Of course, he would have to wait till the swan moved. She was now sitting firmly on her nest, but if he could alarm her a little or disturb the water, she might go away. He forgot all about breakfast and the time. He even forgot about Ram. He thought he could wait forever if only he could hold that warm, smooth egg in his hands.
He waited so long and lay so still that he almost fell asleep to the chatter of the shallow river. Suddenly he was jerked awake, for the swan had risen and stretched out her gleaming wings. She pushed through the reeds and launched herself on the stream. Just a little wriggle now, and he could seize that egg.
But while he was actually stretching out his hand, something happened. He knew it was wrong, and he suddenly did not want to do it. And that was a strange feeling, for he had never minded doing wrong before, if it was something he wanted to do badly. It was such a queer feeling that he drew back his hand and lay looking at the swan and thinking how beautiful she was. Suddenly he discovered that he cared about that swan, and he did not want her to come back and find her egg gone. And that was queer too, because he had never much minded hurting animals before. He wanted to come back himself and share her joy, and watch the eggs hatch into nestlings, and show them to Martin and Chris and Ram.
He got up and started running in the direction of home, knowing that he was different and wondering what had happened to him. It must be something to do with Jesus in my heart, he thought. I suppose that’s how He talks to me. I suppose, if I listen, He’ll always make me mind doing bad things. And he knew that somehow those clear streams of love and happiness had started to flow.
He thought he had never felt so happy before, nor run so fast. Wet and dirty, he burst in on the family members, who were still sitting at their late Saturday breakfast. “I’ve found a swan’s nest with four eggs!” he shouted. “Who wants to come and see it?”
Everyone wanted to see it, so they took a picnic lunch to the place, Mum and Dad bringing the food in the car, and the children walking. It was a glorious sun-drenched day, and Francis’s happiness overflowed as he led them, one by one, to the backwater in the reeds. And late that evening, when Ram had gone home, Auntie Alison found him sitting quietly on the step, stroking Whiskers.
“You’re getting like your namesake,” she said, sitting down beside him. “You and your nests and your cat!”
“Who’s my namesake?” asked Francis.
“Don’t you know? It’s a beautiful name. Francis of Assisi lived about seven hundred years ago in Italy. He loved birds and other wild creatures so much that he used to go out into the fields and preach to them. They say that they all used to come close to him and listen.”
“I don’t believe it. How could birds listen?”
“I don’t expect they did, but it looked like it, and the people in those days believed it. I expect his heart was so full of the love of God that it just flowed out and everybody felt it, even the birds and the animals.”
“Like you said—like rivers flowing out. Will you show me that book tomorrow?”
“Yes, I’ll find the parts you’d understand. Now, come in. It’s bedtime.”
But he lingered a little longer with his cheek resting on Whisker’s fur, listening to the song of the river. The same gurgling water that he could hear washing the roots of the alders would flow down under the bridge to the backwater where the swan sat with folded wings. How glad he felt that she was sitting on four warm eggs.
15
The Homecoming
It was mid-June when Granny came to visit Francis. Uncle John met her on the bus in the village and drove her to the farm because she was rather lame and walked with a stick. She was sitting in the living room when Francis raced in from school on Wednesday afternoon.
He was glad to see his grandmother because there were many things he wanted to ask her, and he always felt safe and comfortable with her. They had tea by themselves, and Francis bombarded her with questions, and the answers were most satisfactory. Mum was better and coming home Monday evening. She wanted to get there first and arrange things. Granny was going up to Yorkshire to get the little girls and bring them home by train on Tuesday evening. Because there was no school on Tuesday, Francis could go over and join his mother that morning. Granny was going to stay with them for a time and help.
“Why do you have to go?” asked Francis. “Why doesn’t Dad bring them home in the car? And when’s he coming, anyhow?”
Granny cleared her throat. “Francis,” she said at last, “I have to tell you something very sad.”
“What?”
“Your father’s not coming back. He’s going to marry somebody else.”
“Oh, yes. Gloria!” said Francis calmly. “I wondered if it would come to that. Poor old Mum!”
Granny looked both shocked and startled.
“I had no idea you knew anything about it, Francis,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing for your mother. And how do you think Wendy and Deborah will take it?”
“I ‘spect they’ll be sad,” said Francis thoughtfully. “After all, he was their own dad. But I’ll look after them all, Granny. I’m ten now. We’ll have to get the house cleaned up, won’t we? You heard how Tyke messed up my room, didn’t you? But Auntie Alison and I went and took care of that.”
She smiled at his eager, important voice. Perhaps things will be easier for him now, she thought. There’ll be room for him and a real place. What a splendid boy he is!
“I know,” she replied. “I’ve been in. Mrs. Glengarry’s going to dust around, and get in some food, and air the beds, so it won’t be like coming to an empty house. But the yard’s terrible! Do you think Mrs. Glenny would let you go over on Saturday and do a bit of weeding and watering? It’s been such a hot week, and all the plants are dying.”
Francis nodded. That would be fun. He would attach the hose to the kitchen tap and make little rivers all over the flower bed, and everywhere the rivers came, Mum’s plants would grow green. He just could not wait.
Uncle John was working on the baler. The grass and moondaisies and ragged robin were almost knee-deep in the meadow, and it was time to start the hay-making. Francis went and stood beside him.
“Uncle John,” he said. “When you go in to town on Saturday morning, could you drop me and my bike off at home? I want to get the yard ready for Mum, and I’ll come back when it is finished.”
“Good idea,” said Uncle John, “and perhaps the others could go for an hour and help too. And when I pick them up, I’ll cut the grass. It must be like a jungle now. You can stay behind and come when you’re ready. There’s that nice old cat-lady next door, isn’t there, if you want anything?”
Francis trotted off, delighted, to find Auntie Alison, who was peeling potatoes. “Well, Francis,” she said. “I hear you’re leaving us. We shall miss you.”
“I shall come back lots,” he said. “I shall come on Saturdays to see the river—and you and Uncle John and Kate and Martin and Chris. And I shall come on Sunday to church, and sometimes I shall bring Ram—and Auntie, Mum’s coming on the bus, and it stops at the bottom of our road at six, and she thinks we’re coming on Tuesday. Auntie, do you think I could give her a big surprise and get there first? She’d open the door and think the house was empty, and there I’d be—me and Whiskers. Wouldn’t that be a lovely surprise?”
“Yes, I think it would,” said Auntie Alison, laughing. “We’ll keep it a dead secret. I’ll take you over with your things about five o’clock and leave you there. And if by any chance she misses the bus or doesn’t come, just phone us and we’ll bring you back.”
Saturday was a huge success. Uncle John mowed the lawn, and everybody weeded. It was only a small yard and Francis, fastening the hose to the tap in the kitchen, watered every dry, thirsty plant. I think it will be all green by Monday, he thought. Wherever the water comes, it will be green.
He got more and more excited as the weekend passed, and on Sunday evening Auntie Alison came up to say good night. “You’ll have to
be like the father of the family now, Francis,” she said. “Your mother’s going to need you so much. What a mercy she’s got a boy of ten as well as those two little girls.”
“Yes, I know. It’s a funny thing, but I didn’t really like my two sisters much before. Wendy pinched me, and Debby was such a crybaby, and Dad always said it was my fault. But do you know?—now I want to see them again.”
“Yes, you’ll have to look after them now. It’s sad for them to lose their father, and I think you’ll soon learn to love them. It has made a difference having Jesus in your heart, hasn’t it? Do you remember your special Bible verse?”
“Yes, I think so. ‘If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in me,’ as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water’—something about the Spirit.”
“Yes, the source is Jesus coming to you, and the rivers are His love flowing out of you, teaching you to love. And if He’s in your heart, He’ll be in your home too, and it will make all the difference. I am going to teach you one more thing that Jesus said, and we will underline both these verses in your Bible. Listen to this—”
She picked up the Bible that Uncle John had given him on Easter Sunday and found John, chapter 14.
“Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode* with him.’ You see, first He lives in the heart that loves and obeys Him, and then the rivers of love flow out into the home, and everything is different.”
“I know.” He spoke slowly, groping for words. “But when I get home—you see, it’s not like here—we don’t read the Bible at home—I mean, how shall I go on learning about Jesus?”
“I’ll give you a little book that tells you what to read each day. Make a time every day to read it carefully, and pray about what you read. I know it is difficult alone. What about your Granny? Perhaps she could read it with you, and then perhaps Wendy would start listening too. I think she could understand.”
“It would be a very good thing if Wendy learned about Jesus,” said Francis seriously. “She might stop pinching.”
“Yes, she might,” agreed Auntie Alison, “but you’ll have to be patient. It takes time.”
She kissed him and left him. It was still light, and he could hear the rustle of wind in the ripening cornfield. I’ll pick a big bunch of poppies, he thought, and wondered what the plants in the yard at home were looking like. Everything grows green where the streams come, he thought drowsily. I’ll have to pack tomorrow, and Auntie might let me make some flapjacks like she did when Ram came. He fell asleep thinking what fun it would be to sit, just he and Mum, at the kitchen table with a pot of tea and a plate of flapjacks.
At last it was four o’clock on Monday and time to go. He had been so excited about going home that he hardly realized, till he came to say goodbye, how sorry he was to leave the family, the cows, and the river. Whiskers was not at all pleased to leave the barn—there was not a hope of a mouse at 23 Graham Avenue!
“I’ll come back soon,” he called through the car window. “’Bye everybody, and thanks for having me.” He tried to wave, but it was difficult, for with one arm he was clasping Whiskers around her middle and with the other he clasped a huge summer bouquet of poppies, wild roses, ragged robin, and moondaisies. There would just be time to arrange them and get tea ready before Mum arrived.
They picked up the key from Mrs. Glengarry, and Auntie Alison helped him carry up his things to his room. Then she said good-bye, and he flung his arms around her middle and clung to her for a moment, realizing how happy he had been. Could it, would it last?
He arranged his flowers in bowls and pots all over the house, laid the tea things on the best cloth, and got out the best china cups and plates, for he believed this was what the occasion and his flapjacks deserved. Then he put on the kettle, very low, and went and curled up on the sofa by the living room window to watch the gate. He was not going to meet her at the bus stop; he was going to be her big surprise.
He began to wonder how he would welcome her. He wanted to appear very grown-up and capable, and he thought he would walk to the front door when he saw her coming, open it, and take her bag. “Don’t worry, Mum,” he would say. “I’m here, and I’ll look after you and the girls, and tea’s ready.” He imagined himself looking very tall, almost a man, and Mum would say, “I’m so thankful you’re here, Francis. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, and whoever made these flapjacks?”
It was a lovely peaceful dream. Whiskers jumped onto his lap, and he threw his arm over the back of the sofa and rested his head on his hand. He gazed at the yard, where everything was green and flowering and pushing toward the sun. It was my hose that did it, he thought. “Rivers of living water.”
He began to think about what Auntie Alison had said on Saturday night—“Streams of love and happiness.” Well, he had been happy, and he had started to love others in a new way, others like Kate and the swan and the birds and the water rats and Ram and even Wendy and Debby. He was longing to see them again. Jesus said, “I will make my home with you”—if Jesus was there, perhaps they would all start again and be happy.
The time seemed very long. He was thinking so hard and feeling so tired after all the excitement that he half fell asleep, lulled by Whisker’s purring. When at last his mother arrived, he never saw her come up the path nor did he hear the click of the key in the lock.
Francis’s mother sat in the bus, her hands clasped tightly together. She was better and ready to start life again, but she almost regretted saying that she wanted to arrive first. The thought of the empty house frightened her now, and she did not want to be alone. There were too many sad things to remember, too many fears for the future. When the children came, it would be different. Or would it? Wendy and Debby would probably settle down. They were too little to understand much, and Granny was coming to live with them for the present. But what had she done to her son, Francis?
The thought of him had haunted her all through her illness, and during her convalescence she would wake in the night and remember those torn-up pictures in the rubbish bin, or the light that would die in his eyes when he wanted to tell her something and she just could not concentrate. All her thoughts had been taken up with her anger and fear over her husband, and she just had not had time for Francis. That was why he had slipped away, got into bad company, and ended up with strangers. Delinquent, her husband had called him, and by whose fault?
She had heard from Granny that the strangers were excellent people and that Francis was happy, and certainly his funny little letters all about calves, swans, and streams sounded happy. But would she ever really get him back, and would he ever forgive her? They had thought at the hospital that she was grieving over her husband, but they were wrong. That grief was past, and she could only think of him with an angry bitterness. Her grief was all for her son, now. It was Francis, Francis all the time.
She walked slowly, for her bag was quite heavy, and when she got inside the gate, she stopped to find her key. She was surprised to see the yard looking so good and the grass mowed. It’s that good old Mrs. Glengarry next door, she said to herself. I’ll pop over when I’ve had a cup of tea.
She crept into the house, awed by the tidy silence, longing for her children. She would leave her bag in the living room and put on the kettle. She went in and then stood, rooted to the spot, wondering if she was seeing things.
He lay curled upon the couch with Whiskers in his lap, his arm thrown over the back, his cheek resting on his hand. His eyes were almost shut, and as he suddenly looked up he seemed, for a moment, quite as bewildered as she was.
“Mum,” cried Francis, and the next instant his arms were tightly around her neck. She held him close and knew, without another word being spoken, that her boy had come home.
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