They bustled about happily, getting the house in matchless order. It was something they had learned to do together beautifully, each taking a task and rushing it through, meanwhile all singing at the top of their lungs some of the hymns that had been sung at the last Sunday’s service or a bit of melody they had sung the last time Grace and Maxwell had been over. One voice would boom out from the top of the stairs, where Harry was wiping the dust from the stair railing and steps; another from the living room where Carey was adjusting a curtain pole that had fallen; Cornelia’s voice from the kitchen and pantry in a clear, sweet soprano; with Louise’s birdlike alto in the dining room, where she was setting the table for breakfast. They were all especially happy that evening somehow. A raise! A thousand more a year! Now Mother could be given more comforts and get well sooner! Now Father would not have to work so late at night going over miserable account books for people, to earn a little extra money.
There was a song in Cornelia’s heart as well as on her lips. She was remembering the words of her little brother and sister in that despairing conference she had overheard the first morning after her arrival and comparing them with what had been said to her tonight, and she was thinking how thankful she was for her homecoming just when it had been and how she would not have lost the last five months out of her life just as it had been for worlds.
With tender thoughts and skillful hands, Cornelia prepared the festive dinner the next evening and arranged a profusion of flowers everywhere. A few great luscious chrysanthemums, golden and white, lifting their tall globes in stately beauty from the gray jar in the living room; wild, riotous crimson and yellow and tawny brown, of the outdoor smaller variety, overflowing vases and bowls in the window seats and on the stair landing; a magnificent spray of brilliant maple leaves that Harry brought in from the woods before he went to school gracing the stone chimney above the mantel; and on the dining table, glowing and sweet, a bowl of deep-red roses, with a few exquisite white buds among them, the kind she knew her father liked because her mother loved them. There was nothing ostentatious or showy about the simple arrangement, nothing to make the member of the firm feel that extra thousand dollars would be wasted in show. It was all simple, sweet, homelike, and in good taste.
There was stewed chicken with little biscuits and currant jelly, mashed potatoes, and succotash, and for dessert, ice cream and angel cake. A simple, old-fashioned dinner without olives or salads. She knew that would please her father best, because it was her mother’s company dinner. It was the dinner he and Mother had on their wedding trip and would always continue to be the best of eating to his old-fashioned mind. Doubtless the old-fashioned member of the firm would enjoy it for the same reason. So Cornelia hummed a little carol as she went about stirring up the thickening for the gravy, stopping to fasten Louise’s pretty sprigged challis dress with the crimson velvet ribbon trimming, and smiling to herself that all was going well. She could hear Carey upstairs getting dressed, and Harry was already stumping downstairs. Everything was all ready. There were five minutes to spare before Father had said he would arrive with his company. Grace had gone up to smooth her hair after being out all the afternoon in the wind, and Maxwell had telephoned that he was on the way and would not delay them.
Then, just as she finished taking up the chicken and went into the living room to be sure Carey hadn’t left his coat and hat lying around on the piano or table, as he sometimes did, a taxi drew up at the door.
At first she thought it was Maxwell’s car, and her cheeks grew a shade pinker as she drew back to glance out of the window. Then she saw it was her father getting out and in a panic flew back to shut the kitchen door.
“They’re coming!” she called softly to the brothers and sister chattering at the head of the stairs.
Pulling down her sleeves and giving a dab to her hair as she went, she hurried back to open the door. But before she could reach it, it was flung open, and there on the threshold of the pretty room stood Mother! A new, well, strong mother, with great happiness in her sweet eyes and the flush of health on her cheeks. And close behind her, looking like a roguish boy, was Father, his eyes fairly dancing with delight.
“Dinner ready?” he called. “Here’s our guest, children, and we’re both hungry as bears! There, children what do you think of your mother? Doesn’t she look great?”
He pulled clumsily at the veil over Mrs. Copley’s hat, helped her off with her traveling coat, and set her forth in the middle of the room. The children, after a gasp of astonished delight, swarmed about her and fairly took her breath away. And when any one of them became momentarily detached from her, he took up the time in whooping with joy and talking at the top of his lungs.
At last the greeting subsided, and Mother became an object of tender solicitation and care again. They placed her in the biggest chair and brought her a glass of water, looking at her as at something precious that had been unwittingly too roughly handled and might have been harmed. In vain did she assure them that she was well again. They looked at their father for reassurance.
“That’s right!” he said. “The doctor says she’s as good as new. She might have come home sooner, but I told him to keep her till she was thoroughly well, and he did. Now children, it’s up to you to keep her so.”
They swarmed about her again and threatened to have the greetings all over once more, till Cornelia suddenly remembered her place as hostess and straightened up.
“But, Father, the company! When is he coming? And our other guests.” She looked cautiously up the stairs to where Grace was discreetly prolonging her hairdressing and lowered her voice.
“It’s too bad to have anyone here this first night. Mother will not like to have strangers.”
But Mother smiled royally. “No, dear, I’m anxious to meet your friends. Father had told me all about them. It’s one of the things that has helped to make me well, knowing that everything was going well with my dear children.”
“Oh, Mother!” said Cornelia with a sudden succumbing to the joy of having Mother home once more. “Oh, Mother!” And she knelt beside her mother’s chair and threw her arms again around the little mother whom she had been without so long and never knew till now how she had missed.
It was the sound of Maxwell’s car at the door and Grace Kendall’s lingering step upon the stair that roused her once more into action. Springing to her feet and glancing from the window, her face growing rosy with the sight of Maxwell coming up the walk, she exclaimed, “But father, where is your guest, your friend? I thought you were going to bring him with you.”
Father stepped smiling over to Mother’s chair and stood with his hand resting softly on her ripply brown hair. “This is my guest—my friend,” he said, tenderly looking down at his partner of the years with a wonderful smile, which she answered in kind. “This is the one I asked you to prepare for, and I wanted her to meet our young friends. I wanted her to get an immediate taste of the atmosphere of our home as it now is, as it has been during her absence, thanks to you, Cornelia, our blessed eldest child.”
The look he and her mother gave her would have been reward enough for any girl for giving up a dozen college graduations. But, as if that had not been enough for the full and free way in which she had given herself, she lifted her eyes, and there beyond them, standing in the doorway, stood Maxwell with such a look of worshipfulness in his face as he witnessed this girl receiving her due from her family as would have repaid a girl for almost any sacrifice.
Grace Kendall, coming slowly down the stairs into the pretty room, watched it all contentedly. Everything was as it should be. The mother was the kind of mother she had hoped she would be, and she liked the way Carey sat on the arm of her chair with his arm around the back protectingly. But suddenly Carey lifted his eyes and saw Grace, and the light of love swept into them. He sprang up and came to meet her eagerly. Taking her hand as if he were about to present a princess to an audience, he led her to his mother and said, “Mother, meet the most wonderful gir
l in the world,” and laid Grace Kendall’s hand in his mother’s. Mrs. Copley took Grace’s rosy face between her two soft white hands, and reaching up, kissed the sweet girl tenderly amid a little hush of silence that none of the family realized they were perpetrating, until suddenly Father awoke to the young girl’s sweet embarrassment, and reaching out a boyish hand to Maxwell, drew him to his wife’s chair and said roguishly, “Mother, and now meet the most wonderful man in the world!” And the little silence broke into a joyous tumult while they all went out to the waiting dinner and did full justice to it with a feeling that that evening was just the real beginning of things.
Late that night, as they were going up to bed, Cornelia, lingering for some small preparation for the morning, heard Harry say to his younger sister, “Gee! Lou, it’s good to have Mother home again, isn’t it? But somehow even she can’t take Cornie’s place, can she? Didn’t Cornie look pretty tonight?”
“She certainly did,” responded the little sister eagerly. “And she certainly is great. We can’t ever spare her again, can we, Harry?”
“Well, I guess you mighty well better get ready to,” said Harry knowingly. “It looks mighty like to me that Max intends us to spare her pretty soon all right, all right.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” sighed Louise. “But then, that’s nice. It isn’t like somebody you don’t know and love already. She’ll always be ours, and he’ll be ours, too. Won’t it be nice? Don’t you hope it’s so, Harry?”
And Cornelia’s cheeks grew pinker in the kitchen as she remembered words and looks that had passed that evening and turned to her task with a happy smile on her lips.
Chapter 31
It was just one year from the day when she had taken that first journey from west to east and met the pretty college girl on her tearful way home to her soul’s trying that Mrs. Maxwell came back from her sojourn in California. The business that had taken her there had prolonged itself, and then unexpectedly the sick sister had telegraphed that she was coming out to spend the winter and wanted her to remain. And because the sister had seemed to be in very great need of her, she had remained.
But now the sister was gaining rapidly, was fully about to be left in the care of a nurse and the many friends with whom she was surrounded, and Mrs. Maxwell had been summoned home for a great event.
As the train halted at the college station and a bevy of girls came chattering round, bidding some comrade good-bye, she thought of the day one year ago when she had been so interested in one girl and wondered whether her instincts concerning her had been true. She was going home to attend that girl’s wedding now! That girl so soon to be married to her dear and only son, and since that one brief afternoon together she had never seen that little girl again.
Oh, there had been letters, of course, earnest, loving, welcoming letters on the part of the mother; glad letters expressing joy at her son’s choice and picturing the future in glowing colors; shy, sweet, almost apologetic letters on the part of the girl, as if she had presumed in accepting a love so great as that of this son. And the mother had been glad, joyously glad, for was she not the first girl she had ever laid eyes upon whose face looked as if she were sweet, strong, and wise enough for her beloved son’s wife?
But now as she neared the place, and the meeting again was close at hand, her heart began to misgive her. What if she had made a mistake? What if this girl was not all those things that she had thought at that first sight? What if Arthur, too, had been deceived, and the girl would turn out to be frivolous, superficial, unlovely in her daily life, unfine in soul and thought? For was she, the mother, not responsible in a large way for this union of the two? Had she not fairly thrown her son into the way of knowing the girl and furthered their first acquaintance in her letters in little subtle ways that she hardly realized at the time but that had come from the longing of her soul to have a daughter just like what she imagined this girl must be?
All the long miles she tortured her soul with these thoughts, and then would come the memory of the sweet, sad, girlish face she had watched a year ago, the strength, the character in the lovely profile of firm little chin and well-set head, the idealism in the clear eyes, and her heart would grow more sure. Then she would pray that all might be well and again take out her son’s last letter and read it over, especially the last few paragraphs:
You will love her, mother of mine, for she is just your ideal. I used to wonder how you were ever going to stand it when I did fall in love, to find out the girl was not what you had dreamed I should marry. For I honestly thought there were no such girls as you had brought me up to look for. When I went to college and found what modern girls were, I used to pity you sometimes when you found out, too. But Cornelia is all and more than you would want. She goes the whole limit of your desire, I believe, for she is notably a Christian. I speak it very reverently, Mother, because I have found few that are, at least, that are recognizable as such; and generally those have managed to make the fact unpleasant by the belligerent way in which they flaunt it and because of their utter crudeness in every other way. Perhaps that isn’t fair, either. I have met a few who seemed genuine and good, but they were mortally shy and never seemed to dare open their mouths. But this girl of mine is rare and fine. She can talk, and she can work, and she can live. She can be bright and cheerful, and she can suffer and strive; but she is a regular girl, and yet she is a Christian. You should hear her lead a Christian Endeavor meeting, striking right home to where everybody lives, and acts, and makes mistakes, and is sorry or forgetful as the case may be. You should hear her pray, leading everybody to the feet of Christ to be forgiven and learn.
Yes, Mother, dear, she has led me there, too; and you have your great wish. I have given myself to your Christ and hers. I feel that He is my Christ now, and I am going to try to live and work for His cause all the rest of my life. For, to tell the truth, Mother, the Christ you lived and the Christ she lived was better than the best thing on earth, and I had to give in. I was a fool that I didn’t do it long ago, for I knew in my heart it was all true as you taught me, even though I did get a lot of nonsense against it when I was in college; but when I saw a young girl with all of life before her giving herself to Christian living this way, it finished me.
So I guess you won’t feel badly about the way things turned out. And anyway you must remember you introduced us and sort of wished her on me with those ferns; so you mustn’t complain. But I hope you’ll love her as much as you do me, and we are just waiting for you to get back for the ceremony, Mother, dear; so don’t let anything hinder you by the way, and haste the day! It cannot come too soon.
She had telegraphed in answer to that letter that she would start at once. The day had been set for the wedding and all arrangement made. Then a slight illness of her sister that looked more serious than it really was had delayed her again; and here she was traveling posthaste Philadelphiaward on the very day of the wedding, keeping everybody on the alert, lest she would not get there in time and the ceremony would have to be delayed. All these twelve months had passed, and yet she had not seen the reconstructed little house on the hill.
As she drew nearer the city, and the sun went down in the western sky, her heart began to quiver with excitement, mature, calm mother, even though she was. But she had been a long time away against her will from her only son, and her afternoon with Cornelia had been very brief. Somehow she could not make it seem real that she was really going to Arthur’s wedding that night and not going to have an opportunity to meet again the girl he was to marry until she was his wife—and never to have met her people until it was over, a final, a finished fact. She sighed a little wearily and looked toward the evening bars of sunset red and gold, with a wish, as mothers do when hard pressed, that it were all over and she going home at last to rest and a feeling that her time was out.
Then right in the midst of it the brakeman touched her on the shoulder and handed her a telegram, with that unerring instinct for identity that such officials seem to
have inborn.
With trembling fingers and a vague presentiment she tore it open and read:
Cornelia and I will meet you at West Philadelphia with a car and take you to her home. Have arranged to have your trunk brought up immediately from Broad Street, so you will have plenty of time to dress. Take it easy, little mother; we love you.
Arthur.
Such a telegram! She sat back relieved, steadied her trembling lips, and smiled. Smiled and read it over again. What a boy to make his bride come to the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony! What a girl to be willing to come!
Suddenly the tears came rushing to her eyes, glad tears mingled with smiles, and she felt enveloped in the love of her children. Her boy and her girl! Think of it! She would have a daughter! And she was a part of them; she was to be in the close home part of the ceremony, the beforehand and the sweet excitement. They were waiting for her and wanting her, and she wasn’t just a necessary part of it all because she was the groom’s mother; she was to stay his mother and be mother to the girl; and she would perhaps be a sister to the girl’s mother, who was also to be her boy’s mother. Now for the first time the bitterness was taken out of that thought about Arthur’s having another mother, and she was able to see how the two mothers could love him together—if the other one should prove to be the right kind of mother. And it now began to seem as if she must be to have brought up a girl like Cornelia.
At that very moment in the little house on the hill, four chattering college-girl bridesmaids were bunched together on Cornelia’s bed, supposed to be resting before they dressed, while Cornelia, happy-eyed and calm, sat among them for a few minutes’ reunion.