“We will, and the sooner the better!” she said.
“I’m going up to the mountains,” said Roger.
“Yes, but you’re coming back in the fall, and when you do you’re coming here! And you’re going to live here years and years!”
“You’re forgetting my doctor.”
“Not at all. I had a long talk with him Sunday and I know just what I’m saying.”
“You don’t look it, my dear,” said Roger, “but of course you may be right. If you take the proper care of me here—and John keeps booming things for the firm—”
“And George makes a huge success of the farm,” Deborah added quickly.
“And Deborah of teaching the world—”
“Oh, Allan, hush up!”
“Look here,” he said. “You go upstairs and tell Edith all this. Your father and I want to be alone.”
And when the two men were left alone, they smoked and said nothing. They smiled at each other.
“It’s hard to decide,” grunted Roger at last. “Which did it—my wonderful sermon or your own long waiting game? I’m inclined to think it was the game. For any other man but you—with all you’ve done, without any talk—no, sir, there wouldn’t have been a chance. For she’s modern, Baird, she’s modern. And I’m going to live just as long as I can. I want to see what happens here.”
The next night in his study, how quiet it was. Edith was busy packing upstairs, Deborah and Allan were gone. Thoughts drifted slowly across his mind. Well, she was married, the last of his daughters, the one whom he cared most for, the one who had taken the heaviest risks. And this was the greatest risk of all. For although she had put it happily out of her thoughts for the moment, Roger knew the old troublesome question was still there in Deborah’s mind. The tenement children or her own, the big family or the small? He felt there would still be struggles ahead. And with a kind of a wistfulness he tried to see into the future here.
He gave a sudden start in his chair.
“By George!” he thought. “They forgot the ring!” Scowling, he tried to remember. Yes, in the brief simple service that day, in which so much had been omitted—music, flowers, wedding gown—even the ring had been left out. Why? Not from any principle, he knew that they were not such fools. No, they had simply forgotten it, in the haste of getting married at once. Well, by thunder, for a girl whose father had been a collector of rings for the best part of his natural life, it was pretty shabby to say the least! Then he recollected that he, too, had forgotten it. And this quieted him immediately.
“I’ll get one, though,” he promised himself. “And no plain wedding ring either. I’ll make A. Baird attend to that. No, I’ll get her a ring worth while.”
He sank deep in his chair and took peace to his soul by thinking of the ring he would choose. And this carried his thoughts back over the years. For there had been so many rings. …
XXXVIII
It was a clear beautiful afternoon toward the end of May. And as the train puffing up the grade wound along the Connecticut River, Roger sat looking out of the window. The orchards were pink and white on the hills. Slowly the day wore away. The river narrowed, the hills reared high, and in the sloping meadows gray ribs and shoulders of granite appeared. The air had a tang of the mountains. Everywhere were signs of spring, of new vigor and fresh life. But the voices at each station sounded drowsier than at the last, the eyes appeared more stolid, and to Roger it felt like a journey far back into old ways of living, old beliefs and old ideals. He had always had this feeling, and always he had relished it, this dive into his boyhood. But it was different today, for this was more than a journey, it was a migration, too. Close about him in the car were Edith and her children, bound for a new home up there in the very heart and stronghold of all old things in America.
Old things dear to Edith’s heart. As she sat by the window staring out, he watched her shapely little head; he noted the hardening lines on her forehead and the gray which had come in her hair. It had been no easy move for her, this, she’d shown pluck to take it so quietly. He saw her smile a little, then frown and go on with her thinking. What was she thinking about, he wondered—all she had left behind in New York, or the rest of her life which lay ahead? She had always longed for things simple and old. Well, she would have them now with a vengeance, summer and winter, the year ’round, in the battered frame house on the mountain side, the birthplace of her family. A recollection came to him of a summer’s dusk two years ago and a woman with a lawn mower cutting the grass on the family graves. Would Edith ever be like that, a mere custodian of the past? If she did, he thought, she would be false to the very traditions she tried to preserve. For her forefathers had never been mere guardians of things gone by. Always they had been pioneers. That house had not been old to them, but a thrilling new adventure. Their old homes they had left behind, far down in the valleys to the east. And even those valley homes had been new to the rugged men come over the sea. Would Edith ever understand? Would she see that for herself the new must emerge from her children, from the ideas, desires and plans already teeming in their minds? Would she show keen interest, sympathy? Would she be able to keep her hold?
In the seat behind her mother, Betsy was sitting with Bruce in her lap,
