“Yes, I know; but I’ve had it pretty well taken out of me,” commented Alice. “It used to come easy to me to be cheerful and resolute and all that; but it’s different now.”
Sister Soulsby stole a swift glance at the unsuspecting face of her companion which was not all admiration, but her voice remained patiently affectionate. “Oh, that’ll all come back to you, right enough. You’ll have your hands full, you know, finding a house, and unpacking all your old furniture, and buying new things, and getting your home settled. It’ll keep you so busy you won’t have time to feel strange or lonesome, one bit. You’ll see how it’ll tone you up. In a year’s time you won’t know yourself in the looking-glass.”
“Oh, my health is good enough,” said Alice; “but I can’t help thinking, suppose Theron should be taken sick again, away out there among strangers. You know he’s never appeared to me to have quite got his strength back. These long illnesses, you know, they always leave a mark on a man.”
“Nonsense! He’s strong as an ox,” insisted Sister Soulsby. “You mark my word, he’ll thrive in Seattle like a green bay-tree.”
“Seattle!” echoed Alice, meditatively. “It sounds like the other end of the world, doesn’t it?”
The noise of feet in the house broke upon the colloquy, and the women went indoors, to join the breakfast party. During the meal, it was Brother Soulsby who bore the burden of the conversation. He was full of the future of Seattle and the magnificent impending development of that Pacific section. He had been out there, years ago, when it was next door to uninhabited. He had visited the district twice since, and the changes discoverable each new time were more wonderful than anything Aladdin’s lamp ever wrought. He had secured for Theron, through some of his friends in Portland, the superintendency of a land and real estate company, which had its headquarters in Seattle, but ambitiously linked its affairs with the future of all Washington Territory. In an hour’s time the hack would come to take the Wares and their baggage to the depot, the first stage in their long journey across the continent to their new home. Brother Soulsby amiably filled the interval with reminiscences of the Oregon of twenty years back, with instructive dissertations upon the soil, climate, and seasons of Puget Sound and the Columbia valley, and, above all, with helpful characterizations of the social life which had begun to take form in this remotest West. He had nothing but confidence, to all appearances, in the success of his young friend, now embarking on this new career. He seemed so sanguine about it that the whole atmosphere of the breakfast room lightened up, and the parting meal, surrounded by so many temptations to distraught broodings and silences as it was, became almost jovial in its spirit.
At last, it was time to look for the carriage. The trunks and handbags were ready in the hall, and Sister Soulsby was tying up a package of sandwiches for Alice to keep by her in the train.
Theron, with hat in hand, and overcoat on arm, loitered restlessly into the kitchen, and watched this proceeding for a moment. Then he sauntered out upon the stoop, and, lifting his head and drawing as long a breath as he could, looked over at the elms.
Perhaps the face was older and graver; it was hard to tell. The long winter’s illness, with its recurring crises and sustained confinement, had bleached his skin and reduced his figure to gauntness, but there was none the less an air of restored and secure good health about him. Only in the eyes themselves, as they rested briefly upon the prospect, did a substantial change suggest itself. They did not dwell fondly upon the picture of the lofty, spreading boughs, with their waves of sap-green leafage stirring against the blue. They did not soften and glow this time, at the thought of how wholly one felt sure of God’s goodness in these wonderful new mornings of spring.
They looked instead straight through the fairest and most moving spectacle in nature’s processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some faces of men, then more behind them, then a great concourse of uplifted countenances, crowded close together as far as the eye could reach. They were attentive faces all, rapt, eager, credulous to a degree. Their eyes were admiringly bent upon a common object of excited interest. They were looking at him; they strained their ears to miss no cadence of his voice. Involuntarily he straightened himself, stretched forth his hand with the pale, thin fingers gracefully disposed, and passed it slowly before him from side to side, in a comprehensive, stately gesture. The audience rose at him, as he dropped his hand, and filled his daydream with a mighty roar of applause, in volume like an ocean tempest, yet pitched for his hearing alone.
He smiled, shook himself with a little delighted tremor, and turned on the stoop to the open door.
“What Soulsby said about politics out there interested me enormously,” he remarked to the two women. “I shouldn’t be surprised if I found myself doing something in that line. I can speak, you know, if I can’t do anything else. Talk is what tells, these days. Who knows? I may turn up in Washington a full-blown senator before I’m forty. Stranger things
