Winter Evening Tales Part 7

"Don't you see that Jamie could get that just as well? Jamie can take the business and make something of it. Father is letting it get worse and worse every week. We should have one less to feed, and Jamie's earnings besides. Sandy, _it has got to be_! Do it while we can make something by the step."

"It is a mean, dastardly step, Sallie. G.o.d will never forgive me if I take it," and David could hear that his son's voice trembled.

In fact, great tears were silently dropping from Sandy's eyes, and his father knew it, and pitied him, and thanked G.o.d that the lad's heart was yet so tender. And after this he felt strangely calm, and dropped into a happy sleep.

In the morning he remembered all. He had not heard the end of the argument, but he knew that Sallie would succeed; and he was neither astonished nor dismayed when Sandy came home in the middle of the day and asked him to "go down the avenue a bit."

He had determined to speak first and spare Sandy the shame and the sorrow of it; but something would not let him do it. In the first place, a singular lightness of heart came over him; he noticed all the gay preparations for Christmas, and the cries and bustle of the streets gave him a new sense of exhilaration. Sandy fell almost unconsciously into his humor. He had a few cents in his pocket, and he suddenly determined to go into a cheap restaurant and have a good warm meal with his father.

Davie was delighted at the proposal and gay as a child; old memories of days long past crowded into both men's minds, and they ate and drank, and then wandered on almost happily. Davie knew very well where they were going, but he determined now to put off saying a word until the last moment. He had Sandy all to himself for this hour; they might never have such another; Davie was determined to take all the sweetness of it.

As they got lower down the avenue, Sandy became more and more silent; his eyes looked straight before him, but they were brimful of tears, and the smile with which he answered Davie's pleasant prattle was almost more pitiful than tears.

At length they came in sight of a certain building, and Sandy gave a start and shook himself like a man waking out of a sleep. His words were sharp, his voice almost like that of a man in mortal danger, as he turned Davie quickly round, and said:

"We must go back now, father. I will not go another step this road--no, by heaven! though I die for it!"

"Just a little further, Sandy."

And Davie's thin, childlike face had an inquiry in it that Sandy very well understood.

"No, no, father, no further on this road, please G.o.d!"

Then he hailed a pa.s.sing car, and put the old man tenderly in it, and resolutely turned his back upon the hated point to which he had been going.

Of course he thought of Sallie as they rode home, and the children and the trouble there was likely to be. But somehow it seemed a light thing to him. He could not helping nodding cheerfully now and then to the father whom he had so nearly lost; and, perhaps, never in all their lives had they been so precious to each other as when, hand-in-hand, they climbed the dark tenement stair together.

Before thy reached the door they heard Sallie push a chair aside hastily, and come to meet them. She had been crying, too, and her very first words were, "Oh, father!' I am so glad!--so glad!"

She did not say what for, but Davie took her words very gratefully, and he made no remark, though he knew she went into debt at the grocery for the little extras with which she celebrated his return at supper. He understood, however, that the danger was pa.s.sed, and he went to sleep that night thanking G.o.d for the love that had stood so hard a trial and come out conqueror.

The next day life took up its dreary tasks again, but in Davie's heart there was a strange presentiment of change, and it almost angered the poor, troubled, taxed wife to see him so thoughtlessly playing with the children. But the memory of the wrong she had nursed against him still softened and humbled her, and when he came home after carrying round his papers, she made room for him at the stove, and brought him a cup of coffee and a bit of bread and bacon.

Davie's eyes filled, and Sallie went away to avoid seeing them. So then he took out a paper that he had left and began to read it as he ate and drank.

In a few minutes a sudden sharp cry escaped him. He put the paper in his pocket, and, hastily resuming his old army cloak and Scotch bonnet, went out without a word to anyone.

The truth was that he had read a personal notice which greatly disturbed him. It was to the effect that, "If David Morrison, who left Aberdeen in 18--, was still alive, and would apply to Messrs. Morgan & Black, Wall street, he would hear of something to his advantage."

His long-lost brother was the one thought in his heart. He was going now to hear something about Sandy.

"He said 'sure as death,' and he would mind that promise at the last hour, if he forgot it before; so, if he could not come, he'd doubtless send, and this will be his message. Poor Sandy! there was never a lad like him!"

When he reached Messrs. Morgan & Black's, he was allowed to stand unnoticed by the stove a few minutes, and during them his spirits sank to their usual placid level. At length some one said:

"Well, old man, what do _you_ want?"

"I am David Morrison, and I just came to see what _you_ wanted."

"Oh, you are David Morrison! Good! Go forward--I think you will find out, then, what we want."

He was not frightened, but the man's manner displeased him, and, without answering, he walked toward the door indicated, and quietly opened it.

An old gentleman was standing with his back to the door, looking into the fire, and one rather younger, was writing steadily away at a desk.

The former never moved; the latter simply raised his head with an annoyed look, and motioned to Davie to close the door.

"I am David Morrison, sir."

"Oh, Davie! Davie! And the old blue bonnet, too! Oh, Davie! Davie, lad!"

As for Davie, he was quite overcome. With a cry of joy so keen that it was like a sob of pain, he fell fainting to the floor. When he became conscious again he knew that he had been very ill, for there were two physicians by his side, and Sandy's face was full of anguish and anxiety.

"He will do now, sir. It was only the effect of a severe shock on a system too impoverished to bear it. Give him a good meal and a gla.s.s of wine."

Sandy was not long in following out this prescription, and during it what a confiding session these two hearts held! Davie told his sad history in his own unselfish way, making little of all his sacrifices, and saying a great deal about his son Sandy, and Sandy's girls and boys.

But the light in his brother's eyes, and the tender glow of admiration with which he regarded the unconscious hero, showed that he understood pretty clearly the part that Davie had always taken.

"However, I am o'erpaid for every grief I ever had, Sandy," said Davie, in conclusion, "since I have seen your face again, and you're just handsomer than ever, and you eight years older than me, too."

Yes, it was undeniable that Alexander Morrison was still a very handsome, hale old gentleman; but yet there was many a trace of labor and sorrow on his face; and he had known both.

For many years after he had left Davie, life had been a very hard battle to him. During the first twenty years of their separation, indeed, Davie had perhaps been the better off, and the happier of the two.

When the war broke out, Sandy had enlisted early, and, like Davie, carried through all its chances and changes the hope of finding his brother. Both of them had returned to their homes after the struggle equally hopeless and poor.

But during the last eleven years fortune had smiled on Sandy. Some call of friends.h.i.+p for a dead comrade led him to a little Pennsylvania village, and while there he made a small speculation in oil, which was successful. He resolved to stay there, rented his little Western farm, and went into the oil business.

"And I have saved thirty thousand dollars, hard cash, Davie. Half of it is yours, and half mine. See! Fifteen thousand has been entered from time to time in your name. I told you, Davie, that when I came back we would share dollar for dollar, and I would not touch a cent of your share no more than I would rob the United States Treasury."

It was a part of Davie's simple nature that he accepted it without any further protestation. Instinctively he felt that it was the highest compliment he could pay his brother. It was as if he said: "I firmly believed the promise you made me more than forty years ago, and I firmly believe in the love and sincerity which this day redeems it." So Davie looked with a curious joyfulness at the vouchers which testified to fifteen thousand dollars lying in the Chemical Bank, New York, to the credit of David Morrison; and then he said, with almost the delight of a schoolboy:

"And what will you do wi' yours, Sandy?"

"I am going to buy a farm in New Jersey, Davie. I was talking with Mr.

Black about it this morning. It will cost twelve thousand dollars, but the gentleman says it will be worth double that in a very few years. I think that myself, Davie, for I went yesterday to take a good look at it. It is never well to trust to other folks' eyes, you know."

"Then, Sandy, I'll go shares wi' you. We'll buy the farm together and we'll live together--that is, if you would like it."

"What would I like better?"

"Maybe you have a wife, and then--"

"No, I have no wife, Davie. She died nearly thirty years ago. I have no one but you."

"And we will grow small fruits, and raise chickens and have the finest dairy in the State, Sandy."

"That is just my idea, Davie."