University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
GETTING HOME.

OLNEY was a thriving, busy little town, numbering
five hundred inhabitants or thereabouts. It had
its groceries, its dry-goods stores, and its two
houses for public worship,—the Methodist and Presbyterian,—while
every other Sunday a little band of Episcopalians
met for their own service in what was called the
Village Hall, where, during week days, a small select school
was frequently taught by some Yankee school-mistress. It
had its post office, too; and there was talk of a bank after
the railroad came that way, and roused the people to a state
of still greater activity. On the whole, it was a pretty
town, though very different from Chicopee, where the
houses slept so aristocratically under the shadow of the old
elms, which had been growing there since the day when our
national independence was declared.

At home Ethelyn's pride had all been centred in Boston,
and she had sometimes thought contemptuously of Chicopee
and its surroundings; but the farther she travelled west
the higher Chicopee rose in her estimation, until she found
herself comparing every prairie village with that rural town
among the hills, which seemed to give it dignity, and made
it so greatly superior to the dead levels of which she was
getting so weary. She had admired the rolling prairies at
first, but, tired and jaded with her long journey, nothing
looked well to her now,—nothing was like Chicopee,—certainly

not Olney, where the dwellings were so new and the
streets were minus sidewalks.

Ethelyn had a good view of it as the train approached
it, and even caught a passing glimpse of the white house
in the distance which Richard pointed out as home, his
face lighting up with all the pleasure of a schoolboy as he
saw the old familiar waymarks and felt that he was home
at last.

Dropping her veil over her face, Ethelyn arose to follow
her husband, who, in his eagerness to grasp the hand
of the tall young man he had seen from the window,
forgot to carry her shawl and her satchel, which last being
upon the car-rack, she tugged at with all her strength,
and was about crying with vexation at Richard's thoughtlessness,
when Tim Jones, who had watched her furtively,
wondering how she and Melind would get along, gallantly
came to her aid, and taking the satchel down kept it upon
his arm.

“Take care of that step. Better let me help you out.
Dick is so tickled to see Jim that he even forgets his wife,
I swan!” Tim said, offering to assist her from the train;
but with a feeling of disgust, Ethelyn declined the offer,
and turned away from him to meet the curious gaze of the
young man whom Richard presented as brother James.

He was younger than his brother by half a dozen years,
but he looked quite as old, if not older. His face and
hands were sunburnt and brown, his clothes were coarse,
his pants were tucked into his tall, muddy boots, and he
held in his hands the whip with which he had driven the
shining bays, now pricking up their ears behind the depot
and eyeing askance the train just beginning to move away.
The Markhams were all good-looking, and James was not

an exception. The Olney girls called him very handsome,
when on Sunday he came to church in his best clothes and
led the Methodist choir; but Ethelyn only thought him
rough and coarse, and when he bent down to kiss her she
drew back haughtily.

“Ethelyn!” Richard said, in the low, peculiar tone,
which she had almost unconsciously learned to fear, just as
she did the dark expression which his hazel eyes assumed
as he said the single word, “Ethelyn!”

She was afraid of Richard when he looked and spoke
that way, and putting up her lips, she permitted the kiss
which the warm-hearted James gave to her. He was
naturally more demonstrative than his brother, and more
susceptible, too; a pretty face would always set his heart
to beating and call out all the gallantry of his nature.
Wholly unsophisticated, he never dreamed of the gulf
there was between him and the new sister, whom he
thought so beautiful,—loving her at once, because she was
so pretty, and because she was the wife of Dick, their
household idol. He was more of a ladies' man than Richard,
and when on their way to the democrat wagon
they came to a patch of mud, through which Ethelyn's
skirts were trailing, he playfully lifted her in his strong
arms, and set her down upon the wagon-box, saying, as he
adjusted her skirts, “We can't have that pretty dress
spoiled, the very first day, with Iowa mud.”

All this time Tim Jones had been dutifully holding
the satchel which he now deposited at Ethelyn's feet, and
then, at James' invitation, sprang into the hinder part of
the wagon-box, and sitting down let his long limbs dangle
over the back board, while James sat partly in Richard's
lap and partly in Ethelyn's. It had been decided that

the democrat must come down again for the baggage;
and so, three on a seat, with Tim Jones holding on behind,
Ethelyn was driven through the town, while face
after face looked out at her from the windows of the
different dwellings, and comment after comment was made
upon her pretty little round hat, with its jaunty feather,
which style had not then penetrated so far west as Olney.
Rumors there were of the Eastern ladies wearing hats
which made them look at least ten years younger than
their actual age; but Ethelyn was the first to carry the
fashion to Olney, and she was pronounced very stylish,
and very girlish, too, by those who watched her curiously
from behind their curtains and blinds.

It was the close of a chill October day, and a bank of
angry clouds hung darkly in the western sky, while the
autumn wind blew cold across the prairie; but colder,
blacker, chillier far than prairie winds, or threatening
clouds, or autumnal day was the shadow resting on
Ethelyn's heart, and making her almost cry out with loneliness
and home-sickness, as she drew near the house where
the blue paper curtains were hanging before the windows,
and Eunice Plympton's face was pressed against the pane.
The daisies and violets and summer grass were withered
and dead, and the naked branches of the lilac brushed
against the house with a mournful, rasping sound, which
reminded her of the tall sign-post in Chicopee, which used
to creak so in the winter-wind, and keep her Aunt Barbara
awake. To the right of the house, and a little in the rear,
were several large, square corn-cribs, and behind these an
enclosure in which numerous cattle, and horses, and pigs
were industriously feeding, while the cobs, stripped and
soiled and muddy, were scattered everywhere. Ethelyn

took it all in at a glance, exclaiming, in a smothered
voice, as the wagon turned into the lane which led to
the side-door, “Not here, Richard; surely, not here!”

But Richard, if he heard her, did not heed her. He
could not comprehend her utter desolation and crushing
disappointment. Her imaginings of his home had never
been anything like the reality, and for the moment she
felt as if in a kind of horrible nightmare, from which she
struggled to awake.

“Oh! if it were only a dream,” she thought; but it
was no dream, and as Richard himself lifted her carefully
from the wagon, and deposited her upon the side-stoop,
there came a mist before her eyes, and for an instant
sense and feeling forsook her; but only for an instant, for
the hall-door was thrown open, and Richard's mother came
out to greet her son and welcome her new daughter.

But alas for Ethelyn's visions of heavy silk and costly
lace! how they vanished before this woman in purple calico,
with ruffles of the same standing up about the throat,
and the cotton-lace coiffeur upon her head. She was very
glad to see her boy, and wound both her arms around his
neck, but she was afraid of Ethelyn. She, too, had had
her ideal, but it was not like this proud-looking beauty,
dressed so stylishly, and, as it seemed to her, so extravagantly,
with her long, full skirt of handsome poplin
trailing so far behind her, and her basque fitting her
graceful figure so admirably. Neither did the hat, rolled
so jauntily on the sides, and giving her a coquettish
appearance, escape her notice, nor the fact that the dotted
veil was not removed from the white face, even after
Richard had put the little plump hand in hers, and
said,

“This, mother, is Ethie, my wife. I hope you will love
each other for my sake.”

In her joy at seeing her pet boy again, Mrs. Markham
would have done a great deal for his sake, but she could
not “kiss a veil,” as she afterwards said to Melinda Jones,
and so she only held and pressed Ethelyn's hand, and
leading her into the house, told her she was very welcome,
and bade her come to the fire and take off her things, and
asked if she was not tired, and cold and hungry.

And Ethelyn tried to answer, but the great lumps were
swelling in her throat, and so keen a pain was tugging at
her heart that when at last, astonished at her silence,
Richard said, “What is the matter, Ethie—why don't you
answer mother?” she burst out in a pitiful cry:

“Oh, Richard, I can't, I can't; please take me back to
Aunt Barbara.”

This was the crisis, the concentration of all she had
been suffering for the last hour, and it touched Mrs. Markham's
heart, for she remembered just how wretched she
had been when she first landed at the rude log cabin,
which was so long her Western home, and turning to
Richard, she said, in an aside,

“She is homesick, poor child, as it's natural she should
be at first. She'll be better, by and by, so don't think
strange of it. She seems very young.”

In referring to her youth, Mrs. Markham meant nothing
derogatory to her daughter-in-law. She was finding an
excuse for her crying, and did not mean that Ethelyn
should hear. But she did hear, and the hot tears were
dashed aside at once. She was too proud to be petted or
patronized by Mrs. Markham, or apologized for by her, so
she dried her eyes, and lifting up her head, said proudly:

“I am tired to-night, and my head is aching so hard
that I lost my self-control. I beg you will excuse me.
Richard knows me too well to need an excuse.”

A born duchess could not have assumed a loftier air,
and in some perplexity Mrs. Markham glanced from her to
Richard, as if asking what to do next. Fortunately for all
parties, John just then came in and approached his new
sister with some little hesitation. He had heard Tim
Jones' verdict, “Stuck up as the Old Nick,” while even
cautious James had admitted his fears that Dick had made
a mistake, and taken a wife who would never fit into their
ways. And this was why he was so late with his welcome.
He had crept up the back stairs, and donned his best neck-tie,
and changed his heavy boots for a pair of shoes, and
put on another coat and vest. He was all right now, and
he shook hands with his new sister, and asked if she was
pretty well, and told her she was welcome, and then stepped
back for Andy, who had been making his toilet when
the bride arrived, and so was also late with his congratulations.