 | CHAPTER XXVII.
SUPPER AT THE PIPE AND BOWL. Haunted hearts |  |
27. CHAPTER XXVII.
SUPPER AT THE PIPE AND BOWL.
The crowd had poured out of the City Hall, the
tramp of feet and the echo of voices had died away, a
solitary figure was moving about the court-room putting
out the lamps, and dust and smoke, added to darkness,
obscured the atmosphere, when two men groped their
way up the staircase leading to the gallery, and the
next moment a hand was laid on Hannah Rawle's
shoulder, and a strong voice, so shaken with emotion as
to be subdued and husky, exclaimed, “Aunt Hannah!”
“Lud a massy! Geordie, is that you?” cried the old
woman. “Give me your hand, my boy. I can't hear
yer, nor see yer, nor git my wits together to make out
what all this means, — 'tis you, ain't it?” she added, as
George shook hands with her heartily, and supporting
her under one elbow, assisted her efforts to rise.
“That's right, help me up! I 'm een-a-most cramped
to death in this place, an' I can't git out nuther, —
Angie won't stir. Start along, child! it's Georgie
come to look us up, — an' Dick, — that's my brother
budge, — I 've been a shakin' an' pushin' of her till
I 'm tired!” — and here one could just see, in the dim
light, that Hannah gave Angie a final pull and nudge,
and that both were wholly without effect upon the
motionless object that intercepted her exit from the
narrow quarters in which she had been imprisoned ever
since morning.
An exclamation of anxiety burst from George; he
was already bending down to get a closer view of the
inanimate figure at his feet.
“Don't! take care! let me!” he exclaimed, barring
further action on Hannah's part by an arm that met
hers just as it was impatiently advanced for another
thrust.
“Fust, as crazy as a loon, and then, jest dumb-founded!
that's been the way she's gone on, an' not a word
have I been able to get out of her. Why, I don't know
a thing that's been a happenin' the whole o' this blessed
day, except what I 've seen with my own eyes!” cried
Hannah, angrily. “Law, Geordie, to think you ain't
dead nor nothin' arter all!” she continued, in quite a
contrary tone, “an' you look better 'n ever you did in
yer life. I knew yer the fust minute, — I should ha'
known yer in Jericho. Fur massy's sake, where did
yer come from? Wal, now,” resuming her former
bitterness of tone, as she observed how wholly Geordie's
attention was distracted from her “what's to pay
wi' that gal, I wonder!”
“Angie!” George was saying in the cautious tone
in which he might have addressed a sleeper, whom he
was hesitating whether or not to wake.
No answer.
“Angie!” again, — this time in an earnest, anxious
voice.
Still no answer.
Then he attempted to raise her, at first awkwardly
and with diffidence, but finding that her form was rigid,
and that she made no resistance, he caught her up in
his strong arms as easily and firmly as if she had been
an infant, turned, and without a word to his companions,
hastened with her up the steps of the gallery and down
the staircase. Only his own heart could hear him
mutter, “Good God! 'twas more than she could
bear. She's dead, and I've done it!”
Van Hausen drew back to let them pass. He was
not much concerned for Angie. He was only wondering
at George's care for her. “If I was in his place
now,” he was saying to himself, “I'd leave her fur
somebody else to look arter, if she was in a dead faint.
Sarves her right to see the infarnal scamp sent to the
gallers where he belongs! So much for jiltin' an honest
feller for the sake o' sich varmin (for Van Hausen,
as well as George, had mistaken the true cause of
Angie's emotion). “But the Lord has righted both on
'em,” muttered the old man, — “given back our own
boy to be the joy of our old age, an' given the devil
his due inter the bargain. We didn't come here
congratulatory tone to Hannah, who had by this time
mounted the steps unassisted, and who, under Van
Hausen's guidance, was now following in the footsteps
of her nephew, but at a considerable distance, for George,
without waiting for his companions, had already gained
the outer door of the building, just within which he had
left his mother under the charge of the ubiquitous constable.
He did not pause even to respond to the anxious
expression of Margery's face, or to the constable's blunt
inquiries and officious readiness to relieve him of at
least a share of his burden; he merely signed to the
latter to open the door for him, beckoned to his mother
to follow, and, without checking his pace, hastened down
the steps, across the Park, and into a narrow side street,
Margery literally trotting at his elbow, — for so only could
she keep up with him, — and consequently too breathless
to utter either a question or a remonstrance. Fortunately
Van Hausen and George had already agreed
upon the tavern where Dick had left his horse as the
rendezvous for their party. So he and Hannah were
able to pursue their course and their dialogue at leisure.
The first contact with the fresh air brought relief to
George's fears, for it sent a convulsive shiver through
Angie's frame, which was succeeded by similar spasms,
recurring at intervals, and indicating that life still flowed
in a full tide, — a tide interrupted in its ordinary channels,
out of course and threatening, but less to be dreaded
than the deathly torpor which seemed to have settled upon
quiver of joy and thankfulness through George's heart,
but almost unmanned him, too, so that he no longer
carried Angie lightly and easily, but trembled beneath
her weight. Doubtless rapid motion and fresh air were
as wholesome remedies as could have been employed in
her case, for soon she gasped, her breast heaved with
one short convulsive breath, and she opened her eyes, —
glassy, unnatural eyes, — which stared unmeaningly up
at George, who, for the first time checking his pace, was
pausing an instant at a street corner, partly to make sure
of his course, partly to get one look at her by aid of
the light that here glimmered feebly from a lamp-post.
“Angie, don't you know me?” he now cried, with
passionate vehemence, — for he was frightened at the
wild expression of her eyes.
At this she laughed full in his face, and he, poor
fellow, who had never heard such a laugh before, stood
aghast, with an anguish and despair pictured on his
features which all his years of martyrdom had never once
reflected there. “Worse than dead! gone mad!” was
his thought, “and I 've done it!” It was a wonder
that he did not drop her upon the sidewalk, so terribly
did he recoil from what he felt to be his work. But
after the first shock he did what, in his self-respect and
reverence for her had not dared to do before, he clasped
her tightly to his heart, — his generous heart, which
accepted in its ruin what had repulsed him in its pride;
his loyal heart, which vowed fresh allegiance to its
shattered idol, and ran on faster than before.
“What's all this! what's all this! somebody sick, or
somebody froze, or what!” cried the stout landlady of
the “Pipe and Bowl,” as George, with Angie in his
arms, dashed unceremoniously into her kitchen. George's
reply consisted in depositing Angie in a straight-backed
chair, in front of a magnificent fire of hickory logs, and
then glancing from her to the landlady with a face of
hopeless dismay.
“That's no way!” exclaimed the good woman, thus
appealed to; “if she 's froze, take her as far you can
from the fire; if she 's faint, lay her flat, — or here,
put her on my bed and I 'll soon bring her to,” — and
the landlady, drawing aside the heavy Killeminster
curtains of an old-fashioned Dutch bedstead, that stood
in one corner of her kitchen, gave a notable slap to the
patch-work quilt, and another to the checked pillow-case,
which seemed to say, “Put her right down here, and
so, young man, and then I 'll see to her.”
It was done; and with the same readiness and zeal
with which she would have plucked a chicken, the
landlady untied the hood which hung to the back of
Angie's neck, unfastened and removed her mandarin,
and commenced an energetic rubbing of her hands and
wrists. Angie, meanwhile, had manifested no other
symptom of life than an occasional heaving of the
chest, and a sound, something between a breath and
a sob. Under the landlady's treatment she further
revived, and there was an immediate recurrence of
the symptoms, which had so alarmed George, — especially
the maniacal laugh.
He groaned. — “O, you hush!” interposed the landlady,
authoritatively. “Did n't you ever see any body
this way afore? I have a dozen times.”
“Have you?” exclaimed George, looking greatly
relieved, though still anxious and woebegone.
Margery had by this time arrived, panting. She had
fallen off a little in her pace at the last, but was near
enough to catch George's signal to her as he darted
through the tavern door. She had hardly entered the
room before she, too, became the subject of the landlady's
remonstrances. Squeezed into a little corner at
the head of the bed, she was hovering over the patient,
patting her cheek, and uttering low consolatory syllables,
— intensely sympathetic in their tone, and of
course the worst possible thing in the world for the
already over-excited girl.
“Come, now, Goody,” said the landlady, “don't you
see you're only makin' matters worse? Her narves
are all unstrung; a stranger'll manage with her better 'n
her own folks; you go way out o' sight,” to Margery,
“and you, too,” to George; and having waived them
both, away, she proceeded to rub Angie's hands and feet,
chafe her temples, and otherwise endeavor to restore a
natural circulation to her system. Convulsive spasms
still continued to agitate the poor girl's frame, however,
and now a sob, now a laugh, and now a combination
of both, to escape from her in spite of the landlady's
labors and her own efforts at self-mastery, when a
better physician and a stronger will came to their
upon the scene. Her stern remonstrance, her
arbitrary command, had for years been the familiar
antidote to every mental and bodily weakness in the
household where she bore sway; and her “Hush, now!
be still, child! ain't you ashamed of yourself? Either
laugh or cry, an' be done with it!” served at once to
infuse tone and vigor into the muscles and nerves
enfeebled or paralyzed by successive shocks.
It seemed for a few moments as if the poor girl would
strangle in the efforts she made to control the spasms,
but she did control them. She looked up gratefully at
the kind landlady who was sprinkling water in her face,
and instinctively clung to her hand. Hannah, satisfied
with the wholesome effect of her reprimand, retired to
the other end of the room and stood gazing into the fire;
Van Hausen, meanwhile, had beckoned to George from
the door-way, and the two had gone off together; Margery,
silent, patient, humble as ever, in spite of the joy
and deliverance wrought out for her this day, sat in the
corner to which the landlady had motioned her when
she banished her from Angie's bedside. The stillness
of the room (for except that her breath came quick
and hard, Angie was quiet now), the warmth, the
cheerful, flickering blaze of the fire, the recollections
of the past, the revelations of the present, all were telling
upon Hannah with subduing effect. She was in
need of gentle, genial influences, for there was war and
contradiction in her heart, — a heart that had been seared
the thirst of blood for blood. That thirst was past, that
glut satisfied, for during the walk to the tavern she had
learned from her brother the developments and result of
the trial which she had witnessed, but had been far from
comprehending. Stern triumph had shone in her eyes
as she entered the tavern, — an unqualified triumph, that
could not endure the display of any less exultant emotion,
as was witnessed in her rebuke to Angie's weakness
and prostration of nerve. But, as she stood now in the
stillness, watching the flames curl round the logs, something
must have stolen into her soul and modified its
vindictive exultation, for the dry light in her eye gradually
became moist, the unnatural strength in her limbs
slackened; she looked around in search of a chair that
stood behind her, sank into it, suffered her head to droop
forward until her chin rested on her hands, and more
than once drew the worsted mitten, that trophy and
pledge of the past, from her pocket, gazed at it thoughtfully
and replaced it meditatively.
Perhaps, as she pondered the events of the day, she
was reflecting how little part she herself had borne in
them; she, a deaf old woman, who could not even hear
the evidence to which strangers' ears were privy. And
her cherished bit of proof, to which she had clung with
such faith and hope, of what value had it been after
all? Even now, the chief agent in planning her husband's
murder was to die in expiation of other crimes
committed against high heaven, not in revenge for her
blow was a destined victim of disease, not of the
scaffold. Humbling thoughts these.
And how different an instrument Providence had
chosen for the accomplishment of his retribution from
any that her forethought or wisdom could have conceived!
Perhaps, as her mind returned from groping
among the mysteries of crime and its judgments to dwell
upon George's unlooked for return, and the signal part
he had played in the arrest and conviction of the villain
who had plotted his uncle's murder, her hard, vindictive
heart was awed and melted before the power and
love of Him whose justice had thus walked hand in hand
with his mercy.
Some such humiliating, subduing influences must
have proved the result and crisis of her meditation, for
turning herself at length in Margery's direction, and
hitching her own chair a little to one side, she exclaimed,
sympathetically, “Don't set off there shiverin',
Margery; draw up, woman. I'm keepin' the fire off of
yer!” and when Margery, like one roused from some
dream or trance, had obeyed the invitation, and the two
old women were ranged side by side in front of the
blazing logs, Hannah still further evidenced her sympathy
and congratulation by laying her hand expressively
on Margery's knee, — not an empty hand, for it held an
open snuffbox. Margery gratefully accepted this little
attention.
“So you've got yer boy back, Margery,” said Hannah,
as she, herself, took a pinch also.
Margery nodded and snuffed in silent assent.
“The Lord's been very marciful to yer this day, — to
us all,” — continued Hannah, after a pause. Again
Margery assented by a motion of the head, — a reverential
motion, — more significant than words could have
been, even if Hannah had had ears for the latter.
“Blessed be his name!” said Hannah.
And Margery, by a gesture, said “Amen.”
“She's asleep, ain't she?” now asked Hannah, checking
the landlady who was crossing the room on tiptoe,
and pointing to the bed where Angie lay, with closed
eyes, and hands devoutly clasped upon her breast.
The landlady gave an affirmative nod, and glanced at
her patient with an air of satisfaction.
“I'm glad on't; it's the best thing in the world fur
her. Poor gal! she ain't one o' the kind that breaks
down fur nothin'. But she's had a hard time on't
to-day; we have all on us.”
The landlady, all curiosity, was eager to hear more,
to listen, indeed, to a detailed account of her guests'
experiences, but Hannah, even in ordinary matters,
was no gossip, and the landlady, disconcerted by the
reserve and the deafness of the old woman, was obliged
to content herself with the assurance that they had been
in court all day, had eaten nothing since morning, and
hoped she would give them something comfortable for
supper.
This latter hint, a most acceptable one to the landlady,
gave an instant diversion to her faculties, both bodily
tavern, which had attained to the height of its reputation
in the old colonial days, had long since been superseded
by statelier places of entertainment, high brick structures,
in some instances, foreshadowing our modern
hotels. On market-days the “Pipe and Bowl” was still
much frequented by rustic customers, and it was seldom
that its early dinner was not attended by a few Dutch
farmers or tradesfolk, who flattered the landlady, and
kept alive the reputation of her modest inn by their
encomiums of her sourkrout and hogs-head cheese;
but the “Pipe and Bowl” had for the most part degenerated
into a convenient tap-room and eating-house,
and it was seldom that a party of guests, a private
party, females included, called for a meal there after sundown.
So Hannah's hint at once suggested the swinging
of the tea-kettle across the crane and adjusting it over
the blaze, and an examination and stirring of the contents
of a huge pot already boiling alongside, the setting
out of an oaken table, and various rummagings in press
and pantry.
“For massy's sake, Margery,” exclaimed Hannah,
abruptly, while the landlady was absent from the
kitchen on one of these hospitable errands, “while
she's out tell me how yer come here. We left yer at
home this mornin', an', I vum, I believe you rode to
York on a broomstick. 'Twouldn't be a bit stranger
than the way I saw yer brought inter the courthouse.”
Margery told her story in her own way, or rather
in the only way that it could be made intelligible to
Hannah, — that is, by signs, hints, and broken phrases,
which together furnished an outline of her adventures;
but for the reader's convenience, I will tell it in a
more connected manner.
An embargo being put upon Captain Rawle's liberty
from the first moment of his arrival in port, in consequence
of his detention as a witness, he had lost no
time in despatching a message of report and inquiry
to his home at Stein's Plains. A couple of his sailors,
with sailors' alacrity to improve the earliest opportunity
for an excursion by land, and with the
eagerness which hands, educated only for pulling ropes,
always manifest to grasp the reins, were only too
eager for a sleighing frolic. Starting early in the morning,
and comparatively sober, these jolly tars had long
before noon reported to the astonished ears of Margery
the intelligence they were sent to convey; viz., the
safety of her son, his arrival in port, his unlucky detention
by legal authorities. The poor mother, less
elated at his seeming resurrection from the dead than
horror-struck at learning that he was already in the
clutches of the law, had but one question to ask, —
“Where is he? Where is my boy?” and but one entreaty,
which she poured out almost on her knees, “O,
take me to him, good sailors! For the love of Heaven,
take me to my boy!” The good-hearted fellows, by
drunk at Stein's, where they had stopped to inquire the
way, were ripe for executing the will of the first applicant;
moreover, did a sailor ever turn a deaf ear to a
woman's prayer — a mother's? She started (poor, mad
Margery, — for fear had by this time unsettled her
faculties) most imperfectly protected against the weather,
but they wrapped her up warm in the buffalo robes, for
which they had not before quite discovered a use, and
in spite of their recklessness and continual mistakes
concerning the route, their frequently stopping to procure
drink, which once or twice they, with the best
intentions in the world, insisted upon the old woman's
sharing, and above all, their many hairbreadth escapes
from sudden upset and utter demolition, they reached
the city in safety, drove with an air of authority to
the very door of the City Hall, where they understood
the trial was going forward, and mounting the old
woman upon their shoulders, bore her triumphantly
through the crowd, and deposited her, as we have seen,
in the very arms of her son.
“What are you about, my dearie?” questioned the
landlady, as, coming back when her other labors were
completed, to look after her charge, she found Angie
awake and making an effort to rise.
“I'm better now,” said Angie, in the feeble, tremulous
tone of one greatly exhausted. “I don't think it'll come
again. I'll get up now.”
“You've been asleep, dearie, and you're a sight the
still a while, till you feel stronger.”
“No; I'll sit up now,” persisted Angie, with quiet
decision; and sliding off from the high bed, she took a
step forward, but she had over-calculated her strength;
she staggered, and would have fallen, but her watchful
nurse caught her and supported her to a seat.
“She's dizzy with just waking up, that's all,” commented
the landlady, in a side tone, intended for Hannah
and Margery.
Angie sank into the first chair that offered itself, with
a faint smile, which seemed to say, “O, I'm better; I
shall do very well now.” The smile was meant for
Margery, who had crept to her side, and was gazing
down upon her with a glance full of tender meaning.
The old and the young hands, too, that had met so often
and so stealthily in mutual terror, sympathy, and dread,
were secretly clasped once more — this time in unspeakable
joy.
Angie, though she did not think it worth while to contradict
the landlady's assertion, had not been asleep, nor,
since she was first revived by the open air of the street,
wholly unconscious, though utterly unable to control the
purely physical effects of the terrible excitement she had
undergone. For the last half hour she had lain in that
repose of utter exhaustion which resembles sleep, and is
scarcely less refreshing.
The landlady, observing the hissing and sputtering of
her tea-kettle, bustled off, as she said, “to set the tea to
and colorless, and rendered more so, apparently, by the
background of dark, rippling hair, which had been
pushed back in a heavy mass from her forehead to
relieve her throbbing temples, sat with her hand riveted
to that of Margery, and her head almost resting on
the shoulder of the old woman, who was bending
fondly over her, for the first time in their mutual
experience, the least helpless of the two, when a door
close by, which led directly from the kitchen to the
stable yard, opened, and Van Hausen, followed by
George, entered abruptly.
The former, without looking to right or left, walked
directly to the fireplace, and taking the chair which
Margery had vacated, gave a complacent glance at the
preparations for supper which were going forward there.
The latter, equally fixed in his purpose, saw nothing
but Angie's pale face; and stepping cautiously up behind
his mother, whispered eagerly, as he laid a hand on
Margery's shoulder, “She's better, isn't she? She's
got over it? — thank Heaven!”
Angie started at hearing his voice so near her; so
did Margery. The former lifted up her drooping head;
instinctively, they both unclasped the tightly locked
hands, — as if he could detect all, — all that was understood
between them in that clasp. That was impossible.
How could he conceive of the nature and extent of the
unspoken confidence that had existed between these two
for years, — the terrible dread — the mighty deliverance?
from each other so quickly but that he did see that — was
the evidence of a love as tender and instinctive as that
of a mother and child.
“Yes, George, I'm — I'm — you —” the effort was
too much for Angie; her lip quivered; he started forward,
and was about to snatch the hand his mother had relinquished,
when something came between him and his
intention.
It was only a cup of tea in the hand of the landlady
— not an insuperable obstacle, certainly, but the exhortation
which accompanied it proved so.
“Let her alone now, sweetheart!” exclaimed the
landlady, inserting her buxom person between them.
“Don't you say a word to her till she's had something
to stay her stomach;” and the good woman, who was
possessed with the idea that a misunderstanding with
the young man, and nothing else, had been the cause of
the young woman's distress, still further balked his intention
by the threatening whisper with which she added,
“If you speak one word now, you'll bring another attack
o' the spasms on her, as sure as the world! Your
supper 's on the table; you must be mighty hungry,
all of you, so you set to while I get somethin' warm into
her.”
George, thus frustrated and overborne, was compelled
to beat an awkward retreat. A wistful look on his part,
a timid one on Angie's, were stolen rather than exchanged;
and thus, after five years of separation, and all
interview, ended in mutual disappointment, embarrassment,
and constraint.
There was a marked contrast in the appetites of the
parties who sat down to the landlady's bountiful supper.
Van Hausen ate voraciously — the exciting events of the
day had but served to whet his gastronomic powers.
Hannah, whose still sturdy frame demanded regular
nourishment, and whose bodily and mental constitution
were of that tough fibre which no accidents of fate or
fortune could disturb in the exercise of their natural
functions, “set to,” as the landlady had recommended,
and seemed in a fair way to compensate herself for her
long fast. But Margery did no such justice to the hospitalities
of the “Pipe and Bowl.” It was sustenance
enough for the mother, soul and body, that her eyes were
feasting on her son; and George, whether elated by the
fulfilment of his heart's best prophecies, or agitated by
something worse than its fears; whether satiated
already with good cheer, and inwardly saying grace,
or choked with a similar emotion to that which made
Angie, sitting in her dark corner, discourage the good
landlady's attempts to put a little life into her in the
form of poached eggs and mutton broth, was, at all
events, unsuccessful in his attempts to even feign an
appetite. At last, suddenly pushing back his plate,
and starting up, he exclaimed, in reply to the questioning
looks of his companions, especially of Van Hausen,
who was, as yet, but half satisfied, “Keep on eating,
only going to see if your horse has finished his oats;
because, if he has, I may as well help that little shaver
in the stable about harnessing.”
The supper-table was pushed back against the wall,
and the two old women, with their cloaks on, — Margery
with a thick one of the landlady's outside her own,
— were getting a last warming in front of the fire,
when George, and Van Hausen who had joined him at
the stable, drove to the front door of the tavern in the
pung.
Angie, who had caught the familiar sound of the bells,
was standing with her face to the wall, hurriedly clasping
the hooks and eyes of her mandarin, when a voice
close to her ear, said, in tones of fraternal tenderness,
“Angie, don't go home to-night — it isn't prudent!
Stay here; uncle Dick 'll come for you to-morrow;
or” — hesitating — “I will.”
“O, no, George!” she answered, in a tremulous,
imploring voice, giving one grateful look up at him,
then, hiding her face beneath her hood, which she
snatched up, put on, and tied with nervous haste,
thus protesting, by deed as well as by word, against
being left behind.
“But it's very cold,” persisted George, still in a
dissuasive tone.
“No matter! I'm quite well now. I must go — that
is,” — faltering at this new thought, and humbly qualifying
her former earnestness, — “unless there isn't room.”
“Plenty of room; if not, you don't suppose I'd take
your place?” answered George. “You'll ride all the
warmer, you three, on one seat, in that wide pung!
only it's such a frosty night, I'm afraid — ”
“O no, if that's all,” answered Angie, interrupting,
but not looking him in the face, looking every where
else in her nervousness and agitation, — “that, that 's
nothing.”
Van Hausen had already marshalled out his sister and
Margery; and Angie, with a step tottering less from
weakness than from the effect of her first interchange
of words with George, and her fear lest his proposition
might be carried into effect, made a hasty movement to
follow them.
George, having thus proved her resolve, however,
gave her no further opportunity to test her strength.
More rapid and decisive in his movements than herself,
he, without permission or the form of an apology,
wrapped a warm overcoat of his own around her shoulders
as an additional protection from the weather, lifted
her in his arms, and without suffering her feet to touch the
snow-covered sidewalk, without even giving her a chance
to say good-night to the landlady who was shivering in
the door-way, as she waited there to see them off, deposited
her in the vacant space left for her on the back
seat of the pung. He then sprang up himself beside Van
Hausen, the latter gave an impatient chirrup to his horse,
and they were off.
It was a long drive for a cold night, but it was
inquiry from George concerning the welfare of
the females of the party, and Van Hausen's gruff “go
long” to the horse, alone disturbed the meditations of the
travellers, whom the events of the day had furnished
with ample food for thought, if they could think in spite
of tingling ears and noses, frozen breath, and feet which,
in the case of the two old women at least, were almost
benumbed with the cold before they reached their destination,
in spite of the bricks with which Hannah had
been provided in the morning, freshly heated for present
use, and such other old-fashioned precautions as had
been devised for their comfort by the considerate landlady
of the “Pipe and Bowl.” Lights were still burning
in most of the farm-houses when they reached Stein's
Plains, sending out little gleams of radiance to greet the
five years' wanderer, who saw in them each a welcome
home, and whose heart, loyal to all its early loves,
glowed and throbbed with inward fires that, like the
household lamps, burned the brighter for the wintry
frosts outside.
There was no light, no fire in the cottage on the crossroad
to which the travellers were bound; and the snow,
with which the wind had toyed all day, lay in a huge
oblique drift across the threshold, to which, no path was
visible. But what of that? George's strong arms were
ready to carry first his mother, then Angie, then his
aunt Hannah even, through the snow, and deposit them
dry-shod within doors, and this in spite of Hannah
boisterous struggle between her and her nephew, a
genuine burst of laughter on his part and on hers,
as he set her down in the door-way, the indignant
protest, “Do yer think I mind a little flurry o' snow,
or that I've lost the use o' my limbs, yer sarcy feller?”
And George remembered just where to put his hand
on the mantel-shelf to find the tinder-box and flint, —
he knew where the lamps were kept, and he had not
forgotten the way to the wood-pile. Before Van Hausen
could turn and drive off, there was a light streaming
from the cottage window to guide him down the road,
and before the echo of his sleigh-bells had died away,
there was a bright fire blazing in the kitchen chimney,
and the family circle were drawn up around it. Not
to linger long, however, for Hannah, tired herself, perhaps
pitying Margery's exhaustion, for Margery, the
weaker of the two, could, by this time, scarcely hold up
her head for weariness, sent Angie to bed, with the curt,
yet well-meant assertion, “that's the best place for you,
child,” and when Angie had gone, resisted all George's
entreaties for one minute's more delay, the answer to
one more question.
“No! Wait till mornin'. Don't yer see yer mother 's
all tuckered out, Geordie!” was an unanswerable remonstrance
and argument; and long before midnight,
indeed, by the time the lights of Christmas-eve had died
out in the neighboring farm-houses, the accounts of this
with darkness and with God its inmates were left to seek
refreshment in sleep, to commune with their own hearts
in the night watches, or in praise and thanksgiving to
Heaven to await the Christmas dawn.
| CHAPTER XXVII.
SUPPER AT THE PIPE AND BOWL. Haunted hearts | |