The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 31

"Wait a minute, Frank," he spoke with hesitation.

The boy turned, looked at his father a moment, and then sat down.

"I don't think we'll cultivate this afternoon, Frank," his father commenced slowly.

"Why--" The boy started to speak but stopped. He saw the frightened grayness return to his mother's face. His father, too, seemed restless.

He crossed and recrossed his knees nervously.

"Well, Frank," he continued, "it's this way. Your Ma ain't been feelin'

well for quite a while and we rode over to the doctor's this morning to see what was the matter."

His mother had gone back of his chair. He could feel her hand on his shoulders. He turned half-round, his hands grasping the chair tightly.

"You mustn't be scared, Frank--the doctor said it wasn't so very bad."

He could feel her twining his hair about her fingers.

He turned, faced his mother silently, half afraid, as though some grim barrier stood between them. He saw fine lines about her gray eyes, and their color seemed heavy and faded. The boy sat staring at his mother with an intensity that made a color come to her cheeks, but he was not looking at her any more. Instead, he was wondering fiercely why he had never noticed the gray in her hair or the lines in her face, or the cough. The cough--surely he might have noticed that. His body lay limp against the back of the chair.

"The doctor said that Ma was pretty sick," his father was speaking on, his voice devoid of life or feeling. "But he said that she 'ud be all right if she went some place where the air was drier."

"What did he say it was?" he asked in a strained voice.

"It's her lungs, he says."

They were silent after this. He was looking out of the window at a far-away straw-stack which lay a ma.s.s of dull gold in the sombre setting of plowed land.

His mother still stood behind his chair. In the heavy silence of the room he could hear her uneven breathing. He heard his father turn in his chair.

"Well, Mother's got to go west--we might all of us go," he spoke with an attempt at cheerfulness. "Maybe we can work a small farm out there."

"What will we do with the farm here?" As she spoke the boy felt his mother's hand press more heavily on his shoulder. He turned from the window and caught his father's eyes looking at him. He saw his face flush.

"I guess we got to sell it. I can get a fair price. Help is scarce and rent's low since the dry years. We can't afford to rent it."

Again the boy caught his father's glance resting hopefully on him.

"But we can't sell the old place; we have worked it too long."

The boy was uneasily conscious of the break in his mother's voice. He sat up, his body stiffened. Did they expect him to stay on the farm? He wouldn't--he could not do that! They had no right to ask this of him.

But he remembered the quick hope in his father's eyes.

He got up from his chair, walked past his mother without looking at her, picked up his hat and went outside, closing the screen-door noiselessly behind him.

The earth slept warm in the drowsiness of early afternoon. The freshness of the morning had pa.s.sed and a languorous mist had fallen. The boy looked out to where earth and sky met in a haze of indefinable color.

What a wonderful earth was beyond! He turned and walked heavily away.

They hadn't any right to expect that!

Half-unconsciously he went toward the grove north of the house where he had played when he was a little boy. The neighbor boys would collect in the grove on a quiet summer afternoon, dressed as Indians, and in heavy seriousness would plan a desperate attack on the little white house with its green tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. What happy times they used to have! But he wasn't a boy any more, he had grown up; still he felt an expectant eagerness as he entered the cool shade of the trees.

He followed a path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters, serving as the back of a natural chair.

The boy sat for a while, leaning back with lowered eyelashes. The dim s.p.a.ces of the grove brought old memories. As he brooded there, relaxed, the sunlight coming in broken fragments through the oak leaves softened his face into almost that of a child.

Suddenly he straightened in desperate rebellion. Why did things have to happen so? He didn't want to grow older--he would rather be a boy.

If he were, his father and mother would not expect him to stay on the farm. With his reflections came the picture of his mother, her dark eyes shining unnaturally out of the rigid paleness of her face. Then the black dress with its long folds--it was horrible. The boy's thoughts blurred into a confusion of sharp emotions.

As he lay back again, with lowered eyelids, he was vaguely conscious of the life about him. Robins hopped from branch to branch, singing and chirping. A blue-jay, in a cracked crescendo, was attacking the established order of things among birds. A bee droned idly past.

Occasionally all sounds ceased, and silence, deep and impenetrable, seemed to close in. After a moment, the confused murmur of the woods began again.

In the underbrush near him, the boy became aware of fluttering noise. At first he could see nothing; then he saw a snake--a blue racer--writhing along the ground, while above it, making queer little noises of distress, hovered a brown wood-thrush. He stiffened. His flesh always crawled at the sight of a snake! Yet, leaning forward, he watched intently. The thrush, its body a blur of brown feathers, rose and fell in continuous attack. Then he saw the reason. A few yards from the tree-stump lay a nest, hidden in a clump of gooseberry bushes. Above the rim showed a circle of hungry gaping beaks. The snake was crawling steadily toward the nest.

It was almost there. The thrush became wild in fear for its young. Again and again its body flashed in silent deadly attack. The snake, rearing its head from the ground, its jaws wide, struck back at the fluttering terror above it.

The snake reached the nest. It writhed over the edge. With a quick, sharp note the bird flung itself upon its enemy. A blur of brown feathers and a glimpse of a twisting, bluish body were all that the boy could see. A moment, and the snake writhed out from the nest. The thrush lay on the ground, blood crimsoning the speckled white of its breast. Its wings fluttered slightly, then the body was still.

The boy leaned back against the trunk and closed his eyes. He released his breath sharply. His throat contracted so that he almost choked. He had always had a horror of seeing a creature maimed or killed. He felt it doubly now, and he might have helped the bird,--no one else could.

Yet it was only a bird; such things happened continually--they had to be: but he could not forget the flutterings of the dying thrush. Then, suddenly, he remembered his mother.

After a long time, he opened his eyes. The trees, the sky,--all the country was asleep; the absolute tranquillity of s.p.a.ce lay lightly in the air and bathed the earth with a drowsy light. And the boy yielded himself to the silence. His eyes mirrored the mystic, reflective mood of the afternoon.

In the west, ragged clouds ma.s.sed together and spread over the sky, their long streamers, black where they reached the sun, darkening the earth with the gray misty twilight of the storm. Then a cool breeze sprang up, the clouds receded, and the sun shone out.

The boy became conscious that it was late and jumped down from his seat.

He felt strangely cheerful. The confused emotions which had raged in him all the afternoon had spent themselves, and he whistled as he walked on between the trees. When he turned into the lane near the house, he could see, in the west, a few black ma.s.ses of cloud, vivid against the crimson flame of the sky--wandering spirits in an infinity of lonely s.p.a.ce.

At the windmill he stopped and looked toward the house. The kitchen was lighted; the rest of the house was dark and shadowy. A thin spiral of smoke twisted up until it became lost in the gray light. How home-like it all was! The boy walked quickly toward the house, took the milk pails from the hooks on the porch and went into the barn. The horses did not raise their heads from the grain as he entered. The sound of their crunching, the sweet smell of the hay, seemed part of the pervading rest and content about him. His father came up from the gloom of the barn, carrying a pail of milk. He glanced at the boy.

"I thought I'd do the ch.o.r.es to-night, son. You don't get a vacation very often. You ought to rest."

"Oh!" The boy felt sudden embarra.s.sment. He had a queer pity for his father. He almost wished that he could have done the ch.o.r.es himself.

It was dark as they walked slowly to the house. In the dusk of the east, the moon appeared red on the rim of the horizon. Everything seemed asleep, yet infinite life still vibrated through its sleep. Out of the oak-grove sounded the hopeless lament of the turtle-dove, voicing the mystery and sadness of the night. From the farm to the north came the faint cry of someone calling the cows, "Co-o, boss; co-o, boss!" A moment, the boy felt as though it were the wonder and music of the horizon that called. Then he smiled at the idea.

His father stopped on the porch. The boy knew what his father was thinking, knew with a wave of pity and understanding. It seemed to him there, in the darkness, that suddenly he was able to comprehend the shadows which he had not known before in his boyish dream of life.

He took off his hat. The night wind was cool. How intense the night was!

Nature seemed a living and beautiful power, ever-veiled but always near.

For a moment his father rested his hand upon the boy's shoulder. The boy moved closer to him.

THE END OF THE PATH[13]

BY NEWBOLD NOYES

From _Every Week_