Gordon McCarroll had arrived at his home in Shandon Heights at half past one o’clock the night he came from Silver Beach. With a warm hug and kiss from his mother and a sleepy growl of welcome from his father, he had gone straight to bed, after assuring his mother, of course, that there was nothing wrong in the world with him. He just wanted to come home, so he came.
He slept late the next morning, and so did they all. But after a good hot breakfast they gathered in the cozy library, Father in his big leather chair, Mother in her own particular rocker, and Gordon stretched on the comfortable old leather lounge that had been his favorite all through the years. And then he began.
“Well you see, Mother, it was this way—”
Even after his strenuous day and his exciting evening and the unexpected journey home, Gordon had not gone to sleep at once. Instead he had lain there in his bed, that was more comfortable than any bed he had found anywhere, and got to thinking. What had he come home for, and just what did he mean to do now?
It was these questions that he was about to bring out for his parents’ perusal and advice.
Oh, he had thrashed them all out thoroughly in the night and he knew just where he stood now. There was no uncertainty in him anymore. He knew that he loved Rose, and that he wanted no other girl in his life but her. His next task was to make his mother and father understand that, and be ready to rejoice in it with him. Could he do that?
Through that long sweet night vigil he had seen Rose almost face to face; he had thrilled with the touch of her lips on his; he had held her small white hand, empty of jewels, and seen the beauty in it as he had not seen it in that other jeweled hand. In his thoughts he had gathered her into his arms, and held her to his heart with wonder and amazing joy. Would he ever do it in reality, he wondered?
And so when the morning dawned, he went down to his father and mother and lay on the couch and began to tell them.
His mother looked up with a hungry fear in her eyes and let her loving heart take in the great beauty that love gives to a face when it has just newly come there to dwell. As she studied the beloved face of her boy, somehow she was reassured. He had not done something rash. Surely, surely, all his years of dependableness were not going to end in mistakes!
“Yes?” she said breathlessly.
But the father sat with a casual glance at his son and a quick half fearful one toward the mother, and hid behind a quizzical smile of content. He would bank on his boy every time, but he wasn’t just sure how the mother was going to take—well, anything new he might be going to propose. He had never been quite sure just how she was going to take anything.
“About this girl we spoke of several months ago!”
“Yes?” Quick, almost appealing. Oh, if he would only hurry and relieve the anxiety.
“Well, I told you she wasn’t anybody new. She’s a girl I’ve known practically all my life.”
“Yes?” Oh if he would only tell her name and end the anxiety. The mother’s eyes sought the father’s and found quick warning in their gentle smiling depths. No, she knew she mustn’t ask for that name. It had to come of itself.
“Why, you don’t need to be so darned scared, little moms,” laughed Gordon. “She was just a simple sweet girl who sat across the aisle from me the last two years I was in high school, and before that she was somewhere else in the same room. She was bright as a button and very quiet and shy. She was always well prepared with her lessons and always stood well, sometimes at the head of the class.”
“When you weren’t occupying that place,” said his father in a half-comic tone of mingled satisfaction and teasing.
Gordon grinned at his father.
“She was there more often than I, dad. But you see, our contacts at that time were just the usual classroom stuff. We saw each other, we said ‘hello’ or asked a question about lessons, that’s about all. She almost never came to any class festivity unless it was in regular school hours. She was never at the parties, and never seemed to have any special friends.”
“But why?” interrupted his mother sharply. “Is there something peculiar about her?”
“No, Mother, she was only peculiarly sweet and well behaved. I don’t know why she never came to things we had, picnics and the like. I judged perhaps it was lack of time. She may have had to work. She dressed very simply—becomingly, but plainly. She did not seem to have her mind on amusements. She was in school to get her education, and she was doing her best to get it. Beyond that I don’t know much even yet.”
“But Gordon, are you sure she is all right? You are sure there is no reason—”
“Mother, let the boy tell in his own way!” said the father.
“Yes, Gordon. Go on, please!” Her voice was fairly trembling with eagerness.
“Yes, Mother, I’m quite sure. But you’ll have to hear the whole story! We went on like that through the whole last term, and I never knew her any better. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of her as she was studying, and had a passing thought of how interesting she seemed, but I wasn’t paying much attention to girls then. Only as I look back now it seems as if I had known her intimately always, since I was a little kid.”
“But why, why, Gordon, didn’t she have anything to do with the rest? Was it their fault or hers?” asked his mother impatiently.
“I think it was hers,” said Gordon. “She just went home, disappeared as soon as school was over, and nobody seemed to notice. I think it must have been on account of her mother being sick. She hurried away as if she had urgent business.”
“Was it only girls who held aloof? Was she a girl who was popular with the boys?”
“No, Mother, she never seemed to look at the boys particularly. She was just a part of school, a lovely part, that we took for granted and thought little about. We were a selfish lot, and there were plenty of girls who hung around and got your attention whenever they could. Besides, I wasn’t hunting for girlfriends at that stage, I tell you. There’s only one thing I remember about her, and that was at commencement. She was dressed in white, and her hair was fixed somehow different. She has brown curly hair, and it was all loose and fluffy, and she looked beautiful. I remember being surprised by her looks. She seemed almost like an angel. I suppose it was the clothes, perhaps, that got me, seeing her in white, when I had been used to seeing her in plain dark cottons. But she was lovely, and she made a beautiful appearance when she gave her commencement orations. She was the only girl who spoke at commencement. Maybe you remember her?”
“Was she small and slight?” His mother caught her breath with eagerness.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“Name Rose Galbraith?” asked the father, looking up casually, with no hint in his face that he had gone and looked up that old high school commencement program from among his archives that first night when Gordon had suggested another girl whom he had known in school. He had treasured the name in his heart during the months of suspense.
“Yes, Dad. How did you remember that? She’s the girl whose speech you spoke of as being the best. Do you remember saying that?”
“Why, I remember thinking she was the best of the bunch or something like that,” said the father dryly. “Nice girl. Nice voice. Nice name, Gordon. Galbraith. There used to be a man named Galbraith, wrote some pretty fine articles in the magazines. Gilbert Galbraith, I think. I suppose he’s no relation of hers, though.”
“Yes,” said Gordon, beaming. “That was her father. He died when she was only a little girl, and she and her mother had a right hard time getting along, I gather. Of course, I haven’t discussed things like that with her much yet.”
“Well, but Gordon, I don’t understand,” said his mother with a worried glance. “How did you get to know her if you didn’t know her any better than that in school? It’s a long time since you graduated. Was she in New York? Have you been meeting her there?”
Gordon laughed.
“Yes, she was in New York, and I met her there, once, but only a very few minutes. That was all!”
“A few minutes!” his mother was appalled.
“Yes, just a few minutes. She was on shipboard, just starting over to Scotland to visit some relatives. She was all alone. Her mother had just died. They had planned to go over together, but her mother died a week before they were to sail. She was pretty well broken up, I think, but of course I didn’t know it. I had been sent down to give some papers to a man who was sailing on the same ship, and as I came down the deck toward the companionway, I saw somebody standing by the rail watching the people, and her back looked sort of familiar. I stopped an instant to identify her, and sure enough, it was Rose Galbraith. I just impulsively stepped up and said, ‘Why, if this isn’t Rose Galbraith!’ or something like that. And she turned around and recognized me, and her face lit up. She seemed so glad to see somebody she knew. She said she was just thinking how she was leaving her native land, and there wasn’t even an acquaintance down in that throng to say good-bye to, and everybody else seemed to have friends. She said she was glad I had spoken to her. She was looking very sweet and pretty. Had something blue on and a blue hat that matched her eyes. I never saw her look so nice and like other girls before, and she seemed so pleased to see me that I lingered a minute or two. I asked her who she was going with and her eyes filled up with quick tears, though she smiled through them and said she was going alone, that her mother and she had been going together, but instead she’d had to leave her mother in the Shandon Cemetery. Well, gosh, that kind of got me, Mother. I felt awfully sorry for her, and I stood there a minute or two more talking, asked her where she was going and all that, you know, and then I realized—well, that isn’t so, I did realize but I did what we usually do when someone we know well is going across the sea or off anywhere for a long time, I just stooped over and kissed her! There, Mother! That’s the story! I suppose you and Dad won’t understand what I mean, but I tell you truly I can’t get away from the memory of her lips, the look in her eyes, her little hand in mine! And it wasn’t any mush-mush stuff, either! It’s real. I’ve been testing it out ever since. I did my best coming home and trying to get interested in that ‘Miss know-it-all’ that you had here for me, but it didn’t work. I even tried her out again, just last night, for she turned up on the train when I was on my way down to Silver Beach where Fran Tallant had coerced me into going to fill in for her brother Ed. I stuck it out till mid evening and then I decided I was done and the time had come to do something decisive. So I called you up, took a taxi to a poky old train, and came home. And here I am! Now, what have you got to say?”
“But, Gordon,” said his father, taking a sudden hand, “do I understand that that scene on the boat is the last? You haven’t seen her or had any contact with her since?”
“Not on your life!” said Gordon. “I’ve been in touch with her right along. I stopped at the flower shop as I went down and ordered a lot of flowers sent up to her cabin before I got off. Then two or three days later I sent her a radio message on shipboard. And ever since we’ve been corresponding. I’ve got her last letter right here in my breast pocket and you can read it, both of you, if you like. It’s a pippin! Of course it’s not a love letter. We haven’t got that far yet. I mean, I have, but I don’t know where she stands as to that. We’ve just been corresponding as friends, so far.”
“Oh-oh!” said Father McCarroll. “So that’s the way it is! Well, Son, I should say you had shown pretty good judgment as to how to go about things. Almost as good work as we got away with, isn’t it, Mother?” And he came over and sat down on the arm of her chair and put a loving arm around his wife. “How about it, little mother, are you going to wish your boy godspeed?”
“Of course!” said Gordon’s mother, wiping away the tears and lighting up her own mother smile.
“But Gordon,” she said a moment later, with a little puzzled look on her brow that almost verged on anxiety, “what are you going to do next? Don’t you think it is time you began to inquire a little more about her? You know you scarcely know her at all.”
“Not on your life, Mother. I know all I need to know. Whatever else I find out I’ll find out from her own lips. The next thing I’m going to do is go over to Scotland and find out if she feels the same way I do. That’s the most important thing, and I’m not going to wait any longer.”
“You mean you are going to give up your job, or have they fired you?” asked his father.
“No, neither,” laughed Gordon. “But I get two weeks vacation anyway, and I am reasonably sure I can coax my superior into giving me another week or two to do some business for the firm. The man who was going broke his leg last week, and I heard last night that he isn’t getting on as fast as they hoped he would. I happen to know they are mighty anxious to have somebody from the company over there on the spot. I’m going up to New York tomorrow morning and see what I can do with them, and if all goes well I’ll sail on the first ship leaving New York tomorrow. Will you wish me well or not, Mother? Father?”
“Sure!” said the father happily.
“Why, of course, Gordon,” said the mother in a small tight voice, “but don’t you think you are being a bit hasty? You know marriage lasts a long time. If it’s all right—”
“It’s all right, Mother! Read that letter and see if you don’t think so! She’s a Christian girl, Mother, and a darned sight better Christian than I’ve ever been with all my wonderful upbringing. And if she’s willing to tie up to me, I’ll have to go some to keep step.”
So Mother McCarroll read Rose’s letter, and Father McCarroll sat and beamed on his son happily.
And when his mother had read the letter, she passed it over to her husband.
“Yes, that’s a lovely letter,” she said and got out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. She was deeply touched. “Yes, she must be a lovely girl!”
So then Gordon started in to tell her all about the other letters he had under lock and key in New York, and Father McCarroll amid it all, trying to read the letter and yet attend to what was being said, nearly lost his mind. He wanted to listen and smile, and he wanted to read, but he managed somehow to do both.
Gordon described the castle and the thatched cottage and the grandmother and the evening and morning worship, and all the sweet Scotch habits and customs he was beginning to love. The parents listened eagerly, thoughtfully, and reflected that much as they had wanted to teach their boy to be a warm, sincere Christian, they had failed to establish a family altar in their home. It had been a long time since they had even thought about such a custom, though it had been a habit in both the homes in which they themselves had been brought up.
“Yes,” said Father McCarroll. “That’s a good thing, family worship. That’s the way I was brought up. And you too, Mother,” nodding toward his wife.
She bowed her head in assent.
“Well, go on, Son! When you get over there what are you going to do next? Get a job and stay there and go courting her?”
“Oh, no,” said Gordon with a grin. “I’ll do that the first few minutes, and then we’re going to get married, if she’ll have me, and I really think she cares. Believe me, Dad, we’re not going to let that sea separate us anymore.”
“Oh!” said the father. “And I suppose your mother and I can stay at home and suck our thumbs. You aren’t even thinking of inviting us to the wedding, are you?”
Gordon’s face lit gorgeously.
“Sure thing, Dad. Would you come? Do you mean you’d leave business and everything and bring Mother over to the wedding?”
“Why of course, if we were invited,” said his parent with a grin.
“Well, you’re invited. We’ll cable an invitation the minute we get the day settled. Say, Dad and Mother, you’re both peaches! Of course I knew you would be, but somehow it’s better than I had even wished!”
And then suddenly the dinner bell rang, and with their arms about one another as they used to walk when Gordon was a little boy, they all three went abreast into the dining room.