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HOME AGAIN.
Ryefield, next station! “Hurra! It seems good to get
into a Christian country once more, after a three-years' camping
out among California savages. I declare, I wonder if Kate
has n't just got supper ready!”
“Hurra, there, Mr. Conductor! just shove out my baggage;
I 'm off here!” And, sure enough, he hurries home at the rate
of two locomotives tied together.
“Kate! Kate! I say, little wife, where are you?” and he
looks through the window. “Whe! — w-h-e-w! if that is n't
comfortable! — There sits Katie with a handsome young man. In
a blue dress, too; the gypsy always knew she looked prettiest in
blue; — and those earrings, too, confound the woman! I wonder
where she gets money to dash out with, when I am digging away
in California! Taking her hand now! Sathanos, what will
come next? May you go to — Kate, God bless you, darling!
— Kate! I say, Kate!” and he raised his voice a little.
“My husband!” and the prettiest white arms in the world
are round his neck, the rosiest lips pressed to his own, and over
the bright black eyes close long, jetty lashes, heavy with
tears!
I don't know how it was, but by this time the husband's heart
was softened considerably. It might have been owing to the influence
of a certain other heart, beating and throbbing against
his wife's youngest brother, a cordial welcome, and sat down with
his good humor not at all diminished by the sight of nicely-browned
biscuits and smoking tea-cakes.
A handsome man, with a slightly sunburned face, sat, in the
afternoon train toward Slingsby, leaning his head on his hand.
He had been for three years a wanderer, and come home rich.
Rich! there 's a great deal in that word, to most. To him there
was everything! The proud man had seen his delicate wife,
reared in luxury, reduced to privation, and she suffered, and
complained not; but it maddened him. He left her on a
crusade for gold, — left her with a weary memory dwelling in
his soul of clinging arms, and passionate kisses. The deep,
bright eyes of their one child, their almost angel Florence, looked
on him in his dreams sometimes, and he heard the last tear-choked
“God bless you!” from his young wife's lips.
Not for many a weary month has he heard tidings from home;
and there were tears in the deep eyes that shone from underneath
his slouched Spanish hat, as he hurried from the Slingsby dépôt.
The roses were bright around the porch of that little fairy
cottage, the woodbine was green over it, and forth from tufts of
mignonette and hearts-ease floated a faint, delicate breath of
perfume. But where were his wife's blue eyes, where the sunshine
of Florence's golden hair? He hurried in; there was no
sound of life, and the pale, thin figure lying on the couch, with
the golden-fringed lids drooping heavily over the blue eyes, can
that be Jennie, — his Jennie? It must be. “Jennie, sweet
THE RETURNED CALIFORNIAN
[Description: 655EAF. Illustration page. Image of a man and a woman standing in front of a large chair. The woman is gesturing at something and there is a hat on the floor.]
lids unclose, — the ripe lips part, — and then she sinks in his
arms in a fainting fit, almost like death.
A half-hour later, and he held her on his breast, murmuring
low words of love, blent with vows never again to part on earth.
“But Florence, our Florence!” he asked, at last; “where is
she?”
“Dead, dearest, dead!” and the young wife clung to him
convulsively. “Dead!” and the word swelled on his ear like
the wail from a broken heart.
Yes, there was life and light on earth, and the great world
recked not that the grass grew green over that child-heart, that
the violets nodded above those closed eyes, and that only dirges
were the husband's welcome home!
Ah me! can gold pay for the wasted wealth of the heart?
Can the gleam of gems shine out of memory the tears that sparkle
in the eyes we love; or velvet spreads, enwrought with gold and
pearl, warm us like the clasp of clinging arms which hold us to a
heart that beats for us only?
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