_ PART XVIII CHAPTER IV
"Go in first and prepare them, dear Blanche; I will wait by the door. Leave it ajar, that I may see them."
Roland is leaning against the wall, old armor suspended over the gray head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I give to the dark cheek and high brow: no change there for the worse,--no new sign of decay. Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the brow,--no shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed, smile with ease,--no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance shows me all this.
"Papoe!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a line. He is coming to-morrow,--to-morrow! If we lived to the age of Methuselah, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is, if the poor man's to be plagued with a good, affectionate son!"
And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father, one minute more, and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty and thin, but still not a furrow. Whence comes that short sigh?
"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret-clock? Well, just go and look again."
"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before you, and they all concur in the same tale,--to-day is not to-morrow."
"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and they've never gone right since he left." Now out comes a letter, for I hear the rustle, and then a step glides towards the lamp, and the dear, gentle, womanly face--fair still, fair ever for me, fair as when it bent over my pillow in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and now the flutter, the start, the cry,--"It is true! it is true! Your arms, mother. Close, close round my necks as in the old time. Father! Roland too! Oh, joy! joy! joy! home again,--home till death!" _