In the Way
Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
In the Way
Grace Livingston Hill
This edition published in 2013
Grace Livingston Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Author biography © Huey Global
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotation in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
ISBN:
1484813006
ISBN-13:
978-1484813003
CONTENTS
THE kitchen looked unusually dreary that night. It was raining and the two young men who called it home had thrown down their wet coats on chairs to dry before the fire when they came in. Their heavy boots also had been drawn off and looked out of sorts and out of place in a dark pool by the door. The stove needed blacking and the fire was sulky. In the sink were piled the dishes of the entire day, still unwashed. They were not many to be sure, but they added to the general air of desolation. Two blackened pipes on the mantel-piece lay in the one cleared space, the rest of the shelf being occupied by a miscellaneous collection of years. On a hook behind the cupboard door there hung a faded checked gingham apron. The owner thereof had been dead nearly a year, but the apron had n
ever been taken down, either because it had never been noticed, or because the boys had not known what to do with it. It could scarcely have been a pleasing object to them, but they had not been accustomed to much that was pleasant in their lives so far, and hardly thought to try and make it for themselves.
The table was set for the evening meal without table-cloth or much regard to the fitness of things. A baker's loaf of sour, puffy-looking bread lay on the bare table. A paper containing a slab of cheese was on the other side. A knuckle of ham on a plate and the molasses pitcher completed the array, with some miserably made tea in a tin teapot. It was a very uninviting-looking table, and yet these two preferred it to having their premises invaded by hired help, or to going out to board. They shrank from any more changes. They ate in silence, for they had worked hard all day and were hungry.
At last the elder of the two shoved his chair back from the table and sat thoughtfully gazing across the room.
“Joe, she wants to come here!” he said, still looking thoughtfully about the dismal room. “Who're you talking about?” said the younger a little crossly, helping himself to another slice of ham. He had been working all the afternoon in the rain, mending the cowhouse roof, and the supper tasted good to him. “I wish you'd ever begin at the right end of a thing, Dave,” he went on; “you always plunge into the middle, and it takes half an hour to get at your idea. Where have you been this afternoon, and who are you talking about?”
“Ruth,” said David.
“Ruth?” said Joseph, showing by his tone that he was scarcely enlightened.
“Ruth,” said David again.
“Oh, Ruth!” said Joseph, a kind of dismay and consternation in his voice. He laid down his bread and molasses and sat back in his chair. “What in the name of common sense does she want to come here for?” he asked after a minute.
“Because Aunt Ruth is dead,” answered David, like a lesson he had been saying over to himself to be sure he had it right; "and because she is alone and is our sister and we are her brothers.”
“Well, where's all the money that was going to be left her? Is it dead too?”
“I don't know about the money; she doesn't say as to that.”
“It must be gone or she wouldn't want to come here. Why doesn't she do something and stay where she is? After being away from home all her life, she can't expect to be taken care of now.”
“Joe,” said David rather sharply, bringing the front legs of his chair down with a thud, "she's our sister. What would father say to hear you speak like that? She doesn't say anything about money, but I don't believe she was thinking of that. She seems to want to come to see us. Maybe it's only a visit she wants, but anyway she is coming. She isn't even going to wait to see whether we want her. She is going to start tonight and will be here tomorrow morning.”
Joe answered this announcement with a long whistle of astonished disapprobation.
He reached for the letter David handed him, and drew the smoky kerosene lamp nearer him to read it. His face grew dark as he read it slowly. It was a letter fair and dainty enough for any brother to be glad to read. Written on heavy, creamy linen paper, in even, graceful lines and curves, a sort of initial of the lovely writer herself. But Joseph threw it down angrily when he had finished, and flung back his chair roughly from the table.
“I guess I'll clear out of this ranch for a while, and let you enjoy your company to yourself,” he said, rising as if to carry out his threat.
His brother rose also, and laying a rough hand kindly on his arm said: “No, you won't do any such thing, Joe; you'll stay here and behave yourself, as you promised father you would do, or at any rate as I promised father I would see you did. She is our sister, and you have got to do your duty toward her, whether you like it or not.” Then David took one of the two dirty pipes from the mantel, and lighting it sat down by the stove, with his stockinged feet on the hearth. Joseph followed his example, and for a few minutes there was silence, save for the sound of wind and rain outside.
“Pretty place this is for a girl,” said Joseph, taking the pipe out of his mouth to speak; “she'll come around messing up everything, and the way she's been brought up she won't know how to do a thing.”
David looked about the room again in a troubled way. It was the same room he remembered in his boyhood, aye, even his babyhood, away back where that shadowy memory of his mother moved about; but the old kitchen had a brighter look in those days. What made the difference? Then when mother had gone and Aunt Nancy had come, the room had seemed well enough; father had lived there and seemed contented. After father had died, Aunt Nancy had kept the room about the same, until her death, nine months ago, and nothing had been changed since.
His eyes wandered to the gingham apron behind the door. He slowly brought his feet down from the hearth, and going over to the cupboard took the apron down from its hook, and carefully rolling it up put it in the stove. Then he sat down and went on smoking. The action stirred up something in the younger brother's memory which made him uncomfortable, and in spite of the rain he announced his intention of going down to the store awhile. David said nothing, and Joseph went about some noisy preparations, drawing on his boots with a heavy thud. Then he threw open the door, and was greeted by such a gust of wind and torrent of rain that, after scowling out into the darkness for a minute, he slammed the door and came in, pulling off his boots and sitting sulkily down again by the fire.
David roused himself to wash the dishes. So much he could do toward clearing up. “I suppose I shall have to get some one to fix up here,” he said, looking hopelessly around.
“What for?” said the irritable Joe. “If she don't like it, let her go home. We don't want her, anyway. There's other rooms in the house besides this; she can stay in them and keep out of here. As for eating, let her get her meals over to Barnes'. We can't cook for her, and 'tain't likely she knows how herself”
“Look here, Joe,” said the elder brother turning slowly around, the cold greasy dishwater dripping from his great red hands; “you are hard on her. She never knew she wasn't Aunt Ruth's own child until after Aunt Ruth died, three weeks ago. It was part of the agreement, you know. Father thought it best for her to have a mother. Aunt Ruth said she wanted her to grow up loving her as her own mother. I never could quite see how it was right and fair not to tell her, but Aunt Ruth made a good deal of it, and father thought it would be just as well, for she would have everything money could buy—you know Uncle Hiram was pretty rich awhile before he died, until he lost a good deal in a failure of some kind. She was a pretty little thing when I saw her.”
Here the dishwasher folded his arms and leaned back against the sink. “You know father sent me there with a message the year before he died, and he told me not to tell any one who I was, but Aunt Ruth. I wasn't to let Ruth know I belonged to her, if I should happen to see her, because he said she had never even heard of me. I didn't kind of like the idea, then, for it seemed as though she would feel ashamed of me if she knew I belonged to her, and I went there feeling all out of patience with a girl that was letting herself be fooled in that way; but you know she was a baby only a few days old when she went there, and how was it her fault?
“Besides, I don't believe they brought her up near so stuck up as I thought, for while I waited in the great big hallway she came flying down the stairs just like a robin, and asked me to please sit down till her mother could come. Then I heard some one call her Ruth, and so I knew who she was, and she answered, yes, she was coming, and went away. But before she went she smiled at me, and said it was a cold morning outside. It seemed sort of funny to think she was my own sister, and if mother hadn't died, or things hadn't turned out as they did, she would have been here instead of there, and like as not she'd have been washing these very dishes now, instead of my doing it.”
“Well, you needn't count on getting her to do them to-morrow night, Dave, I can tell you. City girls never do those things. They're afraid of their hands. She'll be a precious nuisance; that's what I think. How old is she now?” “'Bout a year and a half younger than you,”
“H'm, they're always silly at that age. I wouldn't let her come if I was you, Dave.” “She's on her way by this time, so I can't help it,” said the elder brother imperturbably. He stood still, the dishcloth in his hand, thinking of the bright little figure in blue and white, with flying golden hair, that had tripped down the stairs and given him the chair so graciously; and then he looked hopelessly about that room and wished he knew how to make it pleasant for her coming. The brothers did not sleep well that night. David had an uncomfortable sense of responsibility upon him which he was in nowise able to discharge, much as if an elephant had suddenly found himself inheritor of the proverbial china shop. What he, a quiet, awkward farm boy, was to do with a full-fledged young lady sister, fresh from the city, was more than he could fathom.
He arose early the next morning, as was his custom, and went about his usual duties, or “chores,” as he called them, with the problem still unsolved. Joe, meantime, was angry and dismayed. Though it was by no means a pleasant day for such work, he announced his intention of “gettin' the timber off that upper wood lot,” which was at some distance from the farm proper, and would require all day. Therefore, he took a cold bite in his pocket, shouldered his axe, and was off before David had realized that he would be left alone to receive their guest, when he had entertained some thought of sending his younger brother to the train to meet her.
Her letter had been a brief one and to the point, with an undertone of eager sisterly love and longing for some one who belonged to her, in her loneliness; and this on the second reading reached her elder brother's heart and made him wish that their father was alive to give her what she wanted. He felt himself utterly unable to do so.
Out of deference to the expected guest he forebore, as his brother had done, to eat his breakfast from dishes, this morning, but took a cold hurried lunch from the pantry shelf. He tried to think as he ate, what his father would have done, but it seemed impossible; and again, as he had done many times before, he decided that it was a bad business to give up one's children to some one else to bring up, even though that one was the rich wife of your own brother and the mother of the child was dead. Doubtless Ruth had had a much pleasanter life in her luxurious city home than she would have had in the old farmhouse with only her rough father and brothers and old Aunt Nancy for company; but now that those who had guarded her life were taken away, what was to become of her? He gave it up and went out to his work again. There was a certain amount of work about the farm that must be done every day no matter what happened, and he was glad that it was so.
When this had been done he harnessed the old horse to the light spring wagon; smoothed his hair; put on a coat—an unusual addition, except in cold weather, for merely a ride to the village—and drove slowly toward the town and the railway station. It did not occur to him to put on a collar. That was an amount of dressing not indulged in, except on Sundays or extraordinary occasions, by the people with whom he had been accustomed to associate. Half-way to the village, and almost overcome with his sense of the nearness of the station and his expected guest, he halted the old horse suddenly, thinking of his collarless condition, and half turned the wagon around again toward home to make it good; but the color mounted to his cheek as he remembered the crowd that would be at the station—always, to meet every train—and he turned the astonished horse's nose back again with a jerk, going on more rapidly toward the station.
It was bad enough to have the gaze of those curious eyes, and the ridicule of the lazy tongues leveled upon him while he met his city sister, without having a collar on. A collar was always an embarrassment to him, and for that reason alone he had several times meditated giving up going to church on Sabbath mornings since his father's death; but the power of habit and his father's steady example still held him to that when there was no reasonable excuse. There was no need to fasten Old Gray lest she should be afraid of the cars. She was not afraid of anything in this world now, and so David drew up in front of the long, low station, that had done duty for many a year, and swinging one leg over the wheel to the platform, which was about on a level with the floor of the wagon, he sat surveying the crowd of loafers assembled for their daily excitement of watching the New York train come in.