Part 23 (1/2)
Wilder raised anchor and sailed back to the states. At the expiration of two months he wrote David that his book had been accepted. In time ten bound copies of his novel, his allotment from the publishers, brought him a thrill of indescribable pleasure. The next mail brought papers with glowing reviews and letters of commendation and congratulations. Next came a good-sized check, and the information that his book was a ”best seller.”
The night that this information was received he went up to the top of the hill that jutted over the harbor and listened to the song of the waves. Two years in this land of liquid light--a land of burning days and silent, sapphired nights, a land of palms and olives--two years of quiet, dreamy bliss, an idle and unsubstantial time! How evanescent it seemed, by the light of the days at home, when something had always pressed him to action.
”Two years of drifting,” he thought. ”It is time I, too, raised anchor and sailed home.”
The next mail brought a letter that made his heart beat faster than it had yet been able to do in this exotic, lazy land. It was a recall from Barnabas.
”DEAR DAVE:
”Nothing but a lazy life in a foreign land would have drove a man like you to write a book. The Jedge and M'ri are pleased, but I know you are cut out for something different. I want you to come home in time to run for legislature again. There's goin'
to be something doin'. It is time for another senator, and who do you suppose is plugging for it, and opening hogsheads of money? Wilksley. I want for you to come back and head him off.
If you've got one speck of your old spirit, and you care anything about your state, you'll do it. I am still running politics for this county at the old stand. Your book has started folks to talking about you agen, so come home while the picking is good. You've dreamt long enough. It is time to get up. Don't write no more books till you git too old to work.
”Yours if you come, ”B. B.”
The letter brought to David's eyes something that no one in this balmy land had ever seen there. With the look of a fighter belted for battle he went to the telegraph office and cabled Barnabas, ”Coming.”
CHAPTER III
On his return to Lafferton David was met at the train by the Judge, M'ri, and Barnabas.
”Your trunks air goin' out to the farm, Dave, ain't they?” asked Barnabas wistfully.
”Of course,” replied David, with an emphasis that brought a look of pleasure to the old man.
”Your telegram took a great load offen my mind,” he said, as they drove out to the farm. ”Miss Rhody told me all along I need hev no fears fer you, that you weren't no dawdler.”
”Good for Miss Rhody!” laughed David. ”She shall have her reward. I brought her silk enough for two dresses at least.”
”David,” said M'ri suddenly at the dinner table, ”do tell me for whose name those initials in the dedication to your book stand. Is it any one I know?”
”I hardly know the person myself,” was the smiling and evasive reply.
”A woman, David?”
”She figured largely in my fairy stories.”
”A nickname he had for Janey,” she thought with a sigh.
”Uncle Barnabas,” said David the next day, ”before we settle down to things political tell me if you regret my South American experience.”
”Now that you're back and gittin' into harness, I'll overlook anything. You'd earnt a breathing spell, and you look a hull lot older. Your book's kep' your name in the papers, tew, which helps.”
”I will show you something that proves the book did more than that,”
said David, drawing his bank book from his pocket and pa.s.sing it to the old man, who read it unbelievingly.
”Why, Dave, you're rich!” he exclaimed.