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
