The Gold Brick. Ann S. Stephens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ them; but every reading brings out something new—something more holy than we ever found before. Isn't that your experience?"

      "Yes," answered the old lady, taking a seamstitch with serene precision as she spoke. "It seems to me, husband, that one never learns really what is in the Bible till old age comes on. When we were young, I can remember being so tired when the morning chapter was read, and full of other thoughts, that I am sorry to remember now. That is the reason I always had so much charity for our Nelson. Poor child, he never could sit still through a whole chapter—boy or man!"

      "I'm afraid," answered the old man, with a heavy sigh. "I'm a'most afraid, Eunice, that we neglected to perform our whole duty to the boy at the start. He was such a bright child, that we wandered off into ambition and worldly pride where he was concerned. Now, that we are getting old, and a'most as good as childless, this idea troubles me more than a little. Maybe, if you and I had been a little more strict with the boy, he'd have got over them roving notions, and stayed at home."

      "I don't know," said the old lady, putting on her glasses to loop up a stitch, while a shade of trouble came to her face. "It seems to me as if nothing would ever have kept Nelson on the farm. He was too high strung for that. But what then? Every body isn't of the same idea, you know; and if the education we gave our son helped to unsettle him for our way of life, it fitted him for another. Remember, he went out first mate this time."

      "He's a brave boy, any way," said the old man, kindling with the subject; "and if the season of grace has not reached his soul yet, we must only pray the more earnestly."

       "Yes," whispered the mother. "Pray without ceasing, and in every thing give thanks!"

      "If we did not kneel to the throne of grace in his behalf so often as we might have done in our younger days, we must make up for it now, for our son will some day make a shining light in the house of the righteous," continued the father. "I feel it. I know it, Eunice."

      The old lady sighed.

      "I'm afraid that even now I pray that he may come back to his home, before I think of his eternal salvation, for that wish is always uppermost with me."

      The old man smiled reprovingly, and shook his head.

      "Ah, Eunice!"

      "I can't help it," sighed the mother, confessing her weakness, with a deprecating smile. "He is my only child—all the precious, earthly blessing we have. I can't help being proud and fond of him."

      "How could you, when I, a strong man—one that the brethren sometimes look up to, as all the church members will admit—can't keep back the pride of having a son like that. There's no denying it. Nelson is a young man that must put a temptation of pride into his parents' path. It seems to me as if I were a stronger man and you a handsomer woman for having a son like him."

      "So honorable, so handsome," murmured the old lady.

      "So strong and energetic," responded the father.

      "Ah, if he would but come once more to see his old father and mother."

      The old lady bent over her knitting, and pretended to search for a false stitch, but it was only to conceal the tears that swelled tenderly into her eyes.

      Thrasher could bear no more. The man loved his parents, and those soft tears in his mother's eyes brought moisture to his own. How innocent and childlike the old people were, in comparison with him. Satan, when looking over the flow'ry walls of Paradise, must have felt as he did, listening to that household conversation.

      The old man took up his glasses again, and began to read. The mother kept on with her work, listening, with meek faith, to the holy words that fell from her husband's lips. All at once she started, dropped the knitting in her lap, and listened.

      "It is his step!"

      The old man raised his face from the Bible, and listened, also.

      "Yes, Eunice, it is!"

      The door opened, and their son stood on the threshold—a strong, handsome fellow, such as the father had described him. There was no outcry of joy, no wordy demonstrations; but a tender gladness possessed the old people. The mother kissed him, almost timidly. There was something that awed her tenderness in this powerful young man, though he did tremble in her gentle embrace.

      "My son, you are welcome home—oh, my son!"

      There was something hearty and patriarchal in this welcome of the father. The noble old Christian that forgave his prodigal son must have spoken much after the same fashion.

      They shook hands—the father and son—with a firm, lingering clasp, while the mother looked on, smiling through her tears. With your genuine New England housemother, hospitality is always the servitor of affection. The night dew lay heavily on her son's garments. He looked pale and tired. The mother's heart rose pitifully in her bosom; she insisted upon raking open the fire, and getting a warm cup of tea; even went so far as to offer a cider-brandy sling, with toasted crackers floating on the top.

      Thrasher yielded himself to her tender care. It was wonderful how submissive and grateful that strong-willed man had become under womanly influences. He declined tea, but accepted the glass of smoking drink which the mother prepared. Soon the old man took a tumbler, also, and praised it greatly; for religious men and elders of the church, in those times, thought it no sin to make themselves comfortable with a glass of hot drink before bedtime, never dreaming that their limited indulgence might lead to excess in the coming generation—excess which even legal enactments have failed to remedy. Having no fear and no conscientious scruples on the subject, the old man enjoyed his glass, and filled that of his son more than once; for, somehow, the color would not come genially to the young man's face, and after the first glow of his reception had passed off, he seemed depressed, almost gloomy.

      The old lady took her seat again on the patchwork cushion of blue and red cloth which Thrasher could remember from his childhood, and attempted to resume her knitting; but the plump little hands trembled so much that she gave it up, and drawing back into the shadow, had a sweet, motherly cry all to herself. It was pleasant to hear those two voices blending together in their talk. It was heaven to know that the whole family sat on one hearth again. She could not be thankful enough. What had she done to merit so much happiness at the hands of the Lord.

      This pious under-current of feelings mingled with the conversation as it went on between the two men, leaping rapidly from subject to subject, as always happens when members of one family have been long separated. While the mother was wrapped in dreamy thanksgivings, the old man, not less grateful or affectionate, fell to questioning his son about his voyage, the fate of the ship, and the terrible scenes which had been enacted at St. Domingo, while she lay in the harbor of Port au Prince.

      Thrasher went into the thrilling details. He was naturally eloquent, and the intense interest manifested by his parents, made his pictures as graphic as the reality; but another person might have remarked, though his parents did not, that he avoided mentioning either his own share or that of Captain Mason in these exciting events.

      "But how long did this last, Nelson? Was the brig kept in harbor all the time? Some of the neighbors began to fear that she was lost; but your mother and I hoped and prayed, didn't we, mother?"

      The mother smiled on her son, answering:

      "Nelson always knows that we hope and pray when he is upon the great deep."

      "But СКАЧАТЬ