-faced, too, at her own secret pleasure in doing it, at the same time half wondering "what will come of it." Rose does not wonder; she thinks she knows.

As for Dick, there is every reason to believe that this coming Christmas there will be two or three glad hearts travelling around in company with two or three rough, ragged, shaggy boys; that he will carve his own Christmas turkey at his own, own table; and that there will be a couleur de Rose over all his future life.