Main-Travelled Roads Read online

  They stood and looked at each other. Howard's cuffs, collar, and shirt, alien in their elegance, showed through the dusk, and a glint of light shot out from the jewel of his necktie, as the light from the house caught it at the right angle. As they gazed in silence at each other, Howard divined something of the hard, bitter feeling which came into Grant's heart as he stood there, ragged, ankle-deep in muck, his sleeves rolled up, a shapeless old straw hat on his head.

  The gleam of Howard's white hands angered him. When he spoke, it was in a hard, gruff tone, full of rebellion.

  "Well, go in the house and set down. I'll be in soon's I strain the milk and wash the dirt off my hands."

  "But Mother-"

  "She's 'round somewhere. Just knock on the door under the porch 'round there."

  Howard went slowly around the corner of the house, past a vilely smelling rain barrel, toward the west. A gray-haired woman was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, her hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on the faintly yellow sky, against which the hills stood dim purple silhouettes and the locust trees were etched as fine as lace. There was sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in her attitude.

  Howard stood, his throat swelling till it seemed as if he would suffocate. This was his mother-the woman who bore him, the being who had taken her life in her hand for him; and he, in his excited and pleasurable life, had neglected her!

  He stepped into the faint light before her. She turned and looked at him without fear. "Mother!" he said. She uttered one little, breathing, gasping cry, called his name, rose, and stood still. He bounded up the steps and took her in his arms.

  "Mother! Dear old Mother!"

  In the silence, almost painful, which followed, an angry woman's voice could be heard inside: "I don't care. I am't goin' to wear myself out fer him. He c'n eat out here with us, or else-"

  Mrs. McLane began speaking. "Oh, I've longed to see yeh, Howard.

  I was afraid you wouldn't come till-too late."

  "What do you mean, Mother? Ain't you well?"

  "I don't seem to be able to do much now 'cept sit around and knit a little. I tried to pick some berries the other day, and I got so dizzy I had to give it up."

  "You mustn't work. You needn't work. Why didn't you write to me how you were?" Howard asked in an agony of remorse.

  "Well, we felt as if you probably had all you could do to take care of yourself."

  "Are you married, Howard?"

  "No, Mother; and there ain't any excuse for me-not a bit," he said, dropping back into her colloquialisms."I'm ashamed when I think of how long it's been since I saw you. I could have come."

  "It don't matter now," she interrupted gently. "It's the way things go. Our boys grow up and leave us."

  "Well, come in to supper," said Grant's ungracious voice from the doorway. "Come, Mother."

  Mrs. McLane moved with difficulty. Howard sprang to her aid, and leaning on his arm she went through the little sitting room, which was unlighted, out into the kitchen, where the supper table stood near the cookstove.

  "How, this is my wife," said Grant in a cold, peculiar tone.

  Howard bowed toward a remarkably handsome young woman, on whose forehead was a scowl, which did not change as she looked at him and the old lady.

  "Set down, anywhere," was the young woman's cordial invitation.

  Howard sat down next to his mother, and facing the wife, who had a small, fretful child in her arms. At Howard's left was the old man, Lewis. The supper was spread upon a gay-colored oilcloth, and consisted of a pan of milk, set in the midst, with bowls at each plate. Beside the pan was a dipper and a large plate of bread, and at one end of the table was a dish of fine honey.

  A boy of about fourteen leaned upon the table, his bent shoulders making him look like an old man. His hickory shirt, like that of Grant, was still wet with sweat, and discolored here and there with grease, or green from grass. His hair, freshly wet and combed, was smoothed away from his face, and shone in the light of the kerosene lamp. As he ate, he stared at Howard, as if he would make an inventory of each thread of the visitor's clothing.

  "Did I look like that at his age?" thought Howard.

  "You see we live jest about the same's ever," said Grant as they began eating, speaking with a grim, almost challenging inflection.

  The two brothers studied each other curiously, as they talked of neighborhood scenes. Howard seemed incredibly elegant and handsome to them all, with his rich, soft clothing, his spotless linen, and his exquisite enunciation and ease of speech. He had always been "smooth-spoken," and he had become "elegantly persuasive," as his friends said of him, and it was a large factor in his success.

  Every detail of the kitchen, the heat, the flies buzzing aloft, the poor furniture, the dress of the people-all smote him like the lash of a wire whip. His brother was a man of great character. He could see that now. His deep-set, gray eyes and rugged face showed at thirty a man of great natural ability. He had more of the Scotch in his face than Howard, and he looked much older.

  He was dressed, like the old man and the boy, in a checked shirt without vest. His suspenders, once gay-colored, had given most of their color to his shirt, and had marked irregular broad bands of pink and brown and green over his shoulders. His hair was uncombed, merely pushed away from his face. He wore a mustache only, though his face was covered with a week's growth of beard. His face was rather gaunt and was brown as leather.

  Howard could not eat much. He was disturbed by his mother's strange silence and oppression, and sickened by the long-drawn gasps with. which the old man ate his bread and milk, and by the way the boy ate. He had his knife gripped tightly in his fist, knuckles up, and was scooping honey upon his bread.

  The baby, having ceased to be afraid, was curious, gazing silently at the stranger.

  "Hello, little one! Come and see your uncle. Eh? 'Course 'e will," cooed Howard in the attempt to escape the depressing atmosphere. The little one listened to his inflections as a kitten does, and at last lifted its arms in sign of surrender.

  The mother's face cleared up a little. "I declare, she wants to go to you."

  "'Course she does. Dogs and kittens always come to me when I call 'em. Why shouldn't my own niece come?"

  He took the little one and began walking up and down the kitchen with her, while she pulled at his beard and nose. "I ought to have you, my lady, in my new comedy. You'd bring down the house."

  "You don't mean to say you put babies on the stage, Howard," said his mother in surprise.

  "Oh, yes. Domestic comedy must have a baby these days."

  "Well, that's another way of makin' a livin', sure," said Grant. The baby had cleared the atmosphere a little. "I s'pose you fellers make a pile of money."

  "Sometimes we make a thousand a week; oftener we don't."

  "A thousand dollars!" They all stared.

  "A thousand dollars sometimes, and then lose it all the next week in another town. The dramatic business is a good deal like gambling-you take your chances."

  "I wish you weren't in it, Howard. I don't like to have my son-"

  "I wish I was in somethin' that paid better'n farmin'. Anything under God's heavens is better'n farmin'," said Grant.

  "No, I ain't laid up much," Howard went on, as if explaining why he hadn't helped them. "Costs me a good deal to live, and I need about ten thousand dollars lee-way to work on. I've made a good living, but I-I ain't made any money."

  Grant looked at him, darkly meditative.

  Howard went on:

  "How'd ye come to sell the old farm? I was in hopes-"

  "How'd we come to sell it?" said Grant with terrible bitterness. "We had something on it that didn't leave anything to sell. You probably don't remember anything about it, but there was a mortgage on it that eat us up in just four years by the almanac. 'Most killed Mother to leave it. We wrote to you for money, but I don't s'pose you remember that."

  "No, you didn't."

  "Yes, I did."

&
nbsp; "When was it? I don't-why, it's-I never received it. It must have been that summer I went with Rob Mannmg to Europe." Howard put the baby down and faced his brother. "Why, Grant, you didn't think I refused to help?"

  "Well, it locked that way. We never heard a word from yeh all summer, and when y' did write, it was all about yerself 'n plays 'n things we didn't know anything about. I swore to God I'd never write to you again, and I won't."

  "But, good heavens! I never got it."

  "Suppose you didn't. You might of known we were poor as Job's off-ox. Everybody is that earns a living. We fellers on the farm have to earn a livin' for ourselves and you fellers that don't work. I don't blame yeh. I'd do it if I could."

  "Grant, don't talk so! Howard didn't realize-"

  "I tell yeh I don't blame 'im. Only I don't want him to come the brotherly business over me, after livin' as he has-that's all." There was a bitter accusation in the man's voice.

  Howard leaped to his feet, his face twitching. "By God, I'll go back tomorrow morning!" he threatened.

  "Go, an' be damned! I don't care what yeh do," Grant growled, rising and going out.

  "Boys," called the mother, piteously, "it's terrible to see you quarrel."

  "But I'm not to blame, Mother," cried Howard in a sickness that made him white as chalk. "The man is a savage. I came home to help you all, not to quarrel."

  "Grant's got one o' his fits on," said the young wife, speaking for the first time. "Don't pay any attention to him. He'll be all right in the morning."

  "If it wasn't for you, Mother, I'd leave now and never see that savage again."

  He lashed himself up and down in the room, in horrible disgust and hate of his brother and of this home in his heart. He remembered his tender anticipations of the homecoming with a kind of self-pity and disgust. This was his greeting!

  He went to bed, to toss about on the hard, straw-filled mattress in the stuffy little best room. Tossing, writhing under the bludgeoning of his brother's accusing inflections, a dozen times he said, with a half-articulate snarl:

  "He can go to hell! I'll not try to do anything more for him. I don't care if he is my brother; he has no right to jump on me like that. On the night of my return, too. My God! he is a brute, a savage!"

  He thought of the presents in his trunk and valise which he couldn't show to him that night, after what had been said. He had intended to have such a happy evening of it, such a tender reunion! It was to be so bright and cheery!

  In the midst of his cursings, his hot indignation, would come visions of himself in his own modest rooms. He seemed to be yawning and stretching in his beautiful bed, the sun shining in, his books, foils, pictures around him, to say good morning and tempt him to rise, while the squat little clock on the mantel struck eleven warningly.

  He could see the olive walls, the unique copper-and-crimson arabesque frieze (his own selection), and the delicate draperies; an open grate full of glowing coals, to temper the sea winds; and in the midst of it, between a landscape by Enneking and an Indian in a canoe in a canyon, by Brush, he saw a somber landscape by a master greater than Millet, a melancholy subject, treated with pitiless fidelity.

  A farm in the valley! Over the mountains swept jagged, gray, angry, sprawling clouds, sending a freezing, thin drizzle of rain, as they passed, upon a man following a plow. The horses had a sullen and weary look, and their manes and tails streamed sidewise in the blast. The plowman clad in a ragged gray coat, with uncouth, muddy boots upon his feet, walked with his head inclined t~ ward the sleet, to shield his face from the cold and sting of it. The soil rolled away, black and sticky and with a dull sheen upon it. Nearby, a boy with tears on his cheeks was watching cattle, a dog seated near, his back to the gale.

  As he looked at this picture, his heart softened. He looked down at the sleeve of his soft and fleecy nightshirt, at his white, rounded arm, muscular yet fine as a woman's, and when he looked for the picture it was gone. Then came again the assertive odor of stagnant air, laden with camphor; he felt the springless bed under him, and caught dimly a few soap-advertising lithographs on the walls. He thought of his brother, in his still more in-hospitable bedroom, disturbed by the child, condemned to rise at five o'clock and begin another day's pitiless labor. His heart shrank and quivered, and the tears started to his eyes.

  "I forgive him, poor fellow! He's not to blame."

  II

  HE woke, however, with a dull, languid pulse and an oppressive melancholy on his heart. He looked around the little room, clean enough, but oh, how poor! how barren! Cold plaster walls, a cheap washstand, a wash set of three pieces, with a blue band around each; the windows, rectangular, and fitted with fantastic green shades.

  Outside he could hear the bees humming. Chickens were merrily moving about. Cowbells far up the road were sounding irregularly. A jay came by and yelled an insolent reveille, and Howard sat up. He could hear nothing in the house but the rattle of pans on the back side of the kitchen. He looked at his watch and saw it was half-past seven. His brother was in the field by this time, after milking, currying the horses, and eating breakfast—had been at work two hours and a half.

  He dressed himself hurriedly in a neglige shirt with a windsor scad, light-colored, serviceable trousers with a belt, russet shoes, and a tennis hat-a knockabout costume, he considered. His mother, good soul, thought it a special suit put on for her benefit and admired it through her glasses.

  He kissed her with a bright smile, nodded at Laura the young wife, and tossed the baby, all in a breath, and with the manner, as he himself saw, of the returned captain in the war dramas of the day.

  "Been to breakfast?" He frowned reproachfully. "Why didn't you call me? I wanted to get up, just as I used to, at sunrise."

  "We thought you was tired, and so we didn't-"

  "Tired! Just wait till you see me help Grant pitch hay or something. Hasn't finished his haying, has he?"

  'No, I guess not. He will today if it don't rain again."

  "Well, breakfast is all ready-Howard," said Laura, hesitating a little on his name.

  "Good! I am ready for it. Bacon and eggs, as I'm a jay! Just what I was wanting. I was saying to myself. 'Now if they'll only get bacon and eggs and hot biscuits and honey-' Oh, say, mother, I heard the bees humming this morning; same noise they used to make when I was a boy, exactly. must be the same bees. Hey, you young rascal! come here and have some breakfast with your uncle."

  "I never saw her take to anyone so quick," Laura smiled. Howard noticed her in particular for the first time. She had on a clean calico dress and a gingham apron, and she looked strong and fresh and handsome. Her head was intellectual, her eyes full of power. She seemed anxious to remove the impression of her unpleasant looks and words the night before. Indeed, it would have been hard to resist Howard's sunny good nature.

  The baby laughed and crowed. The old mother could not take her dim eyes off the face of her son, but sat smiling at him as he ate and rattled on. When he rose from the table at last, after eating heartily and praising it all, he said with a smile:

  "Well, now I'll just telephone down to the express and have my trunk brought up. I've got a few little things in there you'll enjoy seeing. But this fellow," indicating the baby, "I didn't take into account. But never mind; Uncle Howard make that all right."

  "You ain't goin' to lay it up agin Grant, be you, my son?" Mrs.

  McLane faltered as they went out into the best room.

  "Of course not! He didn't mean it. Now, can't you send word down and have my trunk brought up? Or shall I have to walk down?"

  "I guess I'll see somebody goin' down," said Laura.

  "All right. Now for the hayfield," he smiled and went out into the glorious morning.

  The circling hills the same, yet not the same as at night. A cooler, tenderer, more subdued cloak of color upon them. Far down the valley a cool, deep, impalpable, blue mist lay, under which one divined the river Ian, under its elms and basswoods and wild grapevines. On the shaven
slopes of the hills cattle and sheep were feeding, their cries and bells coming to the ear with a sweet suggestiveness. There was something immemorial in the sunny slopes dotted with red and brown and gray cattle.

  Walking toward the haymakers, Howard felt a twinge of pain and distrust. Would he ignore it all and smile—

  He stopped short. He had not seen Grant smile in so long-he couldn't quite see him smiling. He had been cold and bitter for years. When he came up to them, Grant was pitching on; the old man was loading, and the boy was raking after.

  "Good morning," Howard cried cheerily. The old man nodded, the boy stared. Grant growled something, with-out looking up. These "finical" things of saying good morning and good night are not much practiced in such homes as Grant McLane's.

  "Need some help? I'm ready to take a hand. Got on my regimentals this morning."

  Grant looked at him a moment.

  "You look like it."

  "Gimme a hold on that fork, and I'll show you. I'm not so soft as I look, now you bet."

  He laid hold upon the fork in Grant's hands, who r~ leased it sullenly and stood back sneering. Howard struck the fork into the pile in the old way, threw his left hand to the end of the polished handle, brought it down into the hollow of his thigh, and laid out his strength till the handle bent like a bow. "Oop she rises!" he called laughingly, as the whole pile began slowly to rise, and finally rolled upon the high load.

  "Oh, I ain't forgot how to do it," he laughed as he looked around at the boy, who was studying the jacket and hat with a devouring gaze.

  Grant was studying him too, but not in admiration.

  "I shouldn't say you had," said the old man, tugging at the forkful.

  'Mighty funny to come out here and do a little of this. But if you had to come here and do it all the while, you wouldn't look so white and soft in the hands," Grant said as they moved on to another pile. "Give me that fork. You'll be spoiling your fine clothes."