Elsie Singmaster

"AND NOW WE WILL GO HOME"

On the day upon which she took possession of the Wenner homestead, Mrs. Jacob Kalb was destined to have more than one shock. She let two pies burn while she thought of little Sarah, who looked so ill, and who had started away so wildly. She was just about to put on her shawl and go up to the Swartz house, to ask whether Sarah was there, when the door opened again.

This time it was not pushed open by Sarah's gentle hand, but was flung back, as though the master of the house were about to enter.

Thinking it was her husband, Mrs. Kalb did not turn at once.

"Well, did you get back?" she asked.

Then, with her arms uplifted to the hook where her shawl hung, she looked round over her shoulder.

A tall young man stood, not on the step, where tramps and agents belonged, but in the kitchen itself, his hand on Mrs. Kalb's freshly scrubbed table.

"Get out of my kitchen," she commanded. She was afraid of no tramps, but there was something in the clear gaze of this young man which frightened her. But he was clean and sober, and he looked like some one whom she knew. "What do you want?" she asked in a more friendly tone.

"Who are you?" asked the stranger.

"I am Mrs. Jacob Kalb, and this is my house."

"Where—" said the young man, and Mrs. Kalb never told the story afterwards without crying—"where is my mother?"

"Your mother!" she repeated. She stared at him with open mouth. Then she said slowly, "It is William Wenner that you look like."

"But where," said the young man again, "is my mother? And my father?"

Mrs. Kalb's shawl dropped slowly to the ground.

"Don't you know?"

"I don't know anything," said the young man. "I have been away for three years. I have had no letters for two years, until last week. Then I found one in Seattle. I—" He drew Sarah's poor, little, incoherent letter from his pocket. "I couldn't make out what my little sister meant. She says nothing about my mother or my father."

Mrs. Kalb was after all a very different person from her husband. She came round to where the young man was standing and made him sit down, and put a kind hand on his shoulder, while she told him.

"And you came now just in time," she sobbed. "The little ones shall go to Uncle Daniel and Aunt Mena, and he will take the farm. The fences are down already, and he is to be guardian. He went this morning to town to get the papers. He and Jacob went. He said we were to live here. But I wouldn't 'a' come, only somebody would have to live here, and—"

The young man was upon his feet.

"Where is my little sister?"

"By Aunt 'Liza. And Albert is there, and Ellie and Weezy are at school." Then she followed him to the door. "I won't be here any more when you come back. And I will have everything cleaned up, and I will leave some pies."

If she had doubted his identity, she would have been convinced by the quick turn which he made beyond the lilac-bushes, in order to take the shortest cut across the fields. She saw him stop for an instant to stare at the long, unbroken slope, which stretched clear to Uncle Daniel's door, then he hurried on.

Aunt Eliza was frightened almost out of her wits. He did not speak to her or greet her, except to say, "Where is my little sister?"

"William!" screamed Aunt 'Liza. "Ach, William, did you come home?"

"Where is my little sister?" He had always been fond of Aunt Eliza, and she had always been kind to him. But now there was no room in his heart for anything but grief and resentment and anxiety.

"She is—ach, I don't know where she is. She went this long time home. But Jacob Kalb lives now at your house. Ellie and Weezy are at school, perhaps she went to them. She is very for the teacher. Perhaps—Here is your little brother, William. Here is Albert. He is—he is—" And Aunt 'Liza burst into tears.

William stooped to kiss him, his lips trembling.

"Where is my uncle?"

"He is gone to—town, William. Ach, sit down once!"

"No," said William curtly. "I'll come back after a while for Albert."

And he was gone, his straight young shoulders bent.

He had suffered hardship and disappointment, but nothing had torn his heart like this. They must have written, they could not have been so cruel as to have forgotten him. It was a common thing for letters to be lost.

He read Sarah's letter once more as he strode along. She said that Uncle Daniel was after them, and that she had chased Jacob Kalb off with a gun. He knew Uncle Daniel's stern determination to have his own way, he knew how he coveted the farm, he knew Jacob's meanness. After that he ran until he came to the schoolhouse door. That, he found, was closed.

He rapped heavily; there was no answer. Then he looked in the window. The room was empty. As he was turning away in despair, he heard some one calling him.

"The school is closed. It won't be open till to-morrow. Miss Miflin went away."

It was the woman who lived in the next house. She had been a schoolmate of his when he was a little boy.

"Miss Miflin?" he repeated slowly. "Is she here yet? Don't you know me, Sallie?"

"No," answered the woman. "I—Why, William!" She had both his hands in hers, and could only stare at him speechlessly. "Why, William! What am I so glad to—" Then she, too, began to cry. "I can't help it, William. I am so sorry for you. I—"

"Do you know anything about my little sister?" asked William. "They said she had come over here."

"Yes, and she was crying, and she talked to teacher, and they went away, and Ellie and Weezy. They went to town. It was something about a guardian. I heard them talking. But I don't believe they could catch the nine o'clock train. Perhaps they are yet at the station. It is another train at eleven." She finished her sentence in a loud shriek as William, after glancing at his watch, ran down the road. "Come soon to see us, William."

She watched him until he vanished at the turn of the road, then she ran out to the field to tell her husband.

Sarah had often pictured to herself what she would do when William came home. Sometimes she seemed to see him coming up the lane, and herself flying down to meet him. Sometimes he opened the door and came into the kitchen and surprised her. Sometimes she imagined that she would cry; at other times, after she had been reading, for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, "Thaddeus of Warsaw," the one novel which the Wenners possessed, she was sure that she should faint. But in all her imaginings, she never dreamed that she should not know him.

She, too, saw the tall, broad-shouldered young man come into the court-room; she even looked absently straight into his eyes, with her frightened stare. Then she looked away.

"Stealing," Jacob Kalb was saying, "is stealing."

The judge bent forward and spoke to Jacob Kalb. William's character was, after all, not the court's affair. If he had been absent so long in Alaska, where the chances were one to fifty against his life, he was entirely negligible so far as the guardianship of these children was concerned. But the sudden vigor and vindictiveness of Jacob's charge angered the judge. He did not like the man's looks, and he did like Miss Miflin and the quaint little Pennsylvania German girls. He had seen Miss Miflin blush when she mentioned the absent brother.

"Do you mean that this older brother stole?" he asked plainly.

"He took school-board money, and didn't pay it back."

Miss Miflin leaned forward.

"He was treasurer of the school-board," she said. "All his accounts were straight, but his uncle, who succeeded him, claimed that forty dollars in cash was missing. His father paid it, and he has never had a chance to explain. He does not even know that his father and mother are dead. If he could—I am sure he would be here. And his uncle told people that he had stolen."

Her cheeks blazed, her hands clasped and unclasped. Sarah watched her dumbly.

"And you think he is still alive?" asked the judge kindly.

"I don't know," she said, with quivering lips.

"Do you think," began the judge again, after a long pause. Then he got no further. Little Sarah had risen from her chair. Her shawl had slipped from her shoulders, she looked with burning eyes across the room. The judge thought that she was going to fall, but she walked steadily across the open space between him and the wide-eyed clerks, toward the door.

"Sarah!" called Miss Miflin gently.

But Sarah did not stop. It was the judge who saw the stranger first, and who guessed the truth. Like a bird to its nest, she went, and a strong arm gathered her straight against the stranger's heart. Sarah did not speak, she only hid her eyes against the stranger's side.

The judge meant to look back at Miss Miflin, and then he meant to dismiss the court at once and banish all these impertinent young clerks, and then he wanted to talk to William. But his gaze stopped with Daniel Swartz.

Daniel's embarrassment at having been caught trying to bribe the twins had changed to a more poignant emotion. He looked frightened. The stranger's eyes were upon him, also.

"I am William Wenner," said the young man. "I have just come home. I did not know that my father and mother were dead, or that my little sister was in—in—such trouble. I wish that Jacob Kalb would say again what he said."

Jacob Kalb lifted a determined face.

"I said that when you went away you didn't pay back all the school-board money, and your pop had to pay it, and you weren't fit to be guardian of Sarah and Albert and the zwillings,—that is what I said."

He did not heed the frantic nudging of his master. He saw the Wenner house, which he had so long coveted, slipping from his grasp.

"Uncle Daniel—" It was a moment before Uncle Daniel looked up. "Is this true?"

"Well," began Uncle Daniel, in confusion. "It was this way—"

"Is it true?" asked William again.

Now it was Jacob Kalb who nudged and Uncle Daniel who paid no heed. He would take advantage of any means to advance on the path which he had set out for himself, he could even deceive himself into believing that he had done his best for the children, he could cheat and slander the absent, but here in the court-house, in the presence of the judge, he could not lie.

"No," he answered. He looked like an old man.

"Why did you accuse this young man falsely?" asked the judge.

Uncle Daniel got upon his feet.

"I think I will go home," he said. "William can be guardian if he wants to."

"No," said the judge. "You will not go home. You will answer my question. Did this young man owe the school-board forty dollars?"

"Yes."

"Did he pay it to the school-board?"

"No."

"I have your receipt," said William. "And Jacob Kalb was present when it was paid."

"It ain't so," muttered Jacob Kalb.

Then Uncle Daniel's rage broke forth.

"He did give me forty dollars," he shouted. "But he owed it to me before he owed it to the school-board, for all the things I bought him already. A couple of suits and hats and candy and such a little velocipede and peanuts, and I took him in the Fair; and then he wasn't thankful. He wouldn't be adopted. He—"

"So he paid you the forty dollars?"

"Yes. But it was mine." Then Uncle Daniel read in the faces of those about him the first frank estimate of his character which it had ever been his misfortune to see.

"I think I will go home," he said again.

"Not yet," replied the judge grimly. He looked at William. "Do you want to prosecute this gentleman?"

"No," answered William.

The judge saw that his lips were trembling.

"The court is adjourned," he said.

Then he changed his mind about lingering to talk to William. He opened the door into the ante-room, and shook hands with them all.

"Make yourselves at home, and stay as long as you like. I'm coming out to Spring Grove to see you. And if you ever need a friend, I'll do my best to help you. And if—" he looked smilingly at William and Miss Miflin, then he concluded that this was not a time for joking. "God bless you," he said, and was gone.

It was not until then that Sarah felt the arm round her loosen its hold.

"He has Albert yet," she said. "I am afraid he will do him something."

Whereupon the arm tightened its grasp once more, and William had only one hand to hold out to the amazed and delighted twins.

"Albert is all right," he said. "And you're not to worry about anything, ever."

"And if it hadn't been for teacher—" began Sarah.

"I know," said William. "And now we will go home."

"Home!" The word was like a burst of song. And only a few hours before she had thought they would have no home. She took a twin by either hand. "Come!"

But the twins drew back.

"We are going to walk by William," they said together.

"All right," consented Sarah.

She and Miss Miflin led the way down the broad steps, and William and the twins came behind. They gazed at him rapturously, realizing that he was as wonderful as their vague remembrance pictured him.

"He is going," said Louisa Ellen, when he drew his hand away, "to buy us candy!"

Fortunately it was to Sarah that he handed the bag, and it was with Sarah that the twins were anxious to sit when they got into the train. It was a little trying that she would let them have only two chocolate drops apiece until they got home.

She looked back once at William and Miss Miflin, who were not talking to each other, but who smiled at her. There was something in their faces which made her heart beat.

"I wonder—" she said softly to herself; then she did not finish the sentence.

"Oh, I am going to cook such a supper!" she said to the approving twins. "First I will fetch Albert and then I will cook."

But Albert did not need to be fetched. When they opened the kitchen door, he ran to meet them.

"Aunt 'Liza fetched me home," he cried, "I am never going away."

There was the gentle closing of a door, and a rustle of skirts, but Sarah did not hear. Then she sniffed the air.

"I smell baked things," she said. Before she finished, the twins were opening the pantry door.

"Look here once!" cried Louisa Ellen.

"Aunt 'Liza's crullers!" said Sarah. "And Aunt Mena's chocolate cake, five layers, and bread and pies, and it is chicken cooking on the stove, and I will make waffles yet, and—"

William caught her by the shoulders as she hurried from cupboard to stove.

"Here, youngster, not so fast!" This was William, indeed, with all William's dear, teasing, familiar ways! He looked at Miss Miflin, and his voice shook. "She is just like my mother. She—" But he could not go on. Instead he stooped and kissed Sarah.

It was not until after supper that there was time to talk; and then there was so much to be said, that they sat at first silently, except the twins, who, seated on the settle with Albert between them, were telling a fantastic tale of the day's adventures. Sarah could hardly speak for happiness. It seemed best to be quiet, and think, and try to realize that they were all safe and happy once more.

When William took Miss Miflin home, Sarah put Albert and the twins to bed, and told them all a story; then she went downstairs to wait until William came back. Even then she must be busy. She took up the sewing which she had laid down the day Albert was taken away. It was finished by the time that William opened the door.

He drew a chair up beside hers.

"Sarah," he said, "if a fairy came and told you that you might have anything in the world you wanted, what would you choose?"

"I don't want anything but to stay here," said Sarah.

"Not if she said you might go to school?"

"To school?" gasped Sarah. "Ach, but I am going to stay here and keep the house, so that when you come home again—"

Sarah was sure that William would not stay in Spring Grove.

"Come home?" repeated William. "But I am going to stay home. I am going to stay here and farm, and the trolley is coming almost to the door, and—"

The slender tower of the main building of the "Normal" came back into Sarah's field of vision.

"Ach!" she cried. "Perhaps I could go to the school, and ride on the trolley back and forth, and keep house yet, and—"

William laughed.

"You shall go on the trolley back and forth, all right, little Dutchman," he said. "But you shall not keep house, yet."

"But who will keep house? It is always so many things to do!"

"What would you think of teacher for a housekeeper?"

"Teacher!" cried Sarah. "Miss Miflin?"

"Yes."

"Would teacher stay here with us?"

"She says so," answered William gravely.