UNCLE BLAIR COMES HOME

It happened that the Story Girl and I both got up very early on the morning of the Awkward Man’s wedding day. Uncle Alec was going to Charlottetown that day, and I, awakened at daybreak by the sounds in the kitchen beneath us, remembered that I had forgotten to ask him to bring me a certain school-book I wanted. So I hurriedly dressed and hastened down to tell him before he went. I was joined on the stairs by the Story Girl, who said she had wakened and, not feeling like going to sleep again, thought she might as well get up.

“I had such a funny dream last night,” she said. “I dreamed that I heard a voice calling me from away down in Uncle Stephen’s Walk—‘Sara, Sara, Sara,’ it kept calling. I didn’t know whose it was, and yet it seemed like a voice I knew. I wakened up while it was calling, and it seemed so real I could hardly believe it was a dream. It was bright moonlight, and I felt just like getting up and going out to the orchard. But I knew that would be silly and of course I didn’t go. But I kept on wanting to and I couldn’t sleep any more. Wasn’t it queer?”

When Uncle Alec had gone I proposed a saunter to the farther end of the orchard, where I had left a book the preceding evening. A young mom was walking rosily on the hills as we passed down Uncle Stephen’s Walk, with Paddy trotting before us. High overhead was the spirit-like blue of paling skies; the east was a great arc of crystal, smitten through with auroral crimsonings; just above it was one milk-white star of morning, like a pearl on a silver sea. A light wind of dawn was weaving an orient spell.

“It’s lovely to be up as early as this, isn’t it?” said the Story Girl. “The world seems so different just at sunrise, doesn’t it? It makes me feel just like getting up to see the sun rise every morning of my life after this. But I know I won’t. I’ll likely sleep later than ever tomorrow morning. But I wish I could.”

“The Awkward Man and Miss Reade are going to have a lovely day for their wedding,” I said.

“Yes, and I’m so glad. Beautiful Alice deserves everything good. Why, Bev—why, Bev! Who is that in the hammock?”

I looked. The hammock was swung under the two end trees of the Walk. In it a man was lying, asleep, his head pillowed on his overcoat. He was sleeping easily, lightly, and wholesomely. He had a pointed brown beard and thick wavy brown hair. His cheeks were a dusky red and the lashes of his closed eyes were as long and dark and silken as a girl’s. He wore a light gray suit, and on the slender white hand that hung down over the hammock’s edge was a spark of diamond fire.

It seemed to me that I knew his face, although assuredly I had never seen him before. While I groped among vague speculations the Story Girl gave a queer, choked little cry. The next moment she had sprung over the intervening space, dropped on her knees by the hammock, and flung her arms about the man’s neck.

“Father! Father!” she cried, while I stood, rooted to the ground in my amazement.

The sleeper stirred and opened two large, exceedingly brilliant hazel eyes. For a moment he gazed rather blankly at the brown-curled young lady who was embracing him. Then a most delightful smile broke over his face; he sprang up and caught her to his heart.

“Sara—Sara—my little Sara! To think didn’t know you at first glance! But you are almost a woman. And when I saw you last you were just a little girl of eight. My own little Sara!”

“Father—father—sometimes I’ve wondered if you were ever coming back to me,” I heard the Story Girl say, as I turned and scuttled up the Walk, realizing that I was not wanted there just then and would be little missed. Various emotions and speculations possessed my mind in my retreat; but chiefly did I feel a sense of triumph in being the bearer of exciting news.

“Aunt Janet, Uncle Blair is here,” I announced breathlessly at the kitchen door.

Aunt Janet, who was kneading her bread, turned round and lifted floury hands. Felicity and Cecily, who were just entering the kitchen, rosy from slumber, stopped still and stared at me.

“Uncle who?” exclaimed Aunt Janet.

“Uncle Blair—the Story Girl’s father, you know. He’s here.”

“WHERE?”

“Down in the orchard. He was asleep in the hammock. We found him there.”

“Dear me!” said Aunt Janet, sitting down helplessly. “If that isn’t like Blair! Of course he couldn’t come like anybody else. I wonder,” she added in a tone unheard by anyone else save myself, “I wonder if he has come to take the child away.”

My elation went out like a snuffed candle. I had never thought of this. If Uncle Blair took the Story Girl away would not life become rather savourless on the hill farm? I turned and followed Felicity and Cecily out in a very subdued mood.

Uncle Blair and the Story Girl were just coming out of the orchard. His arm was about her and hers was on his shoulder. Laughter and tears were contending in her eyes. Only once before—when Peter had come back from the Valley of the Shadow—had I seen the Story Girl cry. Emotion had to go very deep with her ere it touched the source of tears. I had always known that she loved her father passionately, though she rarely talked of him, understanding that her uncles and aunts were not whole-heartedly his friends.

But Aunt Janet’s welcome was cordial enough, though a trifle flustered. Whatever thrifty, hard-working farmer folk might think of gay, Bohemian Blair Stanley in his absence, in his presence even they liked him, by the grace of some winsome, lovable quality in the soul of him. He had “a way with him”—revealed even in the manner with which he caught staid Aunt Janet in his arms, swung her matronly form around as though she had been a slim schoolgirl, and kissed her rosy cheek.

“Sister o’ mine, are you never going to grow old?” he said. “Here you are at forty-five with the roses of sixteen—and not a gray hair, I’ll wager.”

“Blair, Blair, it is you who are always young,” laughed Aunt Janet, not ill pleased. “Where in the world did you come from? And what is this I hear of your sleeping all night in the hammock?”

“I’ve been painting in the Lake District all summer, as you know,” answered Uncle Blair, “and one day I just got homesick to see my little girl. So I sailed for Montreal without further delay. I got here at eleven last night—the station-master’s son drove me down. Nice boy. The old house was in darkness and I thought it would be a shame to rouse you all out of bed after a hard day’s work. So I decided that I would spend the night in the orchard. It was moonlight, you know, and moonlight in an old orchard is one of the few things left over from the Golden Age.”

“It was very foolish of you,” said practical Aunt Janet. “These September nights are real chilly. You might have caught your death of cold—or a bad dose of rheumatism.”

“So I might. No doubt it was foolish of me,” agreed Uncle Blair gaily. “It must have been the fault, of the moonlight. Moonlight, you know, Sister Janet, has an intoxicating quality. It is a fine, airy, silver wine, such as fairies may drink at their revels, unharmed of it; but when a mere mortal sips of it, it mounts straightway to his brain, to the undoing of his daylight common sense. However, I have got neither cold nor rheumatism, as a sensible person would have done had he ever been lured into doing such a non-sensible thing; there is a special Providence for us foolish folk. I enjoyed my night in the orchard; for a time I was companioned by sweet old memories; and then I fell asleep listening to the murmurs of the wind in those old trees yonder. And I had a beautiful dream, Janet. I dreamed that the old orchard blossomed again, as it did that spring eighteen years ago. I dreamed that its sunshine was the sunshine of spring, not autumn. There was newness of life in my dream, Janet, and the sweetness of forgotten words.”

“Wasn’t it strange about MY dream?” whispered the Story Girl to me.

“Well, you’d better come in and have some breakfast,” said Aunt Janet. “These are my little girls—Felicity and Cecily.”

“I remember them as two most adorable tots,” said Uncle Blair, shaking hands. “They haven’t changed quite so much as my own baby-child. Why, she’s a woman, Janet—she’s a woman.”

“She’s child enough still,” said Aunt Janet hastily.

The Story Girl shook her long brown curls.

“I’m fifteen,” she said. “And you ought to see me in my long dress, father.”

“We must not be separated any longer, dear heart,” I heard Uncle Blair say tenderly. I hoped that he meant he would stay in Canada—not that he would take the Story Girl away.

Apart from this we had a gay day with Uncle Blair. He evidently liked our society better than that of the grown-ups, for he was a child himself at heart, gay, irresponsible, always acting on the impulse of the moment. We all found him a delightful companion. There was no school that day, as Mr. Perkins was absent, attending a meeting of the Teachers’ Convention, so we spent most of its golden hours in the orchard with Uncle Blair, listening to his fascinating accounts of foreign wanderings. He also drew all our pictures for us, and this was especially delightful, for the day of the camera was only just dawning and none of us had ever had even our photographs taken. Sara Ray’s pleasure was, as usual, quite spoiled by wondering what her mother would say of it, for Mrs. Ray had, so it appeared, some very peculiar prejudices against the taking or making of any kind of picture whatsoever, owing to an exceedingly strict interpretation of the second commandment. Dan suggested that she need not tell her mother anything about it; but Sara shook her head.

“I’ll have to tell her. I’ve made it a rule to tell ma everything I do ever since the Judgment Day.”

“Besides,” added Cecily seriously, “the Family Guide says one ought to tell one’s mother everything.”

“It’s pretty hard sometimes, though,” sighed Sara. “Ma scolds so much when I do tell her things, that it sort of discourages me. But when I think of how dreadful I felt the time of the Judgment Day over deceiving her in some things it nerves me up. I’d do almost anything rather than feel like that the next time the Judgment Day comes.”

“Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell a story,” said Uncle Blair. “What do you mean by speaking of the Judgment Day in the past tense?”

The Story Girl told him the tale of that dreadful Sunday in the preceding summer and we all laughed with him at ourselves.

“All the same,” muttered Peter, “I don’t want to have another experience like that. I hope I’ll be dead the next time the Judgment Day comes.”

“But you’ll be raised up for it,” said Felix.

“Oh, that’ll be all right. I won’t mind that. I won’t know anything about it till it really happens. It’s the expecting it that’s the worst.”

“I don’t think you ought to talk of such things,” said Felicity.

When evening came we all went to Golden Milestone. We knew the Awkward Man and his bride were expected home at sunset, and we meant to scatter flowers on the path by which she must enter her new home. It was the Story Girl’s idea, but I don’t think Aunt Janet would have let us go if Uncle Blair had not pleaded for us. He asked to be taken along, too, and we agreed, if he would stand out of sight when the newly married pair came home.

“You see, father, the Awkward Man won’t mind us, because we’re only children and he knows us well,” explained the Story Girl, “but if he sees you, a stranger, it might confuse him and we might spoil the homecoming, and that would be such a pity.”

So we went to Golden Milestone, laden with all the flowery spoil we could plunder from both gardens. It was a clear amber-tinted September evening and far away, over Markdale Harbour, a great round red moon was rising as we waited. Uncle Blair was hidden behind the wind-blown tassels of the pines at the gate, but he and the Story Girl kept waving their hands at each other and calling out gay, mirthful jests.

“Do you really feel acquainted with your father?” whispered Sara Ray wonderingly. “It’s long since you saw him.”

“If I hadn’t seen him for a hundred years it wouldn’t make any difference that way,” laughed the Story Girl.

“S-s-h-s-s-h—they’re coming,” whispered Felicity excitedly.

And then they came—Beautiful Alice blushing and lovely, in the prettiest of pretty blue dresses, and the Awkward Man, so fervently happy that he quite forgot to be awkward. He lifted her out of the buggy gallantly and led her forward to us, smiling. We retreated before them, scattering our flowers lavishly on the path, and Alice Dale walked to the very doorstep of her new home over a carpet of blossoms. On the step they both paused and turned towards us, and we shyly did the proper thing in the way of congratulations and good wishes.

“It was so sweet of you to do this,” said the smiling bride.

“It was lovely to be able to do it for you, dearest,” whispered the Story Girl, “and oh, Miss Reade—Mrs. Dale, I mean—we all hope you’ll be so, so happy for ever.”

“I am sure I shall,” said Alice Dale, turning to her husband. He looked down into her eyes—and we were quite forgotten by both of them. We saw it, and slipped away, while Jasper Dale drew his wife into their home and shut the world out.

We scampered joyously away through the moonlit dusk. Uncle Blair joined us at the gate and the Story Girl asked him what he thought of the bride.

“When she dies white violets will grow out of her dust,” he answered.

“Uncle Blair says even queerer things than the Story Girl,” Felicity whispered to me.

And so that beautiful day went away from us, slipping through our fingers as we tried to hold it. It hooded itself in shadows and fared forth on the road that is lighted by the white stars of evening. It had been a gift of Paradise. Its hours had all been fair and beloved. From dawn flush to fall of night there had been naught to mar it. It took with it its smiles and laughter. But it left the boon of memory.