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MARY sat
musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for
Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe
down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway
with the news
And put him on his guard. "Silas is
back."
She pushed him outward with her through the
door
And shut it after her. "Be kind," she said.
She took the market things from Warren's arms
And set
them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside
her on the wooden steps.
"When was I ever anything
but kind to him?
But I'll not have the fellow back,"
he said.
"I told him so last haying, didn't I?
'If
he left then,' I said, 'that ended it.'
What good is
he? Who else will harbour him
At his age for the
little he can do?
What help he is there's no
depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him
most.
'He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won't have
to beg and be beholden.'
'All right,' I say, 'I can't
afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I
could.'
'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will
have to.'
I shouldn't mind his bettering himself
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he
begins like that, there's someone at him
Trying to
coax him off with pocket-money,--
In haying time,
when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to
us. I'm done."
"Sh! not so loud: he'll hear you,"
Mary said.
"I want him to: he'll have to soon or
late."
"He's worn out. He's asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe's I found him here,
Huddled
against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight,
and frightening, too--
You needn't smile--I didn't
recognise him--
I wasn't looking for him--and he's
changed.
Wait till you see."
"Where did you say
he'd been?"
"He didn't say. I dragged him to the
house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing
would do: he just kept nodding off."
"What did he
say? Did he say anything?"
"But little."
"Anything? Mary, confess
He said he'd come to ditch
the meadow for me."
"Warren!"
"But did he? I just
want to know."
"Of course he did. What would you have
him say?
Surely you wouldn't grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added,
if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the
upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you
have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have
heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to
look
Two or three times--he made me feel so queer--
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on
Harold Wilson--you remember--
The boy you had in
haying four years since.
He's finished school, and
teaching in his college.
Silas declares you'll have
to get him back.
He says they two will make a team
for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as
smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On
education--you know how they fought
All through July
under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build
the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on."
"Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot."
"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You
wouldn't think they would. How some things linger!
Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good
arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I
know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to
say too late.
Harold's associated in his mind with
Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked
it--that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the
boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong--
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks
if he could have another chance
To teach him how to
build a load of hay----"
"I know, that's Silas' one
accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its
place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the
unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in
bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him
standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to
lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that,
he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas,
so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look
backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward
to with hope,
So now and never any different."
Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging
the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured
softly in her lap. She saw
And spread her apron to
it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like
morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden
bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard the tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
"Warren," she said, "he has come home to die:
You
needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time."
"Home,"
he mocked gently.
"Yes, what else but home?
It all
depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he's
nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came
a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the
trail."
"Home is the place where, when you have to go
there,
They have to take you in."
"I should have
called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a
little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his
hand and tossed it by.
"Silas has better claim on us
you think
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas
has walked that far no doubt to-day.
Why didn't he go
there? His brother's rich,
A somebody--director in
the bank."
"He never told us that."
"We know it
though."
"I think his brother ought to help, of
course.
I'll see to that if there is need. He ought
of right
To take him in, and might be willing to--
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity
on Silas. Do you think
If he'd had any pride in
claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his
brother,
He'd keep so still about him all this time?"
"I wonder what's between them."
"I can tell you.
Silas is what he is--we wouldn't mind him--
But just
the kind that kinsfolk can't abide.
He never did a
thing so very bad.
He don't know why he isn't quite
as good
As anyone. He won't be made ashamed
To
please his brother, worthless though he is."
"I can't
think Si ever hurt anyone."
"No, but he hurt my heart
the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that
sharp-edged chair-back.
He wouldn't let me put him on
the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there to-night.
You'll be
surprised at him--how much he's broken.
His working
days are done; I'm sure of it."
"I'd not be in a
hurry to say that."
"I haven't been. Go, look, see
for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a
plan. You mustn't laugh at him.
He may not speak of
it, and then he may.
I'll sit and see if that small
sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon."
It hit
the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim
row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
Warren returned--too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped
to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
"Warren,"
she questioned.
"Dead," was all he answered.
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