Chapter VIII: Rex at the Homestead

The day had been longer and lonelier to Dorcas than the previous one, for then she had gone with Bertha to the train in Worcester, and after saying good-bye, had done some shopping in town and made a few calls before returning home. She had then busied herself with clearing up Bertha’s room, which was not an altogether easy task. Bertha was never as orderly as her sister, and, in the confusion of packing, her room was in a worse condition than usual. But to clear it up was a labor of love, over which Dorcas lingered as long as possible. Then when all was done and she had closed the shutters and dropped the shades, she knelt by the white bed and amid a rain of tears prayed God to protect the dear sister on sea and land and bring her safely back to the home which was so desolate without her. That was yesterday; but to-day there had been comparatively nothing to do, for after an early breakfast her father had started for Boylston, hoping to collect a debt which had long been due and the payment of which would help towards the mortgage. After he had gone and her morning work was done, Dorcas sat down alone in the great, lonely house and began to cry, wondering what she should do to pass the long hours before her father’s return.

“I wish I had Bertha’s room to straighten up again,” she thought. “Any way I’ll go and look at it.” And, drying her eyes, she went up to the room, which seemed so dark and close and gloomy that she opened the windows and threw back the blinds, letting in the full sunlight and warm summer air. “She was fond of air and sunshine,” she said to herself, remembering the many times they had differed on that point, she insisting that so much sun faded the carpets, and Bertha insisting that she would have it, carpets or no carpets. Bertha was fond of flowers, too, and in their season kept the house full of them. This Dorcas also remembered, and, going to the garden, she gathered great clusters of roses and white lilies, which she arranged in two bouquets, putting one on the bureau and the other on the deep window-seat, where Bertha used to sit so often when at home, and where one of her favorite books was lying, with her work-basket and a bit of embroidery she had played at doing. The book and the basket Dorcas had left on the window-seat with something of the feeling which prompts us to keep the rooms of our dead as they left them. At the side of the bed and partly under it she had found a pair of half-worn slippers, which Bertha was in the habit of wearing at night while undressing, and these she had also left, they looked so much like Bertha, with their worn toes and high French heels. Now as she saw them she thought to put them away, but decided to leave them, as it was not likely any one would occupy the room in Bertha’s absence.

“There, it looks more cheerful now,” she said, surveying the apartment with its sunlight and flowers. Then, going down-stairs she whiled away the hours as best she could until it was time to prepare supper for her father, whose coming she watched for anxiously, hoping he would reach home before the storm which was fast gathering in the west and sending out flashes of lightning, with angry growls of thunder. “He will be hungry and tired, and I mean to give him his favorite dishes,” she thought, as she busied herself in the kitchen. With a view to make his home-coming as pleasant as possible, she laid the table with the best cloth and napkins and the gilt band china, used only on great occasions, and put on a plate for Bertha, and a bowl of roses in the centre, with one or two buds at each plate, “Now, that looks nice,” she thought, surveying her work, with a good deal of satisfaction, “and father will be pleased. I wish he would come. How black the sky is getting, and how angry the clouds look!” Then she thought of Bertha on the sea, and wondered if the storm would reach her, and was silently praying that it would not, when she saw old Bush and the buggy pass the windows, and in a few moments her father came in looking very pale and tired. He had had a long ride for nothing, as the man who owed him could not pay, but he brightened at once when he saw the attractive tea-table and divined why all the best things were out.

“You are a good girl, Dorcas, and I don’t know what I should do without you now,” he said, stroking Dorcas’s hair caressingly, and adding, “Now let us have supper. I am hungry as a bear, as Bertha would say.”

Dorcas started to leave the room just as she heard the sound of the bell and knew the electric car was coming up the hill. Though she had seen it so many times, she always stopped to look at it, and she stopped now and saw Reginald alight from it and saw the conductor point towards their house as if directing him to it. “Who can it be?” she thought, calling her father to the window, where they both stood watching the stranger as he came slowly along the avenue. “How queerly he acts, stopping so much to look around! Don’t he know it is beginning to rain?” she said, just as the crash and downpour came which sent Rex flying towards the house.

“Oh, father!” Dorcas exclaimed, clutching his arm, “don’t you know, Mr. Gorham wrote that the New Yorker who wanted to buy our farm might come to look at it? I believe this is he. What shall we do with him? Bertha told us to shut the door in his face.”

“You would hardly keep a dog out in a storm like this. Why, I can’t see across the road. I never knew it rain so fast,” Mr. Leighton replied, as Rex’s knock sounded on the door, which Dorcas opened just as a vivid flash of lightning lit up the sky and was followed instantaneously by a deafening peal of thunder and a dash of rain which swept half-way down the hall.

“Oh, my!” Dorcas said, holding back her dress; and “Great Scott!” Rex exclaimed, as he sprang inside and helped her close the door. Then, turning to her, he said, with a smile which disarmed her at once of any prejudice she might have against him, “I beg your pardon for coming in so unceremoniously. I should have been drenched in another minute. Does Mr. Leighton live here?”

Dorcas said he did, and, opening a door to her right, bade him enter. Glancing in, Rex felt sure it was the best room, and drew back, saying, apologetically, “I am not fit to go in there, or indeed to go anywhere. I believe I am wet to the skin. Look,” and he pointed to the little puddles of water which had dripped from his coat and were running over the floor.

His concern was so genuine, and the eyes so kind which looked at Dorcas, that he did not seem like a stranger, and she said to him, “I should say you were wet. You’d better take off your coat and let me dry it by the kitchen fire or you will take cold.”

“She _is_ a motherly little girl, as Phineas Jones said,” Rex thought, feeling sure that this was not the one who was “handsome as blazes,” but the nice one, who thought of everything, and if his first smile had not won her his second would have done so, as he said, “Thanks. You are very kind, but I’ll not trouble you to do that, and perhaps I’d better introduce myself. I am Reginald Hallam, from New York, and my father used to live here.”

“Oh-h!” Dorcas exclaimed, her fear of the dreaded stranger who was coming to buy their farm vanishing at once, while she wondered in a vague way where she had heard the name before, but did not associate it with Louie Thurston’s hero, of whom Bertha had told her.

He was one of the Hallams, of whom the old people in town thought so much, and it was natural that he should wish to see the old Homestead. At this point Mr. Leighton came into the hall and was introduced to the stranger, whom he welcomed cordially, while Dorcas, with her hospitable instincts in full play, again insisted that he should remove his wet coat and shoes before he took cold.

“They are a little damp, that’s a fact; but what can I do without them?” Reginald replied, beginning to feel very uncomfortable, and knowing that in all probability a sore throat would be the result of his bath.

“I’ll tell you,” Dorcas said, looking at her father. “He can wear the dressing-gown and slippers Bertha gave you last Christmas.” And before Rex could stop her she was off up-stairs in her father’s bedroom, from which she returned with a pair of Turkish slippers and a soft gray cashmere dressing-gown with dark blue velvet collar and cuffs.

“Father never wore them but a few times; he says they are too fine,” she said to Rex, who, much against his will, soon found himself arrayed in Mr. Leighton’s gown and slippers, while Dorcas carried his wet coat and shoes in triumph to the kitchen fire.

“Well, this is a lark,” Rex thought as he caught sight of himself in the glass. “I wonder what Phineas Jones would say if he knew that instead of being taken for a confidence man I’m received as a son and a brother and dressed up in ‘the Square’s’ best clothes.”

Supper was ready by this time, and without any demur, which he knew would be useless, Rex sat down to the table which Dorcas had made so pretty, rejoicing now that she had done so, wondering if their guest would notice it, and feeling glad that he was in Bertha’s chair. He did notice everything, and especially the flowers and the extra seat, which he occupied, and which he knew was not put there for him, but probably for the handsome girl, who would come in when the storm was over, and he found himself thinking more of her than of the blessing which Mr. Leighton asked so reverently, adding a petition that God would care for the loved one wherever and in whatever danger she might be.

“Maybe that’s the girl; but where the dickens can she be that she’s in danger?” Rex thought, just as a clap of thunder louder than any which had preceded it shook the house and made Dorcas turn pale as she said to her father:

“Oh, do you suppose it will reach her?”

“I think not,” Mr. Leighton replied; then turning to Rex, he said, “My youngest daughter, Bertha, is on the sea,—sailed on the Teutonic this morning,—and Dorcas is afraid the storm may reach her.”

“Sailed this morning on the Teutonic!” Rex repeated. “So did my aunt, Mrs. Carter Hallam.”

“Mrs. Carter Hallam!” and Dorcas set down her cup of tea with such force that some of it was spilled upon the snowy cloth. “Why, that is the name of the lady with whom Bertha has gone as companion.”

It was Rex’s turn now to be surprised, and explanations followed.

“I supposed all the Hallams of Leicester were dead, and never thought of associating Mrs. Carter with them,” Mr. Leighton said, while Rex in turn explained that as Miss Leighton’s letter had been written in Boston and he had addressed her there for his aunt it did not occur to him that her home was here at the Homestead.

“Did you see her on the ship, and was she well?” Dorcas asked, and he replied that, as he reached the steamer only in time to say good-bye to his aunt, he did not see Miss Leighton, but he knew she was there and presumably well.

“I am sorry now that I did not meet her,” he added, looking more closely at Dorcas than he had done before, and trying to trace some resemblance between her and the photograph he had dubbed Squint-Eye.

But there was none, and he felt a good deal puzzled, wondering what Phineas meant by calling Dorcas “handsome as blazes.” She must be the one referred to, for no human being could ever accuse Squint-Eye of any degree of beauty. And yet how the father and sister loved her, and how the old man’s voice trembled when he spoke of her, always with pride it seemed to Rex, who began at last himself to feel a good deal of interest in her. He knew now that he was occupying her seat, and that the rose-bud he had fastened in his button-hole was put there for her, and he hoped his aunt would treat her well.

“I mean to write and give her some points, for there’s no guessing what Mrs. Walker Haynes may put her up to do,” he thought, just as he caught the name of Phineas and heard Mr. Leighton saying to Dorcas:

“I saw him this morning, and he thinks he will get up in the course of a week and do the plastering.”

“Not before a week! How provoking!” Dorcas replied, while Rex ventured to say:

“Are you speaking of Phineas Jones? I made his acquaintance this morning, or rather he made mine. Quite a character, isn’t he?”

“I should say he was,” Dorcas replied, while her father rejoined:

“Everybody knows Phineas, and everybody likes him. He is nobody’s enemy but his own, and shiftlessness is his great fault. He can do almost everything, and do it well, too. He’ll work a few weeks,—maybe a few months,—and then lie idle, visiting and talking, till he has spent all he earned. He knows everybody’s business and history, and will sacrifice everything for his friends. He attends every camp-meeting he can hear of, and is apt to lose his balance and have what he calls the power. He comes here quite often, and is very handy in fixing up. I’ve got a little job waiting for him now, where the plastering fell off in the front chamber, and I dare say it will continue to wait. But I like the fellow, and am sorry for him. I don’t know that he has a relative in the world.”

Rex could have told of his Aunt Lucy, and that through her, Phineas claimed relationship to himself, but concluded not to open up a subject which he knew would be obnoxious to his aunt. Supper was now over, but the rain was still falling heavily, and when Rex asked how far it was to the hotel, both Mr. Leighton and Dorcas invited him so cordially to spend the night with them, that he decided to do so, and then began to wonder how he should broach the real object of his visit. From all Phineas had told him, and from what he had seen of Mr. Leighton, he began to be doubtful of success, but it was worth trying for, and he was ready to offer fifteen hundred dollars extra, if necessary. His coat and shoes were dry by this time, and habited in them he felt more like himself, and after Dorcas had removed her apron, showing that her evening work was done, and had taken her seat near her father, he said:

“By the way, did Mr. Gorham ever write to you that a New Yorker would like to buy your farm?”

“Yes,” Mr. Leighton replied, and Rex continued:

“I am the man, and that is my business here.”

“Oh!” and Dorcas moved uneasily in her chair, while her father answered, “I thought so.”

Then there was a silence, which Rex finally broke, telling why he wanted that particular farm and what he was willing to give for it, knowing before he finished that he had failed. The farm was not for sale, except under compulsion, which Mr. Leighton hoped might be avoided, explaining matters so minutely that Rex had a tolerably accurate knowledge of the state of affairs and knew why the daughter had gone abroad as his aunt’s companion, in preference to remaining in the employ of Swartz & Co.

“Confound it, if I hadn’t insisted upon aunt’s offering five hundred instead of three hundred, as she proposed doing, Bertha would not have gone, and I might have got the place,” he thought.

Mr. Leighton continued, “I think it would kill me to lose the home where I have lived so long, but if it must be sold, I’d rather you should have it than any one I know, and if worst comes to worst, and anything happens to Bertha, I’ll let you know in time to buy it.”

He looked so white and his voice shook so as he talked that Rex felt his castles and fox-hunts all crumbling together, and, with his usual impulsiveness, began to wonder if Mr. Leighton would accept aid from him in case of an emergency. It was nearly ten o’clock by this time, and Mr. Leighton said, “I suppose this is early for city folks, but in the country we retire early, and I am tired. We always have prayers at night. Bring the books, daughter, and we’ll sing the 267th hymn.”

Dorcas did as she was bidden, and, offering a Hymnal to Rex, opened an old-fashioned piano and began to play and sing, accompanied by her father, whose trembling voice quavered along until he reached the words,—

“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.”

Then he broke down entirely, while Dorcas soon followed, and Rex was left to finish alone, which he did without the slightest hesitancy. He had a rich tenor voice; taking up the air where Dorcas dropped it, he sang the hymn to the end, while Mr. Leighton stood with closed eyes and a rapt expression on his face.

“I wish Bertha could hear that. Let us pray,” he said, when the song was ended, and, before he quite knew what he was doing, Rex found himself on his knees, listening to Mr. Leighton’s fervent prayer, which closed with the petition for the safety of those upon the deep.

As Rex had told Phineas Jones, he was not a professor, and he did not call himself a very religious man. He attended church every Sunday morning with his aunt, went through the services reverently, and listened to the sermon attentively, but not all the splendors of St. Thomas’s Church had ever impressed him as did that simple, homely service in the farm house among the Leicester hills, where his “Amen” to the prayer for those upon the sea was loud and distinct, and included in it not only his aunt and Bertha, but also the girl whom he had knocked down, who seemed to haunt him strangely.

“If I were to have much of this, Phineas would not be obliged to take me to one of his meetings to convert me,” he thought, as he arose from his knees and signified his readiness to retire.