_ PART TWO CHAPTER II
A few days before the time set for his departure David set out on a round of farewell visits to the country folk. It was one of those cold, cheerless days that intervene between the first haze of autumn and the golden glow of October. He had never before realized how lonely the shiver of wind through the poplars could sound. Two innovations had been made that day in the country. The rural delivery carrier, in his little house on wheels, had made his first delivery, and a track for the new electric-car line was laid through the sheep meadow. This inroad of progress upon the sanctity of their seclusion seemed sacrilegious to David, who longed to have lived in the olden time of log houses, with their picturesque open fires and candle lights. Following some vague inward call, he went out of his way to ride past the tiny house he had once called home, and which in all his ramblings he had steadfastly avoided. He had heard that the place had passed into the hands of a widow with an only son, and that they had purchased surrounding land for cultivation. He had been glad to hear this, and had liked to fancy the son caring for his mother as he himself would have cared for his mother had she lived.
As he neared the little nutshell of a house his heart beat fast at the sight of a woman pinning clothes to the line. Her fingers, stiff and swollen, moved slowly. The same instinct that had guided him down this road made him dismount and tie his horse. The old woman came slowly down the little path to meet him.
"I am David Dunne," he said gently, "and I used to live here. I wanted to come to see my old home once more."
He thought that the dim eyes gazing into his were the saddest he had ever beheld.
"Yes," she replied, with the slow, German accent, "I know of you. Come in."
He followed her into the little sitting room, which was as barren of furnishings as it had been in the olden days.
"Sit down," she invited.
He took a chair opposite a cheap picture of a youth in uniform. A flag of coarse material was pinned above this portrait, and underneath was a roughly carved bracket on which was a glass filled with goldenrod.
"You lived here with your mother," she said musingly, "and she was taken. I lived here with my son, and--he was taken."
"Oh!" said David. "I did not know--was he--"
His eyes sought the picture on the wall.
"Yes," she replied, answering his unspoken question, as she lifted her eyes to her little shrine, "he enlisted and went to the Philippines. He died there of fever more than a year ago."
David was silent. His brown, boyish hand shaded his eyes. It had been his fault that he had not heard of this old woman and the loss of her son. He had shrunk from all knowledge and mention of this little home and its inmates. The country folk had recognized and respected his reticence, which to people near the soil seems natural. This had been the only issue in his life that he had dodged, and he was bitterly repenting his negligence. In memory of his mother, he should have helped the lonely old woman.
"You were left a poor, helpless boy," she continued, "and I am left a poor, helpless old woman. The very young and the very old meet in their helplessness, yet there is hope for the one--nothing for the other."
"Yes, memories," he suggested softly, "and the pride you feel in his having died as he did."
"There is that," she acknowledged with a sigh, "and if only I could live on here in this little place where we have been so happy! But I must leave it."
"Why?" asked David quickly.
"After my Carl died, things began to happen. When once they do that, there is no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there's the mortgage. It's due to-morrow, and then--the man that holds it will wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I have always dreaded."
David's head lifted, and his eyes shone radiantly as he looked into the tired, hopeless eyes.
"Your mortgage will be paid to-morrow, and--Don't you draw a pension for your son?"
She looked at him in a dazed way.
"No, there is no pension--I--"
"Judge Thorne will get you one," he said optimistically, as he rose, ready for action, "and how much is the mortgage?"
"Three hundred dollars," she said despairingly.
"Almost as much as the place is worth. Who holds the mortgage?"
"Deacon Prickley."
"You see," said David, trying to speak casually, "I have three hundred dollars lying idle for which I have no use. I'll ride to town now and have the Judge see that the place is clear to you, and he will get you a pension, twelve dollars a month."
The worn, seamed face lifted to his was transfigured by its look of beatitude.
"You mustn't," she implored. "I didn't know about the pension. That will keep me, and I can find another little place somewhere. But the money you offer--no! I have heard how you have been saving to go through school."
He smiled.
"Uncle Barnabas and the Judge are anxious to pay my expenses at college, and--you
must let me. I would like to think, don't you see, that you are living here in my old home. It will seem to me as if I were doing it for
my mother--as I would want some boy to do for her if she were left--and it's my country's service he died in. I would rather buy this little place for you, and know that you are living here, than to buy anything else in the world."
The old face was quite beautiful now.
"Then I will let you," she said tremulously. "You see, I am a hard-working woman and quite strong, but folks won't believe that, because I am old; so they won't hire me to do their work, and they say I should go to the poorhouse. But to old folks there's nothing like having your own things and your own ways. They get to be a part of you. I was thinking when you rode up that it would kill me not to see the frost on the old poplar, and not to cover up my geraniums on the chill nights."
Something stirred in David's heart like pain. He stooped and kissed her gently. Then he rode away, rejoicing that he had worked to this end. Four hours later he rode back to the little home.
"The Judge has paid over the money to Old Skinflint Prickley," he said blithely, "and the place is all yours. The deacon had compounded the interest, which is against the laws of the state, so here are a few dollars to help tide you over until the Judge gets the pension for you."
"David," she said solemnly, "an old woman's prayers may help you, and some day, when you are a great man, you will do great deeds, but none of them will be as great as that which you have done to-day."
David rode home with the echo of this benediction in his ears. He had asked the Judge to keep the transaction secret, but of course the Judge told Barnabas, who in turn informed Uncle Larimy.
"I told the boy when his ma died," said Uncle Larimy, "that things go 'skew sometimes, but that the sun would shine. The sun will allers be a-shinin' fer him when he does such deeds as this." _