“I think it's smoke.” And both the old people with faces pressed close to the window peered wistfully at the thin gray film wavering above the trees of the distant grove.
“It is moving this way, mother.”
“Like enough; the breeze is in the east.”
“There!” they both exclaimed as the faint sound of a whistle reached them. The rumble of the car wheels became distinct, but still they stood watching the shifting line of smoke as it came nearer and nearer. Neither moved until the long train rushed through the town, passing only a few rods from the windows where they were watching. Then Uncle Matt turned away and sat down in his old-fashioned splint rocker. His hands, bronzed and knotted with weather and work, were clasped over the head of his walking stick. He leaned forward, heavily resting his head on his hands.
“Aren't you goin' for the mail, father?”
“Tain't any use. I've been every day for ten years, and never a word from Jem yet.”
“But it might come to-day, and I couldn't stand it noways to think maybe there was a letter and we didn't know it.”
Uncle Matt rose slowly from his chair. “Seems ’zif I couldn't drag myself up to the post-office many more times. This goin' and goin' every day, and watchin' and watchin' the letters poppin' into the boxes here and there and everywhere, and thinkin' every time that the next one will fly into our box and it will be from Jem—but there, mother, I'm goin'. Maybe it will come to-day.”
Aunt Betsey rocked back and forth crying softly, while Uncle Matt with labored effort moved around the room getting ready for his walk. He came and stood beside her as he buttoned his worn, faded coat snugly across his chest; then he patted her silvered hair with clumsy sympathy, saying, “There, mother; there mother, I'm goin' now.” Aunt Betsey nodded and tried to smile as he went out the door.
It was a snowy, tedious walk, but Uncle Matt trudged bravely on, the heroism of his wife's smile filling his loving old heart and urging forward his aged, rheumatic limbs. Every one in the village knew him—knew the almost hopeless hope of his daily pilgrimages to the office. The group of idlers waiting to catch stray bits of gossip from those who were coming and going, smiled sympathetically when the postal clerk took a letter from the box and waved it at the old man as he entered the door.
“For me?” he asked. “Is it for me?”
The clerk nodded. “I hope it's all right,” he ventured, noticing how the letter shook in the trembling hand that received it. But Uncle Matt could make no reply. He stumbled out into the street again, the precious letter crushed in his intense, eager grasp. He forgot all the heart-breaking anxiety of those long years. He forgot that Jem had left home in a drunken fury, without one word of farewell, but sullen curses. He forgot the bitter cruelty of his unbroken silence during the long years. He remembered only that he was their son, their bright, beautiful, winning boy. As he neared home he exulted in the thought of the happiness he was taking to his boy's mother. He knew he would find her sitting before the little open stove trying to knit. She had long since stopped asking if there were any mail, and this morning she did not even look up as he came in, lest he should see her too willing tears. He sat down by her and put the letter in her lap. There was no need to ask from whom it came. They had no thought at first whether the news were good or bad. It was enough for the moment that Jem was alive, that he had written to them.
“You open it, mother,” Uncle Matt said at last.
She lifted it from her lap, took hold of one corner with thumb and finger, but her hands refused to do their bidding.
“I can't, father. You open it.”
He reached to take it, but all the sorrow and loneliness of those long years, all the disappointed pride and ambition, and all the possibilities of happiness or misery concealed by that common yellow envelope, overwhelmed him.
“No, mother, I can't,” he faltered; and after a pause, “We'll take it to Lizy.”
Lizy's home over on the next street was in plain sight across the open space. They went across the field by the foot-path the schoolchildren had worn through the snow. Lizy saw them coming, carrying the letter between them, and opened the door as they turned into the yard.
“You open it,” Aunt Betsey said, by way of greeting, holding the letter toward her sister.
Lizy was a plump, comfortable woman, with much sense and little sentiment. “Lost your glasses?” she asked, running her scissors along the edge. “Why! it's from Jem! Now you let me set right down between you and I'll read it out loud.”
“Wait a minute, Lizy,” Aunt Betsey pleaded, content at first to see the letter unfolded in her sister's hand. Lizy talked in easy commonplaces until her sister said, “Now commence; read every word.”
“Dear Father and Mother”—Aunt Betsey put out a detaining hand. “Wait a minute, Lizy, read that over again. You see he hasn't forgotten; he says, ‘Dear father and mother.’ Now go on.” And so the letter was read with many interruptions and comments.
When once more they were at home, sitting side by side before the fire, they discussed Jem's letter from beginning to end, over and over, until both were nodding in drowsy happiness. Aunt Betsey was the first to start up.
“Do you know, father,” she began, with a little break in her voice, “I've always blamed myself for Jem's goin' away. He just had common store stockings that winter. You mind? My hands were lame and I couldn't knit him any. 'N I've thought sometimes if he'd had on stockings that I knit, those boys couldn't have led him into the saloons so easily, and all these years of sorrow might have been different.”
“Don't, mother, don't blame yourself. It was all because Jem was too anxious to please everybody.” The old man rambled on, fumbling for excuses for his profligate son. “'Twasn't because he was bad at heart. He was too good-hearted. Wasn't that it, mother? He couldn't offend any one.”
Aunt Betsey nodded. “If I only could send him stockings that I knit, maybe they'd help to keep his feet from paths of destruction.”
Uncle Matt brightened up. “Do, mother. Of course it would help him.” Then he stopped in dismay, for his wife was crying again. “What's wrong? Haven't you the yarn?”
She shook her head, holding up the cylindrical strip she was working on. “The last bit is in these wrists, 'n if I raveled them out there wouldn't be more than enough to begin a pair of stockings.”
Uncle Matt's hand instinctively sought his pocket and searched hopelessly for the money he knew was not there. Then he went to the book-shelf and drew from behind the books the well-worn purse. With a desponding glance he replaced it. “There ain't anything we could sell?” he suggested, brightening.
“No, nothing. Everything was gone long ago. The spinning wheels went first and then the old clock; everything has been sold but”—
“Have you sold the foot-stove?”
Aunt Betsey caught her breath. “It's the only thing that's left of mother's.”
“Is that so? I wouldn't have said anything if I'd known that.”
There was little sleep for the anxious mother that night, but with the morning her spirits rose. After breakfast she wrapped up the old-fashioned foot-stove and put the package in her husband's hands. “You take that up to Mis' Deering. She said she'd give me five dollars for it if I ever wanted to sell it. Then go on up to the store and get me some yarn; they know what kind I buy. Go quick, before I change my mind.”
Uncle Matt made no remonstrance, for he knew the mother rejoiced in the sacrifice she was making for their son. The pang of parting with her treasured relic would be forgotten long before the stitches for the first stocking were cast on the shining needles. O, the warmth from that little old foot-stove and the strength of the hardy pioneer lives it had made comfortable must have been woven into those sturdy blue woolen hose! When they were finished,13the mother spread them in a row on her bed, and with her face bowed on its patchwork cover, prayed Heaven to make them in some way instrumental in saving her dear son. Then, with a letter full of sweet mother-love, she sent them on their way.
Uncle Matt resumed his daily visits to the office. Gradually Jem's letter was worn thin from much reading. The folds cracked and the pieces were held together by zigzag stitches. Many nights during that long, cold winter Jem's letter was tucked under his mother's pillow, while she looked forward with loving certainty to the time when another should come. And one day in the early spring the letter came.
“I was coming home, mother,” he wrote. “I've been a long time on the way. I had saved a little money, and I wanted to bring it to you. It is only a little bit, but I will send it, for I can't come now. They say I can't live, but, mother, I want you to know that I have not touched a drop of the stuff that ruined me since I got your package. I couldn't walk up to the bar with stockings on that I knew you had woven so many prayers into. Then, too, your letter was in my pocket, and your love seemed more real to me than it ever had when I was at home.”
Here the shaky, uncertain writing broke off; the pen had fallen from Jem's exhausted hand. The nurse wrote in explanation. Jem was in a hospital in Chicago. He had saved a little child from injury by a half-drunken cart driver, but he himself had been knocked down. His injuries were not serious of themselves, but his very life had been burned out by alcohol. His few weeks of abstinence were in his favor, but his recovery was doubtful. Then she forgot that her patient was simply a “case”—one of hundreds—and told with tender sympathy of the manly heroism of Jem's conduct.
Aunt Betsey arose when they had finished reading the letter and put on her bonnet and shawl. There were no tears and sighs now, but a resolute preparation for the inevitable. “I'm goin' over to Mis' Deering's,” she said quietly, and carried the letter with her. The few crises in the lives of these humble people had been met by the prompt action of the gentle, submissive wife, and Uncle Matt was more than content to leave the matter in her hands. Nor was he greatly surprised when they found themselves on the Chicago express traveling toward Jem. They gave no thought to danger or fatigue or to the possible failure to find him. He was there, they must see him.
These two old people, so innocent, so genuine, so trustful, won the kindliest services of the big, good-natured conductor. At another time the breakneck speed at which the carriage in which he placed them was driven, would have made them faint with terror, but now they only thought, in a dazed way, how kind the driver was to hurry so for them.
When the afternoon began to wane, the nurse by Jem's bedside gave place to a little woman in a rusty black dress. She sat by him scarcely breathing until he stirred uneasily, then she put her hand on his forehead. She stroked his cheek and patted it as she had been used to do when he came in his little white “nightie” to say his prayers by her knee. Her touch seemed to turn back the stained, blotted leaves of his life to the pure pages of youth. He smiled and murmured, “Now I lay—me—down—to sleep,” and then, “No, mother, I have not touched a drop since I got your letter.”
Toward midnight he roused, but with the calmness of one in whom death has drawn near, he showed no surprise at seeing his loved ones near him. “Tell the boys, mother, that I wasted my life. Tell them”—his words were coming more slowly now as the ebbing tide carried his soul out toward the dark waters—“tell them I tried to stop drinking, but I forgot to say, ‘Our Father.’”
There was an empty cot in that ward in the morning. There was a little procession that wound its way in mute sadness through the noise of the city. There were two sorrow-laden old people who returned to the lonely home in Brushville.
Jem's life had been a record of time wasted, talents abused, and honor tarnished. But at the setting of the sun of his life the golden glory of one honest effort and one deed of noble heroism shone through the clouds of wrong-doing that had darkened his day. —Emily D. McBride, in Union Signal.