George Langley's Homecoming
A Sketch
Linden Grove, 1886.
George Langley had been away three years, business having taken him far from his hometown North of Chicago, as it had taken many of his friends; but while his friends saw in this exodus a culmination of all their fondest childhood hopes, and vowed that wild horses could not induce them to return, George was the victim of an embarrassing, nigh on debilitating homesickness. New York society would not agree with him, and the day when his company deemed it expedient that he should return to their Chicago branch was as felicitous a day to George, as the commencement of summer vacation could be to any schoolboy. He wrote his parents at once, and hoped to arrive before the letter.
His homesickness will be even more understandable, when the reader is made acquainted with Miss Wainthrop, as a great influence on George’s plans, desires, and hopes. Miss Wainthrop was the young lady from whom he had been most loathe to part, and with whom he had these three years kept up a friendly and entirely blameless correspondence. He had taken great care that not a line should speak his feelings, which were passionate enough, having too great a respect for Mr. and Mrs. Wainthrop to be courting their daughter behind their backs. Partly to keep up appearances of impartiality, and partly for his own pleasure, he had likewise written these three years to the cousin, Miss Ainslie, who lived with the Wainthrops almost as their second daughter. Her parents had died when she was quite young. If her letters were less looked for, they had nevertheless proved as great a boon to him at his lowest moments—not least because they were longer, more regular, and contained more home news.
On the train, it was one of Miss Wainthrop’s letters he reached for first, and with what tremulous feelings did he read this, which he had read many times before:
“Dearest George—
I confess, we seem very dull here when I read everything you are up to in New York. How did you behave on meeting Mrs. Astor? I believe I should have lost my wits, I do so admire her. And the mayor! I suppose we shall never see you in Linden Grove again, after such delights as these. Chicago has only just gotten its first Opera House. They play nothing there to speak of. I have been trying to persuade Father to take us East—perhaps you could write to him and suggest it? Then, you know, we should be able to see each other in person. I am, after all, not much of a letter writer. I fear you must find my envelopes full of dreadfully dull stuff.
Ever Yours,
Eveline Wainthrop.”
Was not every tender feeling here in evidence? That she should actually want to persuade her father to do what George knew he could not like—Mr. Wainthrop hated travel of all kinds—just to see him! It was a source of great satisfaction that he should be able to grant her wish to be in the same room, without giving her the trouble and inconvenience of traveling all the way to New York.
While in the throes of these pleasant reflections, he recalled a story from Miss Ainslie’s most recent letter, which made him very desirous to read the missive again. He sifted through a page of close-packed script to find it:
“You know the Morgans. They have three dear little boys, though the two eldest are grown so tall they can hardly be called little anymore—indeed you would not recognize them—but the littlest came to me yesterday as I walked past their farm after school, quite white-faced, so that I was afraid something dreadful had occurred. As it happened, he had only been tossing chickens up in the air, and one of the more ambitious of these had landed on top of his parents’ shed. He was so afraid of being scolded he dared not go to his brothers, but came to me, in the hopes I might correct the evil. I begin to regret starting this tale—but now I have begun, I must press on bravely. Who do you think fetched the ladder, and climbed to the fair damsel’s rescue? I am glad you were not here, for I’m sure you would have laughed yourself into a broken rib at my expense.”
At the mental image conjured, George did indeed laugh out loud, discomposing an old woman sitting near him. After apologizing profusely, he gave himself over to every pleasant conjecture, as to how Miss Wainthrop would look, and whether she guessed his feelings, and whether they were returned. Yet the image of Dorothy Ainslie nobly rescuing a chicken from its aery prison would intrude sometimes, and render his position by the nervous old woman distressing in equal measure to both her and himself.
George Langley’s homecoming to his family was everything such an event should be. Mr. and Mrs. Langley were sensible, affectionate parents, and were very glad to have their son home and likely to be within easy distance for some time. His sisters questioned him without let or stop on the New York fashions; and only with the tribute of some five or six recent magazines, could they begin to be even slightly appeased.
The eager lover had yet a sense of decorum, and it was two days before he made the familiar walk to the Wainthrops’ house. When he rang the bell, he was ushered into the parlor at once, a large bright room, made almost oppressive by a quantity of vases of fresh, abnormally vast blooms.
He was not left to himself overlong; for while he was indulging in all the enjoyable anxieties of a man in love, the door burst open, and a radiant, breathless woman of twenty tumbled in.
“George!” She cried, laughing and speaking at once, and embraced him without hesitation or embarrassment.
A queer lightness and warmth, an ease of being, took hold of George at the sight of her, and he returned her embrace with enthusiasm, crying, “Dottie!”
She pulled away from George, only to look him over with all the eagerness of his own observation. This was hardly the same Dottie Ainslie he had left behind—she was nearly as tall now as himself, and her figure, though light and pleasing, was that of a woman and not a girl. Her wild, wiry curls were pinned up, if not tamed, and though her dress was hardly of the kind to attract attention, its drabness had a better effect. George did not notice it, and remained wholly engrossed in Dottie herself. “Miss Ainslie” he could call her no longer, not even in thought, for with all these changes she was the same dear old Dottie: lively, generous and good.
“Aunt Margaret and Evie will be down presently—but I could not wait—I wanted to see what you looked like, and if New York agreed with you, and if success had made you spoiled.”
“And what do you think? Have I been spoiled?”
“That remains to be seen. I can hardly tell after five minutes.”
“But so far?”
Dottie looked at him, at first seriously, then breaking into a smile, but she would pass no verdict; and before they had chatted many minutes, Mrs. Wainthrop entered, with welcoming phrases aplenty. These, being exhausted, after a short pause were repeated, Mrs. Wainthrop possessing little talk which was not small, and no curiosity about anyone’s affairs but her own. This made the interval before Miss Wainthrop’s entrance seem yet longer than it was—for it was of its own accord very long—and not all Dottie’s eagerness to hear about New York, nor all her willingness to give the important news of the neighborhood and of her own affairs, could shorten the half-hour to anything like five minutes.
At last the moment arrived. Miss Wainthrop entered, wreathed in smiles, cream taffeta, ribbons and paper roses. She was beautiful as memory had persuaded George she could be, and her greeting, her apologies, her tender pressing of his hand, all were conducive to the most pleasant thoughts and conjectures. George was dazzled. For several minutes he was the happiest man on the earth.
Miss Wainthrop sat next to Dottie, though enough removed so that no part of her dress was crushed or invisible. She touched her cousin’s arm.
“Dottie, dearest, will you ring for tea?”
Dottie complied. Miss Wainthrop, meanwhile, asked George a handful of questions about his journey which Mrs. Wainthrop had already ventured; after these were answered, however, she proved herself more adept at conversing than her mother. She could introduce a new subject very capably, and once Dottie had sat next to her again, she asked,
“Do you like these ribbons, Mr. Langley?” Before he could determine whether he did, let alone answer, she continued, “Chicago is, after all, not entirely devoid of good things. I have been trying to persuade Dottie to wear more ornaments. My dear, you are too pretty to dress as such a Quaker.”
“I have nothing to say against ribbons—at a ball I consider them invaluable—but I confess, I lack the patience to pin myself up in them every day.”
“Surely a visit from Mr. Langley is not an everyday occurrence.” Miss Wainthrop said, with a very pretty smile in that gentleman’s direction.
“Although I can assure you, Mr. Langley, we would be very happy if it were.” Mrs. Wainthrop here put in, and smiled in triumph at her own wit.
“Mother!” Miss Wainthrop laughed consciously, and took to her fan.
George must have looked silly in response, for the smile Dottie sent him was nine parts of laughter.
Once Miss Wainthrop had fanned herself into composure, and after giving many hints of it being such a hot day, that any blushes ought to be ascribed to the temperature merely, she poured out the tea.
On the train ride from New York, George had experienced some anxiety as to what he would say to Miss Wainthrop, when he once beheld her. This anxiety proved entirely needless. George was not called upon to talk. To listen, and to agree, was his portion—indeed, this was the portion of all but Miss Wainthrop herself. She had many important affairs to discuss. Whether it would rain later, and what an abominable, what an absolute catastrophe such an occurrence would be, received its share of consideration, for a group of friends had settled on having a picnic at the lake that very afternoon. That such a scheme should be prevented by the merest whim of Nature was really intolerable! For she had bought a new frock this Spring especially for such occasions, and had determined this picnic as the very event to wear it for the first time. She was quite sure Rosie Hamilton had nothing half so fine, and certainly nothing so exactly suited to dining out of doors. To be sure, she was not such a stickler for dress as some women—she did not gawk all day over the magazines, simply to determine whether she should wear a green ribbon, or a pink! Yet there was something to be said, surely, for making the effort; for nothing could be so abominable as a picnicking party shabbily dressed.
Mrs. Wainthrop regarded her daughter during this little speech with the smile of one who has learnt to appear to attend, while thinking of other things. George found his attention slipping more and more towards Dottie, who looked to be the only one listening sympathetically. George was shocked and dismayed to realize that the chief emotion of his heart, was bewilderment that she did not blush for her cousin. So fickle was his grand passion, it could not survive fifteen minutes of absurdity. He even began to compare the cousins as he regarded them and pretended, like Mrs. Wainthrop, to be engrossed entirely in her daughter’s most trivial plans. Miss Wainthrop, for all her fine clothes and ribbons and flowers, for all her gentle hints and simpering glances, yet felt removed, distant, somehow cold. He could not understand her, and suspected that she did not want to be understood. Dottie, by contrast, though now mostly silent, was yet more expressive and open in her looks, movements and actions, than all of Miss Wainthrop’s talk could make her appear.
He rose at the appropriate time, and was dismayed to realize how much he longed to go. Mrs. Wainthrop’s extended au revoir could be nothing but tiresome, and Miss Wainthrop’s most winning smile could not win back his former regard. He found the door, feeling rather more hollow than when he had last crossed it; for every one of the pleasant anxieties and hopes he had carried with him then, he had been forced to leave behind.
“George!”
It was Dottie, who alone of the ladies had followed him into the passage. Her smile, though unconscious, did what Miss Wainthrop’s could not, and lifted George’s heart.
“I’m so glad you came today—make sure you come again soon. I know Uncle Alfred will be sorry to have missed you.”
George, who had been making resolutions of distancing himself from the family, promised now to return before the week was out. The departure which he had so desired became less of a relief—he lingered—and, in a stroke of inspiration, asked if she still helped sometimes at the school? She did; George suggested he might have the slightest interest in seeing the old place again.
“Oh, yes! Come tomorrow—you can tell the children about New York.”
As it happened, he had absolutely nothing to do on the morrow—would be delighted—and the obvious joy this plan gave Dottie was such a tonic to George’s disappointed hopes regarding her cousin, that he quite forgot to be wistful. He took his leave in the greatest good humor; and during the course of the walk home, he became once more so full of tender feelings, and so sanguine in those hopes he had thought mere minutes before to have been lost for good, that the greatest trouble in his mind, was in trying to remember whether Dottie liked roses best, or gardenias.
Thank you for reading! There will be no post next week, but the week after there will be our first in-depth post about fiber arts. See you then!