Kathie's Soldiers Part 28

"But it's through now. I feel like saying, with Joe Gargery, 'And now, Pip, old chap,' (Pip, in this instance, standing for country) 'we've done our duty by one another.' School is out, and Uncle Sam is sending us home as fast as possible. I've nothing to do now but to be gloriously lazy, and have every one wait upon me."

"O, I am so glad, so thankful," and Kathie pressed the thin hands in her own, so soft and warm, "to have you back here, when we were afraid--"

"It has been a hard struggle, little Kathie. I shall never see a blue coat again without thinking of what many a brave fellow has had to suffer. I seem to have been feasted upon roses; but hundreds of them had no such luck."

"And to come to peace at last,--to know there will be no more calls!"

"It certainly is good tidings of great joy. And though I couldn't be in at the last, losing all the triumph and glory, I feel that I did a little good work, and shall never regret the rest."

Her soft eyes answered him.

"And there is something else. I want to tell you that your precious words bore good fruit after many days. My dear child," drawing her closer to him until the silken curls swept his cheek, "I owe you more than I can ever express, ever pay. It was your sweet, simple daily life, and your unconscious heroism that first led me to think. I have heard hundreds of sermons, and had hosts of religious friends, but nothing ever touched me like your gentle firmness that night so long ago at my brother's, and your rare modesty afterward, and all your straightforward course, even when it involved pain and sacrifice. I can't exactly tell you how the truth and the peace came to me, enabling me to do my duty to G.o.d and man; but when I was ill and helpless, and hovering on the verge of death, I want you to know that _His_ love was infinitely precious to me. It took away all perplexity, all care and trouble, and gave me rest in the dreariest of nights. And as He suffered for us, so ought we to be willing to suffer for one another. I never realized before what a great and grand thing life was when obedience to G.o.d crowns it first of all And even out there it seemed as if I was always taking lessons of you, remembering what you had said and done."

"O no, no!" she cried, with her utmost sweet humility. "I am not worthy of so much."

"My darling friend, I think you are one of G.o.d's own messengers. Through you I have found him, come to see him as he is, a tender, loving Father."

She hardly dared to taste the rich ripe fruit gathered here to her hand.

It was such a sacred work to have guided another soul ever so little, and she could scarcely believe that it had come through her.

"Are you going to keep Kathie all the afternoon?" asked a soft, pleading voice.

Both started. For many minutes they had been silently thinking of the little steps that reached to G.o.d, made so much more simple and easy by the tender spirit-leading than all the learned philosophy of the world.

"O Miss Jessie!"

"Mrs. Meredith, if you please," he exclaimed with a little laugh in his tone. "There, you have kissed enough. Come, sit down and look at me. I am afraid you will forget about my being one of our country's n.o.ble sons."

Jessie might have been a little thinner with all her anxiety and watching, but she was the same dear, sweet friend, and Kathie thought prettier than ever, with her half shy, tender grace.

"He has grown very exacting," the young wife said, with a smile.

Kathie blushed. "It seems so odd for you to--be--"

"Married," exclaimed Mr. Meredith. "Why, what else could I do? When I was a poor, helpless log, unable to stir hand or foot, some one had to take pity upon me. She was very good, I a.s.sure you."

"As if I had not known it long before!" and a host of old memories rushed over Kathie.

"Isn't it odd," Mr. Meredith said, in a lower tone, taking his wife's hand, "that it was through Kathie we came to know each other? I can just see the picture she made in the great hall of the hotel, like a little wild-flower blown astray by a gust of wind."

Jessie thought of something else,--how she and Charlie were sitting by the cheerful fire one winter night, when he had expressed a desire to make her happy in some way, because she was always studying the pleasure of others. But for that she might never have known the Alstons so intimately, and of course--

There she had to stop with a dainty blush.

It was very odd, Kathie decided, in her simple child's way.

"And we have to thank Kathie for a good deal of delicacy in keeping our secret," Mr. Meredith said. "Circ.u.mstances gave it into her hands long ago."

She smiled a little. "What did Ada say?" she asked, rather shyly.

"I have not been favored with Ada's opinion, but she and her mother are to pay me a short visit presently. George wanted me to come immediately to New York, but I fancied Jessie must be a trifle homesick; and, to confess the truth, I was longing for a glimpse of Brookside. Have you begun gardening yet, Kathie? And tell me the story of the whole winter.

I'm just famis.h.i.+ng for gossip."

Uncle Robert proposed returning presently, but they would not listen to his taking Kathie. Mr. Meredith begged her and Jessie to have tea up in the room, where he could look at them. His side was still very weak, and his journey had fatigued him too much to admit of his sitting up. "But I shall soon be about with a crutch," he announced, gayly.

Pa.s.sing the lodge cottage again that evening, Kathie gave a tender thought to its inmates, and the childish longing for fairy power came back to her. No wand, nothing but a Fortunatus's purse with one piece of gold in it, and that could not do everything.

Kathie was up betimes the next morning. There were lessons to study, an exercise to write, and a music practice to be sandwiched in somewhere, for Mr. Lawrence was to come that afternoon. And her head was still so full of Mr. Meredith and dear Jessie.

"It will not do," she said, presently, to herself, when she found that she was listening to every bird, and watching the cloud of motes in the suns.h.i.+ne; so with that she set to work in good earnest.

Belle Hadden was loftier than ever on this day, and seemed to hold herself quite apart. "A new kink of grandeur," Emma Lauriston said.

Lottie Thorne always had the earliest news. Now she made sundry mysterious confidences, prefaced with, "Would you have believed it?"

"What is that, Lottie?" asked one of the girls.

"O, haven't you heard?" the face aglow with a sense of importance. "Papa told us last night, though I suppose it is all over. Poor Belle! Why, it would kill me!"

"But what _is_ it?"

"About Mr. Hadden. He has been embezzling, or making false returns, or something, and charged the government with a great deal more than he supplied. Why, I believe it is almost a million! And he is in prison!"

"Not so bad as that," subjoined Sue Coleman, quietly.

"But he _is_ in prison."

"Yes, there is some trouble, but maybe it will not amount to much."

"I should think she would be ashamed to show her face!"

"How can _she_ help it?" said the softest and sweetest of voices. "It is very hard to punish her or make her answerable for her father's faults."

"What should you do, Kathie Alston, if you had been intimate with her?"

It was Sue Coleman who spoke, and there was a husky strand in her voice.

"I should keep on just the same. It will be very painful for her to bear anyhow. Suppose it was one of us!"

"You don't know what hateful things she said about your uncle ever so long ago," pursued Lottie.

"But if they were false, her merely saying them could not make them true, you know."

It was a bit of philosophy quite new to the girls, though each one might have thought of it long before, and was one of the things that had been a great comfort to Kathie many a time.

"But this _is_ true."

"It will be bitter enough to bear, then, without our adding to the burden"; and a tremulous color flitted over Kathie's fair face, not so much at what she had been saying as the fact that these girls were grouped around listening for her verdict.

"I don't believe she will come to-morrow," two or three voices decided.