THE human animal is a strange spectacle to behold, let alone comprehend. Not infrequently he goes along for years developing a state of mind, a consistent attitude, and then having got it thoroughly established does something in distinct contradiction to it. Martin had never cared for music, but when one evening, a little more than a week after Rose's arrival, she suggested, with a laughing lilt, her fondness for it, he agreed that he had missed it in his home and, to Bill's and Mrs. Wade's unbelieving surprise, dwelt at length upon his enjoyment of Fallon's band and his longing to blow a cornet. A little later, finding an excuse to leave, he drove into town on a mission so foreign to his iron-clad character that it seemed to cry against his every instinct, but which, for all that, he did with such simplicity as to indicate that it was the most natural step imaginable. He actually bought a two-hundred-dollar mahogany Victrola and an assortment of records, bringing both home with him in his car and, assisted eagerly by Bill, carrying them into the front room with an air that said it was a purchase he had been intending to make for a long time. Rose rewarded him with her bubbling delight and her aunt noticed with an odd constriction about her heart how Bill revelled at last in the new treasure, until now so hopelessly coveted. Martin had never shone to better advantage than this evening as he helped select and put on different pieces, lending himself to the mood of each. It was while a foot-stirring dance was on that Rose asked suddenly:
“Oh, Uncle Martin, do you know how?”
He shook his head. “You'll have to teach me to square up for learning to drive the car.”
“That's a bargain; and I'll teach Bill too,” she added with native tact. But Mrs. Wade, ill at ease in her own parlor, caught the afterthought quality of Rose's tone. There was no question but that it was for Martin she sparkled, sweet and spontaneous as she was. Decidedly, the time had come when definite action should not be delayed.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when they finally broke up and husband and wife found themselves alone in their own room. As they undressed, Mrs. Wade acted nervously, confused as to how to begin, while Martin whistled lightly and kept time by a slight bobbing of his head. She shot a meaning look in his direction.
“You seem happy, don't you?”
He stopped whistling instantly and assumed his more normal look of set sternness. This was the man she knew and she preferred him that way, rather than buoyant because of some other woman, even though that other was as lovable and innocent of any deliberate mischief as her niece. Not that she was jealous so much as she was hurt. When a woman has fortified herself, after years of the existence to which Mrs. Wade had submitted, with the final conviction that undoubtedly her husband's is a nature that cannot be other than it is, and then learns there are emotional potentialities not yet plumbed, not to mention a capacity for pleasant comradeship of which he has never vouchsafed her an inkling, she finds herself being ground between the millstones of an aching admission of her own deficiencies and a tattered, but rebellious, pride.
Martin, when her remark concerning his apparent happiness had registered, let his answer be a sober inspection of the garment he had just removed.
“I don't suppose you can talk to me now after such a strenuous evening,” she went on more emphatically. And as he maintained his silence, she continued with: “Oh, don't think I'm blind, Martin Wade. I know exactly how far this has gone and I know how far it can go.”
“What are you driving at?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean—the way you are behaving toward Rose.”
“Are you trying to imply that I'm carrying on with her?”
“I certainly am. I'm not angry, Martin. I never was calmer than I am right now, and I don't intend to say things just for the sake of saying them. I only want you to know that I have eyes, and that I don't want to be made a fool of.”
To her surprise, Martin came over to her and, looking at her steadily, returned with amazing candidness: “I'm not going to lie to you. You're perfectly welcome to know what's in my mind. I love her with every beat of my heart—she has brought something new into my life, something sacred—you've always thought I cared for nothing but work, that all I lived for was to plan and scheme how to make money. Haven't you? I don't blame you. It's what I've always believed, but tonight I've learned something.” Mrs. Wade could see his blood quicken. “She has been in this house only a few days and already I am alive with a new fire. It seems as if these hours are the only ones in which I have ever really lived—nothing else matters. Nothing! If there could be the slightest chance of my winning her love, of making her feel as I am feeling now, I'd build my world over again even if I had to tear all of the old one down.” Martin was now talking to himself, oblivious to his wife's presence, indifferent to her. “Happiness is waiting for me with her, with my little flower.”
“Your Rose of Sharon?” Her tone was biting.
“If only I could say that! My Rose of Sharon!” It seemed to Mrs. Wade that the very room quivered with his low cry that was almost a groan. “I know what you're thinking,” he went on, “but you know I have never loved you. You knew it when I married you, you must have.” The twisting agony of it—that he could make capital out of the very crux of all her suffering. “I have never deceived you and I never intend to. My life with you hasn't been a Song of Solomon, but I'm not complaining.”
“You're not complaining! I hope I won't start complaining, Martin.”
“Well, now you know how I feel. I'll go on with the present arrangement between us, but I'm playing square with you—it's because there's no hope for me. If I thought she cared for me, I would go to her, right now, tonight, and pour out my heart to her, wife or no wife. Oh, Rose, have pity! It can't do you any harm if I drink a little joy—don't spoil her faith in me! Don't frighten her away. I can't bear the thought of her going out into the world to work. She's like a gentle little doe feeding on lilies—she doesn't dream of the pitfalls ahead of her. And she will never know—she doesn't even suspect how I feel towards her. She will meet some young fellow in town and marry. I'm too old for her—but Rose, you don't understand what it means to me to have her in the same house, to know that she is sleeping so near, so beautiful, so ready for love; that when I wake up tomorrow she will still be here.”
Disarmed and partly appeased by the frankness of his confession, Mrs. Wade sat silently taking in each word, studying him with wet eyes, her lips almost blue, her breath a little short. The fire in his voice, the reality of his strange, terrible love, the eyes that gazed so sadly and so unexpectantly into space, the hands that seemed to have shed their weight of toil and clutched, too late, for the bright flowers of happiness—all filled her with compassion. Never had he looked so splendid. He seemed, in casting off his thongs, to have taken on some of the Herculean quality of his own magnificent gesture. It was as if their barnyard well had burst into a mighty, high-shooting geyser. To her dying day would she remember that surge of passion. To have met it with anger would have been of as little avail as the stamp of a protesting foot before the tremors of an earthquake.
She offered him the comforting directness which she might have given Bill. “I didn't know you felt so deeply, Martin. Life plays us all tricks; it's played many with me, and it's playing one of its meanest with you, for whatever happens you are going to suffer—far more than I am. You can believe it or not, but I'm sorry.”
Martin felt oddly grateful to her; he had not expected this sense of understanding. She might have burst into wild tears. Instead, she was pitying him. More possessed of his usual immobility, he remarked:
“I must be a fool, a great, pathetic fool. I look into a girl's eyes and immediately see visions. I say a few words to her and she is kind enough to say a few to me and I see pictures of new happiness. I should have more sense. I don't know what is the matter with me.”
Although countless answers leaped to his wife's tongue she made none but the cryptic: “Well, it's no use to discuss it any more tonight. We both need rest.” But all the while that she was undressing with her usual sure, swift movements, and after she had finally slipped between the sheets, her mind was racing.
She was soon borne so completely out on the current of her own thoughts that she forgot Martin's actual presence. She remembered as if it were yesterday, the afternoon he came to the office and asked her to marry him. She wondered anew, as she had wondered a thousand times, if anything other than a wish for a housekeeper had prompted him. She remembered her misgivings—how she had read into him qualities which she had believed all these years were not there. But hadn't her intuition been justified, after all, by the very man she had seen tonight? Yes, her first feeling, that he was something finer, still in the rough, had been correct. She had thought it was his shyness, his unaccustomedness to women that had made him such a failure as a lover—and all the while it had been simply that she was not the right woman. When love touched him, he became a veritable white light.
All these years when he had been so cold, so hard toward her, it simply was because he disliked her. She remembered the day she was hurt, and the night her first baby came. Martin's brutality even now kindled in her a dull blazing anger, and as she realized what depths of feeling were in him, his callousness seemed intensified an hundred-fold. Well, she was having her revenge. All his life he had thwarted her, stolen from her, used her as one could not use even a hired hand, worked her more as a slave-driver hurries his underlings that profits may mount; now, by her mere existence, she was thwarting him. She saw him again as he had flashed before her when he had talked of Rose and she admitted bitterly to herself, what in her heart she had known all along—that if Martin could have loved her, she could have worshipped him. Instead, he had slowly smothered her, but she had at least a dignity in the community. He should not harm that. If they were unhappy, at least no one knew it. Her pride was her refuge. If that were violated she felt life would hold no sanctuary, that her soul would be stripped naked before the world.
But why was she afraid? Didn't Martin have his own position to think of? What if he had said nothing was to be compared to his new-found love for Rose. What stupidity on his part not to realize that it was his very position, power and money that commanded her respect. Did he command anything else from her? Mrs. Wade reviewed the evening. Yes, response had been in Rose's laugh, in every movement. Hadn't she always adored Martin, even as a tiny girl? Hadn't there always been some mystic bond between them? How she had envied them then. But if Martin were to go to her with only his love? From the depths of her observations of people she took comfort. He might stir his lovely Rose of Sharon to the uttermost, had he been free he might have won her for his wife—but would it be possible for fifty-four to hold the attention of twenty for long if he had nothing but his love to offer?
Such thoughts were hurrying through her heated mind as Martin slowly laid himself beside her. He said nothing, but lost himself in a flood of ceaseless ponderings. After stretching some of the tiredness out of his throbbing muscles, he relaxed and lay quietly, trying to recall exactly what he had said. Did his wife suspect that there might be no truth in the remark that Rose would never know how he felt toward her? At moments he felt that the girl already divined it, again he was not so sure. It was hard to be certain, but the more he thought about it the more hope he began to feel that she would yet be wholly his. Her admiration and trust belonged to him now, but there might be moral scruples which he would have to overcome. There would be the difficulty of convincing her that she would be doing her aunt no wrong. She would gain courage, however, from his own heedlessness. That same daring which he had just shown with the older Rose and which had impressed her into silence would eventually move his flower to him. He had thrown down the bars. Secrecy was now out of the question and it was well that he was moving thus in the open. Rose might shrink at first from the plain-spokenness of the situation, but this phase would soon pass and then the fact that she knew he was not hiding his love for her even from his wife would make it far easier to press his suit and possibly to bring it to a swift consummation.
He must win her! He must. He had been mad to admit to himself, much less to his Rag-weed, that there was any doubt of this outcome. It might take a few more days, a week, not longer than that. But what should he do when Rose gave the message to him? Could he go away with her? This bothered him for a while. Of course, he would have to. He could not send his wife away. The community would not tolerate this. Martin knew his neighbors. He did not care a snap for their good opinion, but he realized exactly how much they could hurt him if he violated their prejudices beyond a certain point. Fortunately, there are millions of communities in the world. This one would rise against him and denounce, another would accept them as pleasant strangers. He might be taken for Rose's father! He would fight this with tireless care. Yes, he would have to go away. But his business interests—what about his farm, his cattle, his machinery, his bank stock, his mortgages, his municipal bonds? How wonderful it would be if he could go with her to the station—his securities in a grip, his other possessions turned into a bank draft! But this woman lying at his side—the law gave her such a large share.
Cataclysmic changes were taking place in the soul of Martin Wade. The very thing which, without being able to name, he had dreaded a short week ago in the garage, was hovering over him, casting its foreboding shadow of material destruction. His whole system of values was being upset. He felt an actual revulsion against property. What was it all compared to his Rose? He would throw it at his wife's feet—his wife's feet and Bill's. Let them take every penny of it—no, not every penny. He would need a little—just a thousand or two to start with and then the rest would come easily, for he knew how to make money. And how liberal that would be.
He could see himself as he would go forth with Rose, leaving behind the woman he had never loved and all that he had toiled so many years to amass. It seemed fair—the property for which he had lusted so mercilessly left for the woman with whom he had lived so dully, left as the ransom to be paid for his liberty. So he and his Rose of Sharon would walk away—walk, because even the car would be surrendered—and he would be free with the only woman for whom he had ever yearned.
Would she be happy for long? His pride answered “yes,” but against his will he pictured himself being dumped ruthlessly into the pitiless sixties while Rose still lingered in the glorious twenties. This was a most unpleasant reflection and Martin preferred to dismiss it. That belonged to tomorrow. He would wait until then to fight tomorrow's battles. His mind came back to the property again. Wasn't it rather impetuous to surrender all? Wouldn't it be unfair to Rose to be so generous to his wife? She had Bill. In a few years he would be old enough to run the farm. Until then, with his help and good hired hands, she could do it herself. Why not leave it and the goods on it to her and take the mortgages and bonds with him? Rose was joy. He could hold her more securely with comforts added to his great love. Her happiness had to be thought of, had to be protected.
He could tell that his wife was still awake. He might begin to talk and maybe they could arrange a settlement. But he was getting too tired for a discussion that might invite tears and even a fit of hysterics, like the one she had gone through before their first child came dead. He could see her still as she looked that morning in the barn crying: “You'll be punished for this some day—you will—you will. You don't love me, but some time you will love some one. Then you'll understand what it is to be treated like this—” It gave him the creeps now to remember it. It was like one of those old incantations; almost like a curse. What if some day his Rose should grow to be as indifferent, feel as little tenderness toward him as he had felt toward his wife at that moment. The pain of it made him break out into a fine sweat. But he hadn't understood. What had he understood until this love had come into his life! He would never do a thing as cruel as that now. Come to think of it, the older Rose wasn't acting like a bad sort. But then, when it came to a show-down she might not be so magnanimous as she had appeared tonight.
Mrs. Wade was still thinking. She also was measuring possibilities and clairvoyantly sensing what was going on in her husband's mind. She, too, was sure that Rose would capitulate to him. She felt a deep sympathy for the girl. Martin had said it himself—he was too old for her. Her happiness lay with youth. And yet, how could one be so certain? Love was so illusive, so capricious! Did it really bow to the accident of years? Had she, Rose Wade, the right to snatch from anyone's hands the most precious gift of life? Wouldn't she have sold her very soul, at one time, to have had Martin care for her like this? Oh, if the child were wise she would not hesitate! She would drink her cup of joy while it was held out to her brimming full. A strange conclusion for a staid churchwoman like Mrs. Wade, but her rich humanity transcended all her training. She wondered if there could be anything in the belief that there was waiting somewhere for each soul just one other. There were people, she knew, who thought that. Rose had drawn out all that was finest in Martin—she had transformed him into a lover, and if she wanted the man, himself, she could have him. But, decided his wife, he could not take with him the things which her sweat and blood had helped to create. She would give him a divorce, but her terms would be as brutal as the Martin with whom she had lived these twenty years, and who now took it for granted that she would let him do whatever he chose. She was to be made to step aside, was she, with no weapon with which to strike back and no armor with which to protect herself? Well, there was one way she might hit him—one. She would strike him in his weakest point—his belongings. Yes, Martin Wade might leave her but all his property must be left behind—every cent of it. There should be a contract to that effect; otherwise, she would fight as only a frenzied woman can fight.
The two of them, lying there side by side as quietly as if in death, each considered the issue settled. She would let him go without his property; Martin would leave with half of it. And through all the long wordless controversy, their little Rose of Sharon, a few yards away, slept as only a tired child can sleep.
WHEN Martin opened his eyes, next morning, he realized with a start that he had overslept, which was a new experience for one whose life had been devoted so consistently to hard toil; and he saw with a sharper start, that his wife, who always got up about a half hour earlier than himself, was not even yet awake. He wondered what had come over him that he should have committed such a sin, and as his tired mind opened one of its doors and let the confused impressions flutter out, he countenanced a luxury as unusual as the impulse that had sent him townward the evening before to bring home the Victrola. Instead of jumping out hastily so that he might attend to his hungry, bellowing stock, he lay quietly marshalling the new incidents of his life into a parade which he ordered to march across the low ceiling.
He could not comprehend what the tornado had been about. There had been so little on which to base the excitement—so little that he was puzzled as to what had caused the scene with his wife. And as he reflected, it seemed highly unlikely to him that he would ever permit himself to do anything that might jeopardize his whole life, topple over the structure that decades of work had built. Why, it was scarcely less than suicidal to let a stranger come into his heart and maybe weaken his position. He remembered his last thought before falling asleep. It appeared unutterably rash, though when hit upon, it had been a decision that moderated a more extreme action. Now he realized that it was the very acme of foolishness deliberately to sacrifice half his fortune, especially the farm itself, to which he had given so many years of complete concentration. Certainly, if Rose were ready to be his, he might not hesitate even a second; but this flower was still to be won by him, and this morning, aware of what scant grounds he had upon which to venture any forecasts, he felt as full of doubt as he had been of confidence last night. It had been a saddening experience, but fortunate, for all that, inasmuch as nothing serious had come of it, except that he was greatly sobered. Martin could not understand that mysterious something which had risen up in his nature and threatened to wreck a carefully-built life. It was his first meeting with the little demon that rebels in a man after he thinks his character and his reactions thoroughly established, and he shuddered as he realized how close the strange imp had pulled him to the precipice. Yesterday, that precipice had seemed a new paradise; now it was a yawning chasm—and he drew back, frightened.
Cows, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, barn cats—all do not remain patient while the man who owns them lies in bed dreaming dreams. They wait a while and then get nervous. The many messages for food which they sent to Martin forced him to spring out of bed and hurry to them, for nothing is as unbearably insistent as a barn and yard full of living things clamoring their determination to have something to eat. As Martin ran to stop the bedlam, he saw the world as an enormous, empty stomach, at the opening of which he stood, hurling in the feed as fast as his muscles would permit. It was all there was to farming—raising crops and then shovelling the hay and the grain into these stomachs. Martin stood back a few feet and with loving eyes watched his animals enjoy their food. Here were the creatures he loved. The fine herd of Holstein cows—their big eyes looked at him with such trust! And their black and white markings—so spick and span with shininess because he threw salt on them that each cow might lick the other clean—their heavy milk veins, great udders, and backs as straight as a die—all appealed to his sense of the beautiful. “God Almighty!” he thought, “but they're wonders! There's none like them west of Chicago.” The mule colts, so huge and handsome, and oh, so knowing! made him chuckle his pride and satisfaction in a muttered: “Man's creation, are you, you fine young devils? Well, you're a credit, the lot of you, to whoever deserves it.” His eyes wandered over the rest of his stock, swept his wide realm. It was all a very part of himself. Yes, here was his life—here was his world. It would be the height of folly to leave it.
At breakfast, his wife ate sullenly, refusing to be drawn into the conversation, but by a wise compression of her lips and a flicker of amusement in her eyes, which seemed to say: “Oh, if only you could see how absurd you appear,” she contrived very cleverly to render Martin miserably self-conscious. Hampered by this new and unexpected feeling, his attempts to be pleasant fell flat and he lapsed into his old grimness, while Rose, eating quickly, confined her remarks to her determination to go to town in search of a job. Had Martin not talked as he had to his wife he would have been able, undoubtedly, to disregard her and to continue the line of chatter which he had hit upon so happily and which he had never suspected was in him. But the fact, not so much that she knew, but that from this vantage point of knowledge she was ridiculing him, was too much for even his self-possession. It made the light banter impossible. Especially, as there was no doubt that Rose did not seem anxious for it.
For Martin had not been the only member of that household who had held early communion with himself. The girl had sat long and dreamily at her dressing table—the dainty one of rich, dark mahogany that Uncle Martin's thoughtfulness had provided. It seemed unbelievable, but there was no use pretending she was mistaken—Uncle Martin, Aunt Rose's husband, was falling in love with her. She felt a little heady with the excitement of it. He was so different from the callow youths and dapper fellows who had heretofore worshipped at her shrine. There was something so imposing, so important about him. She was conscious that a man so much older might not appeal to many girls of her age, but it so happened that he did appeal to her. She would be able to have everything she wished, too—didn't she know how good, how kind, how tender he could be. And her heart yearned toward him—he was so clearly misunderstood, unhappy. But what about Aunt Rose? Well, then, why had she let herself get to be so ugly? She looked as if the greases of her own kitchen stove had cooked into her skin, thought the girl, mercilessly. Didn't she know there was such a thing as a powder puff? Women like that brought their own troubles upon themselves, that's what they did. And she was an old prude, too. Anyone could see with half an eye that she didn't like the idea of Uncle Martin learning to dance—why, she didn't even like his getting the Victrola—when it was just what both he and Bill had been wanting. But for all that she was her aunt, her own mother's sister and, poor dear, she was a good soul. It would probably upset her awfully and besides, oh well, it just wasn't right.
Before her mirror Rose blushed furiously, quite ashamed of the light way in which she had been leading Uncle Martin on. “But I haven't said one solitary thing auntie couldn't have heard,” she justified herself. Oh, well, no harm had been done. But she mustn't stay here, that was certain. She wouldn't say so, or hurt their feelings, for she wanted to be on the best of terms with them always, but she would stop flirting with Uncle Martin and just turn him back into a dear good friend. She hoped she was clever enough to do that much. And the dark-brown curls received a brushing that left no doubt of the vigor of her decisions.
She insisted that she go to Fallon that morning.
“I've been here eight whole days, Uncle Martin,” she announced firmly, “eight whole days and haven't tried to get a thing. It's terrible, isn't it, Aunt Rose, how lazy I am. I'm going to have Bill take me in right straight after breakfast.”
“If you're so set on it, I'll see about your position this afternoon,” conceded Martin reluctantly. “We'll drive in in the car.”
“Oh, Uncle Martin,” she coaxed innocently, “let me try my luck alone first. Bill can tell me who the different men are and if I know he's waiting for me outside in the buggy, it will keep me from being scared.” And her young cousin, only too pleased with the proposed arrangement, chimed in with: “That's the stuff, Rose. Folks have got to go it on their own, to get anywhere.”
By evening she had a position in an insurance agent's office with wages upon which she could live with fair decency. As it had rained all day and her employer wanted her to begin the next morning, she had the best possible excuse for renting a room in Fallon and asking Bill to ride in horseback with some things which she would ask Aunt Rose, over the telephone, to pack. It rained all the next day, too, and Sunday, when she met Mrs. Wade and Bill at church, she told them she had some extra typing she had promised to do by Monday. “No, auntie, this week it is really and truly just impossible, but next week—honest and true!” she insisted as the older woman seconded rather impersonally her son's urgent invitation to chicken and noodles.
Soon winter was upon them in good earnest, and Rose's visits “home,” as she always called it, were naturally infrequent. By Christmas time, she was receiving attentions from Frank Mall, Nellie's second son, a young farmer of twenty-five.
To Mrs. Wade's everlasting credit, she never twitted Martin with this, although she knew it from Rose's own lips, a month before he heard of it through Bill. She was too grateful for their narrow escape to feel vindictive and might have convinced herself they had merely endured a bad nightmare if it had not been for the shiny Victrola; the sight of it underscored the whole experience and she wished there were some way to get rid of the thing, a wish that was echoed even more fervently by Martin. In the evenings they would sit around the cleared supper table, she doing odd jobs of mending, Martin reading, checking up the interest dates on his mortgages or making entries in his account book, while Bill at his books, would study to the accompaniment of record after record, blissfully unconscious of what a thorn in the flesh he and his music were to both his parents.
It was all so unpleasant. To Mrs. Wade it brought up pictures. And it made Martin feel sheepish—the way he had felt that afternoon, decades ago, as he sat in the bakery eating a chocolate ice-cream soda and watching her walk across the Square. He would have told Bill to quit playing it—more than once the sharp words were on his tongue—but memories of the enthusiasm he had evinced the night he brought it home kept him silent. He was afraid of what the boy might say, afraid he might put two and two together, so he let it stay, although with his usual caution he had arranged for a trial and would have felt justified in packing it back as soon as the roads had permitted. Illogically, he felt it was all Bill's fault that he must endure this annoyance.
That fall, the boy started to high school in Fallon, making the long daily ride to and from town on horseback. He was a good pupil and the hours he spent with his lessons were precious; they made the farm drift away. To his mind, which was opening like a bud, it seemed that history was the recorded romance of men who were everything but farmers. School books told fascinating stories of conquerors, soldiers, inventors, writers, engineers, kings, statesmen and orators. He would sit and dream of the doers of great deeds. When he read of Alexander the Great, Bill was he. He was Caesar and Napoleon, Washington and Lincoln, Grant and Edison and Shakespeare. When railroads were built in the pages of his American History, it was Bill, himself, no less, who was the presiding genius. His imagination constructed and levelled, and rebuilt and remade.
One beautiful November afternoon, in his Junior year, at the sound of the last bell, which usually found him cantering out of town, he went instead to the school reading-room, and, sitting down calmly, opened his book and slowly read. The clock ticked off the seconds he was stealing from his father; counted the minutes that had never belonged to Bill before, but which now tasted like old wine on the palate. He cuddled down, lost to the world until five o'clock, when the building was closed. He left it only to march down a few blocks to the town's meager library, where another hour flew past. Gradually an empty feeling in his middle region became increasingly insistent, and briefly exploring his pockets, Bill decided upon a restaurant where he bought a stew and rolls for fifteen cents. Never had a supper tasted so satisfying. After it, he strolled around the town, feeling a pleasant warmth in his veins, a springiness to his legs, a new song in his heart. It was so good to be free to go where he pleased, to be his own master, if only for a stolen hour, to keep out of sight of a cow or a plow. He wondered why he had never done this before.
It was youth daring Fate, without show or bravado or fear; rolling the honey under his tongue and drawing in its sweetness; youth, that lives for the moment, that can be blind to the threatening future, that can forget the mean past; youth slipping along with some chewing-gum between his teeth and a warm sensation in his stew-crammed stomach, whistling, dreaming, happy; youth, that can, without premeditation, remain away from home and leave udders untapped and pigs unfed; sublime enigma; angering bit of irresponsibility to the Martins of a fiercely practical world. Bill was that rare kind of boy who could pull away from the traces just when he seemed most thoroughly broken to the harness.
It was ten o'clock before he got his pony out of the livery barn and started for home. Even on the way, he refused to imagine what would happen. He entered the house quietly, as though to tell his father that it was his next move, and setting his bundle of books on a chair, he glanced at his mother. She was at the stove, where an armful of kindling had been set off to take the chill out of the house. She looked at him mysteriously, as though he were a ghost of some lost one who had strayed in from a graveyard, but she said nothing. Bill did not even nod to her. He fumbled with his books, as though to keep them from slipping to the floor when, quite obviously, they were not even inclined to leave the chair. Rose let her eyes fall and then slide, under half-closed lids, until they had Martin in her view. She looked at him appealingly, but he was staring at a paper which he was not reading. He had been in this chair for two hours, without a word, pretending to be studying printed words which his mind refused to register. Martin had done Bill's share of the chores, with unbelief in his heart. He had never imagined such a thing. Who would have thought it could happen—a son of his!
His wife broke the silence with:
“What happened, Billy? Were you sick?”
“No, mother, I wasn't sick.”
Martin was still looking at his paper, which his fists gripped tightly.
“Then you just couldn't get home sooner, could you? Something you couldn't help kept you away, didn't it?”
Bill shook his head slowly. “No,” he answered easily. “I could have come home much sooner.”
“Billy, dear, what DID happen?” She was beginning to feel panicky; he was courting distress.
“Nothing, mother. I just felt like staying in the reading-room and reading—”
“Oh, you HAD to do some lessons, didn't you! Miss Roberts should have known better—”
“I didn't have to stay in—I wanted to.”
Martin still kept silent, his eyes looking over the newspaper wide open, staring, the muscles of his jaw relaxed. The boy was quick to sense that he was winning—the simple, non-resistance of the lamb was confounding his father.
“I wanted to stay. I read a book, and then I took a walk, and then I dropped in at the restaurant for a bite, and then I walked around some more, and then I went to a movie.”
“Billy, what are you saying?”
Martin, slowly putting down his paper, remarked without stressing a syllable:
“You had better go to bed, Bill; at once, without arguing.”
Bill moved towards the parlor, as though to obey. At the door he stopped a moment and said: “I wasn't arguing; I was just answering mother. She wanted to know.”
“She does not want to know.”
“Then I wanted her to know that I don't intend to work after school any more. I'll do my chores in the morning, but that's all. From now on nobody can MAKE me do anything.”
“I am not asking you to do anything but go to bed.”
“I don't intend to come home tomorrow afternoon until I'm ready. Or any afternoon. And if you don't like it—”
“Billy!” his mother cried; “Billy! go to bed!”
The boy obeyed.
Bill was fifteen when this took place. The impossible had happened. He had challenged the master and had won. Even after he had turned in, his father remained silent, feeling a secret respect for him; mysteriously he had grown suddenly to manhood. Martin was too mental to let anger express itself in violence and, besides, strangely enough, he felt no desire to punish; there was still the dislike he had always felt for him—his son who was the son of this woman, but though he would never have confessed aloud the satisfaction it gave him, he began to see there was in the boy more than a little of himself.
“Poor Billy,” his mother apologized; “he's tired.”
“He didn't say he was tired—”
“Then he did say he was tired of working evenings.”
“That's different.”
“Yes, it's different, Martin; but can you make him work?”
“No, I don't intend to try. He isn't my slave.”
With overwhelming pride in her eyes, pride that shook her voice, she exclaimed: “Not anybody's slave, and not afraid to declare it. Billy is a different kind of a boy. He doesn't like the farm—he hates it—”
“I know.”
“He loathes everything about it. Only the other day he told me he wished he could take it and tear it board from board, and leave it just a piece of bleak prairie, as it was when your father brought you here, Martin.”
“You actually mean he said he would tear down what took so many years of work to build? This farm that gives him a home and clothes and feeds him?”
“He did, Martin. And he meant it—there was hatred burning in his eyes. There's that in his heart which can tear and rend; and there's that which can build. Oh, my unhappy Billy, my boy!”
“Don't get hysterical. What do you want me to do? Have I said he must work?”
“No, but you have tried to rub it into his soul and it just can't be done. You're not to be blamed for being what you are, nor is Billy—I'll milk his cows.”
“I'm not asking that.”
“But I will, Martin.”
“And let him stand by and watch you?”
“Put it that way if you will. Billy must get away from here. I see that now.”
“I haven't suggested it.”
“But I do. I want him to be happy. We'll let him board in Fallon the rest of the year. The butter and egg money will be enough to carry him through. It won't cost much. If we don't send him, he'll run away. I know him. He's my boy, and your son, Martin. I won't see him suffer in a strange world, learning his lessons from bitter experiences. I want him to be taken care of.”
“Very well, have it as you say. I'm not putting anything in the way. I thought this was his home, but I see it isn't. It isn't a prison. He can go, and good luck go with him.” And after a long silence: “He would tear down this farm—the best in the county! Tear it down—board from board!”
THE very next day, Mrs. Wade rented a room for Bill in the same home in which Rose boarded, and for the rest of the winter she and Martin went on as before—working as hard as ever and making money even faster, while peace settled over their household, a peace so profound that, in her more intuitive moments, Bill's mother felt in it an ominous quality.
The storm broke with the summer vacation and the boy's point-blank refusal to return to farm work. His father laid down an ultimatum: until he came home he should not have a cent even from his mother, and home he should not come, at all, until he was willing to carry his share of the farm work willingly, and without further argument. “You see,” he pointed out to his wife, “that's the thanks I get for managing along without him this winter. The ungrateful young rascal! If he doesn't come to his senses shortly—”
“Oh, Martin, don't do anything rash,” implored Mrs. Wade. “Nearly all boys go through this period. Just be patient with him.”
But even she was shaken when his Aunt Nellie, over ostensibly for an afternoon of sociable carpet-rag sewing, began abruptly: “Do you know what Bill is doing, Rose?”
“Working in the mines,” returned his mother easily. “Isn't it strange, Nellie, that he should be digging coal right under this farm, the very coal that gave Martin his start?”
“Well, I'm not going to beat about the bush,” continued her sister-in-law abruptly. “He's working in the mines all right, but he isn't digging coal at all, though that would be bad enough. I wouldn't say a word about it, but I think you ought to know the truth and put a stop to such a risky business—he's firing shots.”
Rose's heart jumped, but she continued to wind up her large ball with the same uninterrupted motion.
“Are you sure?”
“I made Frank find out for certain. It's an extra dangerous mine because gas forms in it unusually often, and he gets fifteen dollars a day for the one hour he works. There's a contract, but he's told them he's twenty-one, and when you prove he's under age they'll make him stop.”
Rose still wound and wound, her clear eyes, looking over her glasses, fixed on Nellie.
“It's bad enough, I'll say,” rapped out the spare, angular woman, “to have everybody talking about the way Martin has ditched his son, without having the boy scattered to bits, or burned to a cinder. Already he's been blown twenty feet by one windy shot, and more than once he's had to lie flat while those horrible gases burned themselves out right over his head. His 'buddie,' the Italian who fires in the other part of the mine at the same time, told Harry Brown, the nightman, and he told Frank, himself. Why, they say if he'd have moved the least bit it would have fanned the fire downward and he'd have been in a fine mess. Sooner or later all shot-firers meet a tragic end. You want to put your foot down, Rose, and put it down hard—for once in your life—if you can,” she added, half under her breath.
“It isn't altogether Martin's fault,” began Rose, but Nellie cut her off with a short: “Now, don't you tell me a word about that precious brother of mine! It's as plain to me as the nose on your face that between his bull-headed hardness and your wishy-washy softness you're fixing to ruin one of the best boys God ever put on this earth.”
“I'll talk to Billy,” Rose promised.
It was the first time she ever had found herself definitely in opposition to her boy, but she felt serene in the confidence of her own power to dissuade him from anything so perilous. She understood the general routine of mining, and had been daily picturing him going down in the cage to the bottom, travelling through a long entry until he was under his home farm and located in one of the low, three-foot rooms where a Kansas miner must stoop all day. Oh, how it had hurt—that thought of those fine young shoulders bending, bending! She had visualized him filling his car, and mentally had followed his coal as it was carried up to the surface to be dumped into the hopper, weighed and dropped down the chute into the flat cars. Of course, there was always the danger of a loosened rock falling on him, but wasn't there always the possibility of accidents on a farm, too? Didn't the company's man always go down, first, into the mine to test the air and make certain it was all right? Rose had convinced herself that the risk was not so great, after all, though she could not help sharing a little of her husband's wonder that the boy could prefer to work underground instead of in the sweet, fresh sunshine. But she had thought it was because in the desperation of his complete revolt from Martin's domination anything else seemed to him preferable. Now, in a lightning flash, she understood. This reaction from a life whose duties had begun before sun-up and ended long after sundown, made danger seem as nothing in comparison with the marvellous chance to earn a comfortable living with only one hour's work a day.
Her conversation with Bill proved that she had been only too right. The boy was intoxicated with his own liberty. “I know I ought to have told you, mother,” he confessed. “I wanted to. Honest, I did, but I was afraid you'd worry, though you needn't. The man who taught me how to fire has been doing it over twenty years. A lot of it's up to a fellow, himself. You can pretty near tell if the air is all right by the way it blows—the less the better it is. And if you're right careful to see that the tool-boxes the boys leave are all locked—so's no powder can catch, you know—and always start lighting against the air, so that if there's gas and it catches the fire'll blow away from you instead of following you up—and if you examine the fuses to see they're long enough and the powder is tamped in just right—each miner does that before he leaves and lots of firers just give 'em a hasty once-over instead of a real look—and then shake your heels good and fast after you do fire—”
“Billy!” Rose was white. “I can't bear it—to hear you go on so lightly, when it's your life, your LIFE, you're playing with. For my sake, son, give it up.”
With an odd sinking of the heart, she observed the expression in his face which she had seen so often in his father's—the one that said as plainly as words that nothing could shake his determination. “A fellow's got a right to some good times in this world,” he said very low, “and I'm getting mine now. I'm not going to grind away and grind away all my life like father and you've done. If anything did happen I'd have had a chance to dream and think and read instead of getting to be old without ever having any fun out of it all. Maybe you won't believe it, but some days for hours I just lie in the sun like a darky boy, not even thinking. Gee! it feels great! And sometimes I read all day until I have to go to the mine. There's one thing I'm going to tell you square,” he went on, a firm ring in his voice, boyish for all its deep, bass note, “I'm never going back to the farm, never! Mother,” he cried, suddenly, coming over to take her hand in both his. “Will you leave father? We could rent a little house and you'd have hardly anything to do. I'm making more than lots of men with families. And I'd give you my envelope without opening it every pay-day.” “Oh, Billy, you don't know what you're saying! I couldn't leave your father. I couldn't think of it.”
“What I don't see is how you can stand it to stay with him. He's always been a brute to you. He's never cared a red cent for either of us.”
Rose was abashed before the harsh logic of youth. “Oh, son,” she murmured brokenly, “there are things one can't explain. I suppose it may seem strange to you—but his life has been so empty. He has missed so much! Everything, Billy.”
“Then it's his own fault,” judged the boy. “If ever anybody's always had his own way and done just as he darn pleased it's father. I wish he'd die, that's what I wish.”
“Bill!” His mother's tone was stern.
“There you are!” he marvelled. “You must have wished it lots of times yourself. I know you have. Yet you always talk as if you loved him.”
In Rose's eyes, the habitual look of patience and understanding deepened. How could Bill, as yet scarcely tried by life, comprehend the purging flames through which she had passed or realize time's power to reveal unsuspected truths.
“When you've been married to a man nearly twenty-two years and have built up a place together, there's bound to be a bond between you,” she eluded. “He just lives for this farm. It's almost as dear to him as you are to me, son, and it's a wonderful heritage, Bill, a magnificent heritage. Just think! Two generations have labored to build it out of the dust. Your father's whole life is in it. Your father's and mine. And your grandmother's. If only you could ever come to care for it!”
Bill fidgeted uneasily. “You mean you want me to go on with it?” he demanded. “You want me to come back to it, settle down to be a farmer—like father?”
The tone in which he asked this question made Rose choose her words carefully.
“What are your plans, son? What do you want to be—not just now, but finally?”
“I can't see what difference it makes what a fellow is—except that in one business a man makes more than in another. And I can't see either that it does a person a bit of good to have money. I'm having more fun right now than father or you ever had—more fun than anybody I know. Mother,” and his face was solemn as if with a great discovery, “I've figured it out that it's silly to do as most people—just live to work. I'm going to work just enough to live comfortably. Not one scrap more, either. You can't think how I hate the very thought of it.”
Rose sighed. Couldn't she, indeed! She understood only too well how deeply this rebellion was rooted. The hours when he had been dragged up from the far shores of a dreamful slumber to shiver forth in the chill darkness to milk and chore, still rankled. Those tangy frosty afternoons, when he had been forced to clean barns and plow while the other boys went rabbit and possum hunting or nutting, were afternoons whose loss he still mourned. Nothing had yet atoned for the evenings when he had been torn from his reading and sent sternly to bed because he must get up so early. Always work had stolen from him these treasures—dreams, recreation and knowledge. He had been obliged to fight the farm and his father for even a modicum of them—the things that made life worth living. And the irony of it—that eventually it would be this farm and Martin's driving methods which, if he became reconciled to his father, would make it possible for him to drink all the fullness of leisure.
It was too tragic that the very thing which should have stood for opportunity to the boy had been used to embitter him and drive him into danger. But he must not lose his birthright. An almost passionate desire welled in Rose's heart to hold on to it for him. True, she too had been a slave to the farm. Yet not so much a slave to it, she distinguished, as to Martin's absorption in its development. And of late years there had been for her, running through all the humdrum days, a satisfaction in perfecting it. In her mind now floated clearly the ideal toward which her husband was striving. She had not guessed how much it had become her own until she felt herself being drawn relentlessly by Bill's quiet, but implacable determination to have her leave it all behind. If only he would try again, she felt sure all would be so different! His father had learned a lesson, of that she was positive, and though he would not promise it, would not be so hard on the boy. And with this new independence of Bill's to strengthen her, they could resist Martin more successfully as different issues came up. She could manage to help her boy get what he wanted out of life without his having to pay such a terrible price as, the mine on one hand, and his father's displeasure on the other, might exact, for she knew that if he persisted too long, the break with Martin could never be bridged and that in the end his father would evoke the full powers of the law to disinherit him and tie her own hands as completely as possible in that direction.
But she was far too wise to press such arguments in her son's present mood. They would have to drift for a while, she saw that clearly, until she could gradually impress upon him how different farming would be if he were his own master. In time, he might even come to understand how much Martin needed her.
“Say you will,” Bill, pleading, insistent, broke in on her train of reflections, “I've always dreamed of this day, when we'd go away, and now it's come. I can take care of you.”
As he stood there, a glorious figure in his youthful self-confidence, a turn of his head reminded her a second time of Martin, recalling sharply the way her husband had looked the night he told her of his love for the other Rose. He had been bothered by no fine qualms about abandoning herself. She thought of his final surrender of love to wisdom. It was only youth that dared pursue happiness—to purchase delicious idleness by gambling with death. Billy was her boy. His dreams and hopes should be hers; her way of life, the one that gave him the most joy. She would follow him, if need be, to the end of the earth.
“Very well, son,” she said simply, her voice breaking over the few words. “If a year from now you still feel like this, I'll do as you wish.”
“You don't know how I hate him,” muttered the boy. “It's only when I'm tramping in the woods, or in the middle of some book I like that I can forgive him for living. No, mother, I don't mean all that,” he laughed, giving her a bear-like hug.
It was in this more reasonable side, this ability to change his point of view quickly when he became convinced he was wrong, that Mrs. Wade now put her faith. She would give him plenty of rope, she decided, not try to drive him. It would all come right, if she only waited, and she prayed, nightly, with an increasing tranquillity, that he might be kept safe from harm, taking deep comfort in the new light of contentment that was gradually stealing into his face. After all, each one had to work out his destiny in his own way, she supposed.
It was less than a month later that her telephone rang, and Rose, calmly laying aside her sewing and getting up rather stiffly because of her rheumatism, answered, thinking it probably a call from Martin, who had left earlier in the evening, to wind up a little matter of a chattel on some growing wheat. It had just begun to rain and she feared he might be stuck in the road somewhere, calling to tell her to come for him. But it was not Martin's voice that answered.
“Mrs. Wade?”
“Yes.”
“Why”—there was a forbidding break that made her shudder. A second later she convinced herself that it seemed a natural halt—people do such things without any apparent cause; but she could not help shaking a little.
“Is it about Mr. Wade?” and as she asked this question she wondered why she had spoken her husband's name when it was Bill's that really had rushed through her mind.
“No, ma'am, it ain't about Martin Wade I'm callin' you up, it ain't him at all—”
“I see.” She said this calmly and quietly, as though to impress her informant and reassure him. “What is it?” It was almost unnecessary to ask, for she knew already what had happened, knew that the boy had flung his dice and lost.
“It's your son, Mrs. Wade; it's him I'm a-callin' about. We're about to bring him home to you—an'—and I thought it'd be better to call you up first so's you might expect us an' not take on with the suddenness of it all. This is Brown—Harry Brown—the nightman at the mine down here. We've got the ambulance here and we're about ready to start.” There was an evenness about the strange voice that she understood better than its words. If Bill had been hurt the man would have been quick and jerky in his speaking as though he were feeling the boy's pain with him; but he was so even about it all—as even as Death.
“Then I'll phone for Dr. Bradley so he'll be here by the time you come,” said Rose, wondering how she could think of so practical a thing. Her mind had wrapped itself in a protecting armor, forbidding the shock of it all to strike with a single blow. She couldn't understand why she was not screaming.
“You can—if you want to, but Bill don't need him, Mrs. Wade,—he's dead.”
Slowly she hung up the receiver, the wall still around her brain, holding it tight and keeping her nerves taut, afraid to release them for fear they might snap. She stood there looking at the receiver as her hands came together.
As though she were talking to a person instead of the telephone before her, she gasped: “So—so THIS is what it has all been for—this. Into the world, into Martin's world—and this way out of it. Burned to death—Billy.”
The rain had lessened a little and now the wind began to shake the house, rattle the windows and scream as it tore its way over the plains. The sky flared white and the world lighted up suddenly, as though the sun had been turned on from an electric switch. At the same instant she saw a bolt of lightning strike a young tree by the roadside, heard the sharp click as it hit and then watched the flash dance about, now on the road, now along the barbed wire fencing. Then the world went black again. And a rumble quickly grew to an earth-shaking blast of thunder. It was as though that tree were Billy—struck by a gush of flying fire. The next bolt broke above the house, and the light it threw showed her the stripling split and lying on the ground. In the impenetrable darkness she realized that the house fuse of their Delco system must have been blown out, and she groped blindly for a match. She could hear the rain coming down again, now in rivers. There was unchained wrath in the downpour, viciousness. It was a madman rushing in to rend and tear. It frothed, and writhed, and spat hatred. Rose shook as though gripped by a strong hand. She was afraid—of the rain, the lightning, the thunder, the darkness; alone there, waiting for them to bring her Billy. She was too terrified to add her weeping to the wail of the wind—it would have been too ghastly. Would she never find a match! As she lit the lamp, like the stab of a needle in the midst of agony, came the thought of how long it had been after Martin had put in his electrical system and connected up his barns before she had been permitted to have this convenience in the house. What would he think now? She wished he were home. Anyone would be better than this awful waiting alone. She could only stand there, away from the window, looking out at the sheets of water running down the panes and shivering with the frightfulness and savageness of it all.
Her ears caught a rumble, fainter than thunder, and the splash of horses' hoofs—“it's too muddy for the motor ambulance,” she thought, mechanically. “They're using the old one,” and her heart contracting, twisting, a queer dryness in her throat, she opened the door as they stopped, her hand shading the lamp against the sudden inrush of wind and rain. “In there, through the parlor,” she said dully, indicating the new room and thinking, bitterly, as she followed them, that now, when it could mean nothing to Billy, Martin would offer no objections to its being given over to him.
The scuffling of feet, the low, matter-of-fact orders of a directing voice: “Easy now, boys—all together, lift. Watch out; pull that sheet back up over him,” and a brawny, work-stooped man saying to her awkwardly: “I wouldn't look at him if I was you, Mrs. Wade, till the undertaker fixes him up,” and she was once more alone.
As if transfixed, she continued to stand, looking beyond the lamp, beyond the bed on which her son's large figure was outlined by the sheet, beyond the front door which faced her, beyond—into the night, looking for Martin, waiting for him to come home to his boy. She asked herself again and again how she had been so restrained when her Billy had been carried in. After what seemed interminable ages, she heard heavy steps on the back porch and knew that her husband had returned at last. He brought in with him a gust of wind that caused the lamp to smoke. She held it with both hands, afraid that she might drop it, and carrying it to the dining-room table set it down slowly, looking at him. He seemed huger than ever with his hulk sinking into the gray darkness behind him. There was something elephantine about him as he stood there, soaked to the skin, bending forward a little, breathing slowly and deeply, his fine nostrils distending with perfect regularity, his face in the dim light, yellow, with the large lines almost black. He was hatless and his tawny-gray hair was flat with wetness, coming down almost to his eyes, so clear and far-seeing.
“What's the matter with the lights? Fuse blown out?” he asked, spitting imaginary rain out of his mouth.
Rose did not answer.
“Awful night for visiting,” Martin announced roughly, as he took off his coat. “But it was lucky I went, or all would have been pretty bad for me. Do you know, that rascal was delivering the wheat to the elevator—wheat on which I held a chattel—and I got to Tom Mayer just as he was figuring up the weights. You should have seen Johnson's face when I came in. He knew I had him cornered. 'Here,' I said, 'what's up?' And that lying rascal turned as white as death and said something about getting ready to bring me a check. I told him I was much obliged, but I would take it along with me—and I did. Here it is—fourteen hundred dollars, plus interest. And I got it by the skin of my teeth. I didn't stop to argue with him for I saw the storm coming on. I went racing, but a half mile north I skidded into the ditch. I really feel like leaving the car there all night, but it would do a lot of damage. I'll have to get a team and drag it in. I call it a good day's work. What do you say?” He looked at her closely, for the first time noticing her drawn face and far-away look.
“What's the matter? You look goopy—”
Rose settled herself heavily in the rocker close to the table.
“You're not sick, are you?”
She shook her head a few times and answered: “He's in there—”
“Who?” Martin straightened up ready for anything.
“Billy—”
“Oh!” A light flashed into Martin's face. “So he has come back, has he? Back home? What made him change toward this place? Is he here to stay?”
“No, Martin—”
“Then if he hasn't come to his senses, what is he doing here—here in my house, the home he hates—”
“He doesn't hate it now,” Rose replied, struggling for words that she might express herself and end this cruel conversation, but all she could do was to point nervously toward the spare room.
“What is he doing in there? It's the one spot that Rose can call her own, poor child.”
“He's on the bed, Martin—”
“What's the matter with the davenport he's always slept on? Is he sick? What in heaven's name is going on in this house?”
As Martin started toward the bedroom, his wife opened her lips to tell him the truth but the words refused to come; at the same instant it struck her that not to speak was brutal, yet just. She would let Martin go to this bed with words of anger on his lips, with feelings of unkindness in his heart. She would do this. Savage? Yes, but why not? There seemed to be something fair about it. Then her heart-strings pulled more strongly than ever. No; it was too hard. She must stop him, tell him, prepare him. But before the words came, he was out of the room and when she spoke he did not hear her because of the rain.
He saw the vague lines of the boy's body, hidden by the sheet, and thought quickly, “Bill's old ostrich-like trick,” and while at the same instant something told him that a terrible thing had happened, the idea did not register completely until he had his hand on the linen. Then, with a short yank, he pulled away the cover and saw the boy's head. Dark as it was, it was enough to show him the truth. With a quick move he covered him again. There was a smeary wetness on his fingers, which he wiped away on the side of his trousers. They were drenched with rain, but he distinguished the sticky feel of blood leaving his hand as he rubbed it nervously.
His first emotion was one of anger with Rose. He was sure she had played this sinister jest deliberately to torture him and he had fallen into the trap. He wanted to rush back into the other room and strike her down. He would show her! But he dismissed this impulse, for he did not want her to see him like this, no hold on himself and his mind without direction. Sitting there, she would have the advantage. Without so much as a sound except for the slight noise he made in walking, Martin went through the parlor towards the front door and out to the steps, where he leaned for a moment against the weather-boarding, letting the rain fall on him as he stared dully down at the ground. It felt good to stand there. No eyes were on him, and the rain was refreshing. This had been too much for him. Never had he known himself to be so near to bewilderment. How fortunate that he had escaped by this simple trick of leaving the house. Then he thought of the car—a half-mile north—and the horses in the stable. He must do something. He would bring the car into the garage. It was relieving to hurry across the dripping grass toward the barn. How wonderful it was to keep the body doing something when the breath in him was short, his heart battering like an engine with burned-out bearings, his brain in insane chaos. As he applied a match to the lantern he thought of his wife again, and his face regained its scowl.
Only when he had his great heavy team in the yard, his lantern hanging from his arm, the reins in his hands, and was pulling back with all his strength as he followed the horses—only then did he permit himself to think about the tragedy that had befallen.
“He's dead—killed,” he groaned. “It had to come. Shot-firers don't last long. Whoa, there, Lottie; not so fast, Jet, whoa!” His protesting team in control again, he trudged heavily behind. “It's terrible to die that way—not a chance in a thousand. And a kid of sixteen didn't have the judgment—couldn't have. But Bill knew what he was facing every evening. He didn't go in blindly. They'll blame me, as though it was my fault. I didn't want him to go there. I wanted him to take a hand here, to run the place by himself in good time. It was his mother who sent him away first.” He went on like that, justifying himself more positively as excuse after excuse suggested itself.
Not until he had convinced himself that he was in no way responsible, did he allow his heart to beat a little for this boy of his. “Poor Bill,” he thought on, “it has been a tough game for him. Lost in the shuffle. Born into something he didn't like and trying to escape, only to get caught. What did he expect out of life, anyway? Why didn't he learn that it's only a lot of senseless pain? Every moment of it pain—from coming into the world to going out. Oh, Bill, why didn't you learn what I know? You had brains, boy, but it would have been better if you had never used them. I've brains, too, but I've always managed to keep them tied down—buckled to the farm, to investments, and work—thinking about things that make us forget life. It's all dust and dust, with rain once in a while, only the rain steams off and it's dust again.”