Part 18 (1/2)

Then his wife silently took her place at the table and he bowed his head and repeated the grace to which she had listened three times a day for nearly thirty years, only that this time he added the request that the Lord would, in his ”merciful kindness, strike terror to the hearts of all evildoers and turn them from their way.”

When the silent meal was ended, Hester followed her husband to the door and laid a detaining hand on his arm. He stood and looked down on that slender white hand as if it were something that too sudden a movement would joggle off, and she did not know that it was as if she had laid her hand on his very heart. ”Peter, tell me what happened yesterday afternoon. You should tell me, Peter.”

Then the Elder did an unwonted thing. He placed his hand over hers and pressed it harder on his arm, and after an instant's pause he stooped and kissed her on the forehead.

”I spoke the lad fair, Hester, and made him an offer, but he would none of it. He thinks he is his own master, but I have put him in the Lord's hands.”

”Has he gone, Peter?”

”Maybe, but the offer I made him was a good one. Comfort your heart, la.s.s. If he's gone, he will return. When the Devil holds the whip, he makes a hard bargain, and drives fast. When the boy is hard pressed, he will be glad to return to his father's house.”

”Richard's valise is gone. The maid says he came late yesterday after I was gone, and took it away with him.”

”They are likely gone together.”

”But Peter's things are all here. No, they would never go like that and not bid me good-by.”

The Elder threw out his hands with his characteristic downward gesture of impatience. ”I have no way of knowing, more than you. It is no doubt that Richard has become a ne'er-do-weel. He felt shame to tell us he was going a journey on the Sabbath day.”

”Oh, Peter, I think not. Peter, be just. You know your son was never one to let the Devil drive; he is like yourself, Peter. And as for Richard, Peter Junior would never think so much of him if he were a ne'er-do-weel.”

”Women are foolish and fond. It is their nature, and perhaps that is how we love them most, but the men should rule, for their own good. A man should be master in his own house. When the lad returns, the door is open to him. That is enough.”

With a sorrowful heart he left her, and truth to tell, the sorrow was more for his wife's hurt than for his own. The one great tenderness of his life was his feeling for her, and this she felt rather than knew; but he believed himself absolutely right and that the hurt was inevitable, and for her was intensified by her weakness and fondness.

As for Hester, she turned away from the door and went quietly about her well-ordered house, directing the maidservant and looking carefully over her husband's wardrobe. Then she did the same for Peter Junior's, and at last, taking her basket of mending, she sat in the large, lace-curtained window looking out toward the west--the direction from which Peter Junior would be likely to come. For how long she would sit there during the days to come--waiting--she little knew.

She was comforted by the thought of the talk she had had with him the day before. She knew he was upright, and she felt that this quarrel--if it had been a quarrel--with his father would surely be healed; and then, there was Betty to call him back. The love of a girl was a good thing for a man. It would be stronger to draw him and hold him than love of home or of mother; it was the divine way for humanity, and it was a good way, and she must be patient and wait.

She was glad she had gone without delay to Mary Ballard. The two women were fond of each other, and the visit had been most satisfactory.

Betty she had not seen, for the maiden was still sleeping the long, heavy sleep which saves a normal healthy body from wreck after severe emotion. Betty was so young--it might be best that matters should wait awhile as they were.

If Peter Junior went to Paris now, he would have to earn his own way, of course, and possibly he had gone west with Richard where he could earn faster than at home. Maybe that had been the grounds of the quarrel. Surely she would hear from him soon. Perhaps he had taken their talk on Sunday afternoon as a good-by to her; or he might yet come to her and tell her his plans. So she comforted herself in the most wholesome and natural way.

Richard's action in taking his valise away during her absence and leaving no word of farewell for her was more of a surprise to her. But then--he might have resented the Elder's att.i.tude and sided with his cousin. Or, he might have feared he would say things he would afterwards regret, if he appeared, and so have taken himself quietly away. Still, these reasons did not wholly appeal to her, and she was filled with misgivings for him even more than for her son.

Peter Junior she trusted absolutely and Richard she loved as a son; but there was much of his father in him, and the Irish nature was erratic and wild, as the Elder said. Where was that father now? No one knew. It was one of the causes for anxiety she had for the boy that his father had been lost to them all ever since Richard's birth and his wife's death. He had gone out of their lives as completely as a candle in a gale of wind. She had mothered the boy, and the Elder had always been kind to him for his own dead sister's sake, but of the father they never spoke.

It was while Hester Craigmile sat in her western window, thinking her thoughts, that two lads came hurrying down the bluff from the old camp ground, breathless and awed. One carried a straw hat, and the other a stout stick--a stick with an irregular k.n.o.b at the end. It was Larry Kildene's old blackthorn that Peter Junior had been carrying. The Ballards' home was on the way between the bluff and the village, and Mary Ballard was standing at their gate watching for the children from school. She wished Jamie to go on an errand for her.

Mary noticed the agitation of the boys. They were John Walters and Charlie Dean--two chums who were always first to be around when there was anything unusual going on, or to be found. It was they who discovered the fire in the foundry in time to have it put out. It was they who knew where the tramps were hiding who had been stealing from the village stores, and now Mary wondered what they had discovered.

She left the gate swinging open and walked down to meet them.

”What is it, boys?”

”We--we--found these--and--there's something happened,” panted the boys, both speaking at once.

She took the hat of white straw from John's hand. ”Why! This is Peter Junior's hat! Where did you find it?” She turned it about and saw dark red stains, as if it had been grasped by a b.l.o.o.d.y hand--finger marks of blood plainly imprinted on the rim.

”And this, Mrs. Ballard,” said Charlie, putting Peter Junior's stick in her hand, and pointing to the same red stains sunken into the k.n.o.b.