CHAPTER XVI
ANOTHER HOME-COMING
MRS. STURGIS stepped eagerly off the twelve-five train on to the Bedford Station platform, and stood looking expectantly about her. A few seconds later Ken came charging through the crowd from the other end of the platform. They held each other for a moment at arms' length, in the silent, absorbing welcome when words seem insufficient; then Kenelm picked up his mother's bag and tucked her hand through his arm.
"Now don't get a cab, or anything," Mrs. Sturgis begged. "I can perfectly well walk to the street-car—or up to the house, for that matter. Oh, I'm so much, much better."
"Well," Ken said, "I thought we'd have a little something to eat first, and then—"
"But we'll have lunch as soon as we get home, dear. What—"
"Well, the fact is," Ken said hastily, "you see we're not at Westover Street just now. We've been staying in the country for a while, at the jolliest old place, and, er—they want you to come up there for a while, too."
Ken had been planning different ways of telling his mother of the passing of the Westover Street house, all the way down from Asquam. He could not, now, remember a single word of all those carefully thought out methods of approach.
"I don't think I quite understand," Mrs. Sturgis said. "Are you staying with friends? I didn't know we knew any one in the country."
They were in the middle of the street, and Ken chose to focus his attention on the traffic.
"Let's get to the lunch place," he said. "It's quieter there, to talk."
"Still wearing that old suit, dear?" Mrs. Sturgis said, touching Ken's sleeve as he hung up his overcoat in the restaurant.
"Er—this is my good suit," Ken murmured. "That is, it's the only suit I have—that is—"
"See here," said Mrs. Sturgis, whose perceptions were beginning to quicken as she faced a member of her family again with the barrier of cautious letters thrown aside; "there's been enough money, hasn't there?"
"Lots," Ken said hastily. "We've been living royally—wait till you see. Oh, it's really a duck of a place—and Phil's a perfect wonder."
"What's a duck of a place?"
"Applegate Farm. Oh law! Mother dear, I'll have to tell you. It's only that we decided the old house was too expensive for us to run just for ourselves, so we got a nice old place in the country and fixed it up."
"You decided—you got a place in the country? Do you mean to say that you poor, innocent children have had to manage things like that?"
"We didn't want you to bother. Please don't worry, now." Ken looked anxiously across the table at his mother, as though he rather expected her to go off in a collapse again.
"Nonsense, Ken, I'm perfectly all right! But—but—oh, please begin at the beginning and unravel all this."
"Wait till we get on the train," Ken said. "I want to arrange my topics. I didn't mean to spring it on you this way, at all, Mother. I wish Phil had been doing this job."
But Ken's topics didn't stay arranged. As the train rumbled on toward Bayside, the tale was drawn from him piecemeal; what he tried to conceal, his mother soon enough discovered by a little questioning. Her son dissimulated very poorly, she found to her amusement. And, after all, she must know the whole, sooner or later. It was only his wish to spare her any sudden shock which made him hold back now.
"And you mean to tell me that you poor dears have been scraping along on next to nothing, while selfish Mother has been spending the remnant of the fortune at Hilltop?"
"Oh, pshaw, Mother!" Ken muttered, "there was plenty. And look at you, all nice and well for us. It would have been a pretty sight to see us flourishing around with the money while you perished forlorn, wouldn't it?"
"Think of all the wealth we'll have now," Mrs. Sturgis suggested, "all the hundreds and hundreds that Hilltop has been gobbling."
"I'd forgotten that," whistled Ken. "Hi-ya! We'll be bloated aristocrats, we will! We'll have a steak for dinner!"
"Oh, you poor chicks!" said his mother.
She must hear about the Sturgis Water Line, and hints of the Maestro, and how wonderful Phil had been, teaching Kirk and all, and how perfectly magnificent Kirk was altogether—a jumbled rigamarole of salvaged motor-boats, reclaimed farm-house, music, somebody's son at sea, and dear knows what else, till Mrs. Sturgis hardly knew whether or not any of this wild dream was verity. Yet the train—and later, the trolley-car—continued to roll through unfamiliar country, and Mrs. Sturgis resigned herself trustfully to her son's keeping.
At the Asquam Station, Hop was drawn up with his antiquated surrey. He wore a sprig of goldenrod in his buttonhole, and goldenrod bobbed over the old horse's forelock.
"Proud day, ma'am," said Hop, as Ken helped his mother into the wagon, "Proud day, I'm sure."
"As if I were a wedding or something," whispered Mrs. Sturgis. "Ken, I'm excited!"
She looked all about at the unwinding view up Winterbottom Road—so familiar to Ken, who was trying to see it all with fresh eyes. They climbed out at the gate of the farm, and Hop turned his beast and departed. Half-way up the sere dooryard, Ken touched his wondering mother's arm and drew her to a standstill. There lay Applegate Farm, tucked like a big gray boulder between its two orchards. Asters, blue and white, clustered thick to its threshold, honeysuckle swung buff trumpets from the vine about the windows. The smoke from the white chimney rose and drifted lazily away across the russet meadow, which ended at the once mysterious hedge. The place was silent with the silence of a happy dream, basking content in the hazy sunlight of the late September afternoon.
Mrs. Sturgis, with a little sound of surprised delight, was about to move forward again, when her son checked her once more. For as she looked, Kirk came to the door. He was carrying a pan and a basket. He felt for the sill with a sandaled toe, descended to the wide doorstone, and sat down upon it with the pan on his knees. He then proceeded to shell Lima beans, his face lifted to the sun, and the wind stirring the folds of his faded green blouse. As he worked he sang a perfectly original song about various things.
Mrs. Sturgis could be detained no longer. She ran across the brown grass and caught Kirk into her arms—tin pan, bean-pods, and all. She kissed his mouth, and his hair, and his eyes, and murmured ecstatically to him.
"Mother! Mother!" Kirk cried, his hands everywhere at once; and then, "Phil! Quick!"
But Phil was there. When the Sturgis family, breathless, at last sorted themselves out, every one began talking at once.
"Don't you really think it's a nice place?"
"You came sooner than we expected; we meant to be at the gate."
"Oh, my dear dears!"
"Mother, come in now and see everything!" (This from Kirk, anxious to exhibit what he himself had never seen.)
"Come and take your things off—oh, you do look so well, dear."
"Look at the nice view!"
"Don't you think it looks like a real house, even if we did get it?"
"Oh, children dear! let me gather my poor scattered wits."
So Mrs. Sturgis was lovingly pulled and pushed and steered into the dusky little living-room, where a few pieces of Westover Street furniture greeted her strangely, and where a most jolly fire burned on the hearth. Felicia removed her mother's hat; Ken put her into the big chair and spirited away her bag. Mrs. Sturgis sat gazing about her—at the white cheese-cloth curtains, the festive bunches of flowers in every available jug, the kitchen chairs painted a decorative blue, and at the three radiant faces of her children.
Kirk, who was plainly bursting with some plan, pulled his sister's sleeve.
"Phil," he whispered loudly, "do you think now would be a good time to do it?"
"What? Oh—yes! Yes, go ahead, to be sure," said Felicia.
Kirk galloped forthwith to the melodeon, which Mrs. Sturgis had so far failed to identify as a musical instrument, seated himself before it, and opened it with a bang. He drew forth all the loudest stops—the trumpet, the diapason—for his pæan of welcome.
"It's a triumphal march, in your honor," Felicia whispered hastily to her mother. "He spent half of yesterday working at it."
Mrs. Sturgis, who had looked sufficiently bewildered became frankly incredulous. But the room was now filled with the strains of Kirk's music. The Maestro would not, perhaps, have altogether approved of its bombastic nature—but triumphant it certainly was, and sincere. And what the music lacked was amply made up in Kirk's face as he played—an ineffable expression of mingled joy, devotion, and the solid satisfaction of a creator in his own handiwork. He finished his performance with one long-drawn and really superb chord, and then came to his mother on flying feet.
"I meant it to be much, much nicer," he explained, "like a real one that the Maestro played. But I made it all for you, Mother, anyway—and the other was for Napoleon or somebody."
"Oh, you unbelievable old darling!" said Mrs. Sturgis. "As if I wouldn't rather have that than all the real ones! But, Ken—you didn't tell me even that he could play do-re-mi-fa!"
"Well, Mother!" Ken protested, "I couldn't tell you everything."
And Mrs. Sturgis, striving to straighten her tangled wits, admitted the truth of this remark.
After supper, which was a real feast, including bona fide mutton-chops and a layer cake, the Sturgis family gathered about the fireside.
"This is home to you," Mrs. Sturgis said. "How strange it seems! But you've made it home—I can see that. How did you, you surprising people? And such cookery and all; I don't know you!"
Phil and Ken looked at one another in some amusement.
"The cookery," said Felicia, "I'll admit came by degrees. Do you remember that very first bread?"
"If I recall rightly, I replaced that loose stone in the well-coping with it, didn't I?" said Ken, "or did I use it for the Dutchman's bow anchor?"
"Nothing was wrong with those biscuits, tonight," Mrs. Sturgis said. "Come and sit here with me, my Kirk."
Felicia blew out the candles that had graced the supper-table, drew the curtains across the windows where night looked in, and came back to sit on the hearth at her mother's feet. The contented silence about the fire was presently broken by a tapping at the outer door, and Ken rose to admit the Maestro and Martin. The Maestro, after a peep within, expressed himself loth to disturb such a happy time, but Ken haled him in without more ado.
"Nonsense, sir," he said. "Why—why you're part of us. Mother wouldn't have seen half our life here till she'd met you."
So the Maestro seated himself in the circle of firelight, and Martin retired behind a veil of tobacco-smoke—with permission—in the corner.
"We came," said the Maestro, after a time of other talk, "because we're going away so soon, and—"
"Going away!" Three blank voices interrupted him. Kirk left even his mother's arm, to find his way to the Maestro's.
"But I do go away," said the old gentleman, lifting a hand to still all this protest, "every autumn—to town. And I came partly to ask—to beg you—that when cold weather seems to grip Applegate Farm too bitterly, you will come, all of you, to pay an old man a long visit. May I ask it of you, too, Mrs. Sturgis? My house is so big—Martin and I will find ourselves lost in one corner of it. And—" he frowned tremendously and shook Kirk's arm, "I absolutely forbid Kirk to stop his music. How can he study music without his master? How can he study without coming to stay with his master, as it was in the good old days of apprenticeship?"
Felicia looked about the little shadow-flecked room.
"I know what you're thinking," said the Maestro, smoothing Kirk's dark hair. “You're hating the thought of leaving Applegate Farm. But perhaps the winter wind will sing you a different tune. Do you not think so, Mrs. Sturgis?"
Mrs. Sturgis nodded. "Their experience doesn't yet embrace all the phases of this," she said.
"Yes," said the Maestro, "some day before the snows come, you will come to me. And we'll fill that big house with music, and songs, and laughing—yes, and work, too. Ah, please!" said the Maestro, quite pathetically.
Felicia put her hand out to his.
"We will come, dear Maestro," she said, "when this little fire will not keep us warm any longer."
"Thank you," said the Maestro.
From behind them came murmurous talk of ships—Ken and Martin discussing the Celestine and her kind, and the magic ports below the Line. Kirk whispered suddenly to the Maestro, who protested.
"Oh, please!" begged Kirk, his plea becoming audible. "Really it's a nice thing. I know Ken makes fun of it, but I have learned a lot from it, haven't I? Please, Maestro!"
"Very well, naughty one," said the musician; "if your mother will forgive us."
He bowed to her, and then moved with Kirk into the unlit part of the room where the little organ stood. With a smile of tender amusement, he sat down at the odd little thing and ran his fingers up and down the short, yellowed keyboard. Then, with Kirk lost in a dream of rapt worship and listening ecstasy beside him, he began to play. And his touch made of the little worn melodeon a singing instrument, glorified beyond its own powers by the music he played.
The dimly firelit room swam with the exquisite echo of the melody. Ken and Martin sat quiet in their corner. Felicia gazed at the dear people in the home she had made: at Ken, who had made it with her—dear old Ken, the defender of his kindred; at Kirk, for whom they had kept the joy of living alight; at the Maestro, the beautiful spirit of the place; at her mother, given back to them at last. Mrs. Sturgis looked wonderingly at her children in the firelight, but most of all at Kirk, whose face was lighted, as he leaned beside the Maestro, with a radiance she had never before seen there.
And without, the silver shape of a waning moon climbed between the black, sighing boughs of the laden orchard, and stood above the broad, gray roof of Applegate Farm.