Of helping his mother against her will he never heard any more. When
his father returned that evening he had the same look of panic as on
the previous day, followed by the same expression of relief at seeing
the domestic life going on as usual. But he asked no questions, nor
did he ever bring the subject up again. When a day or two later Tom
explained to him that the powder had been blown away he merely nodded,
letting the matter rest.
Autumn came on and Tom went to school at Bere. He liked the school. No
longer a State ward, but the son of a man supposed to be of substance,
he passed the tests inflicted by the savage snobbery of children. His
quickness at sports helped him to a popularity justified by his good
nature. With the teachers he was often forced to seem less intelligent
than he was, so as to escape the odious soubriquet of "teacher's pet."
On the whole, the winter was the happiest he had so far known. It could
have been altogether happy had it not been for the tragic situation of
the Quidmores. After the brief improvement that had followed on his
coming they had reacted to a mutual animosity even more intense. Each
made him a confidant.
"God! it's all I can do to keep my hands off her," the soft drawl
confessed. "If she was just to die of a sickness, and me have nothing
to do with it, I don't believe I'd be satis--" He held the sentence
there as a matter of precaution. "What do you think of a woman who all
the years you've known her has never done anything but whine, whine,
whine, because you ain't givin' her what you promised?"
"And are you?" Tom asked, innocently.
"I give her what I can. She don't tempt me to do anything extra. Say,
now, would she tempt you?"
Tom did his best to take the grown-up, man-to-man tone in which he was
addressed. "I think she's awful tempting, if you take her the right
way."
To take her the right way, to take him also the right way, was the
boy's chief concern throughout the winter. To get them to take each
other the right way was beyond him.
"So long as he goes outside his home," Mrs. Quidmore declared, with an
euphemism of which the boy did not get the significance, "I'll make him
suffer for it."
"But, ma, he can't stay home all the time."
"Oh, don't tell me that you don't know what I mean! If you wasn't on
his side you'd have found out for me long ago who the woman is. Just
tell me that--"
"And what would you do?"
"I'd kill her, I think, if I got the chance."
"Oh, but ma!"
She brandished the knife with which she was cutting cold ham for the
supper. "I would! I would!"
"But you wouldn't if I asked you not to, would you, ma?"
The knife fell with a despairing movement of the hand. "Oh, I don't
suppose I should do it at all. But he ought to love me."
"Can he make himself love you, ma?"
The ingenuous question went so close to the point that she could only
dodge it. "Why shouldn't he? I'm his wife, ain't I?"
The challenge brought out another of the mysteries which surrounded
marriage, as a penumbra fringes the moon on a cloudy night. When his
father next reverted to the theme, while driving back from market, the
penumbra became denser.
"Say, boy, don't you go to thinking that the first time you fall in
love with a pretty face it's goin' to be for life. That's where the
devil sets his snare for men. Eight or ten years from now you'll see
some girl, and then the devil'll be after you. He'll try to make you
think that if you don't marry that girl your one and only chance'll
come and go. And when he does, my boy, just think o' me."
"Think of you--what about?"
The sweetness of the tone took from the answer anything like
bitterness. "Think how I got pinched. Gosh, when I look back and
remember that I was as crazy to get her as a pup to catch a squir'l
I can't believe it was me. But don't forget what I'm tellin' you. No
fellow ought to think of bein' married till he's over thirty. He can't
be expected to know what he'll love permanent till then."
It was the perpetual enigma. "But you always love your wife when you're
married to her, don't you?"
The answer was in loud satirical laughter, with the observation that
Tom was the limit for innocence.
Quite as disturbing as questions of love and marriage were those
relating to the fact that the man who had done very well as a hatter
was a failure as a market gardener.
"A hell of a business, this is! Rothschild and Rockefeller together
couldn't make it pay. Gosh, how I hate it! Hate everything about it,
and home worst of all. Know a little woman that if she'd light out with
me...."
In different keys and conjunctions these confidences were made to
the boy all through the winter. If they did not distress him more it
was because they were over his head. The disputes of the gods affect
mortals only indirectly. When Jupiter and Juno disagree men feel that
they can leave it to Olympus to manage its own affairs. So to a boy
of twelve the cares of his elders pass in spheres to which he has
little or no access. In spite of his knowledge that their situation was
desperate, the couple who had adopted him were mighty beings to Tom
Quidmore, with resources to meet all needs. To be so went with being
grown up and, in a general way, with being independent.
Their unbosomings worried him; they did not do more. When they were
over he could dismiss them from his mind. His own concerns, his
lessons, his games, his friends and enemies in school, and the vague
objective of becoming "something big," were his matters of importance.
Martin and Anna Quidmore cared for him so much, though each with a
dash of selfishness, that his inner detachment from them both would
have caused them pain.
And yet it was because of this detachment that he was able, in some
sense, to get through the winter happily. Whatever might have hurt him
most passed on the kind of Mount Olympus where grown-up people had
their incredible interests. Told, as he always was, that he couldn't
understand them, he was willing to drop them at that till they were
forced on him again. As spring was passing into summer they were forced
on him less persistently; and then one day, quite unexpectedly, he
struck the beginning of the end.
It was a Saturday. As there was no school that day he had driven in
on the truck with his father, to market a load of lettuce and early
spinach. On returning through Bere in the latter part of the forenoon,
Quidmore stopped at the druggist's.
"Jump down and have an ice cream soda. I'll leave the lorry here, and
come back to you. Errand to do in the village."
The words had been repeated so often that for these excursions they
had come to be a formula. By this time Tom knew the errand to be at
Bertha's house, which was indirectly opposite. Seated at a table in the
window, absorbing his cool, flavored drink through a pair of straws,
he could see his father run up the steps and enter, running down again
when he came out. Further than the fact that there was something
regrettable in the visit, something to be concealed when he went home,
the boy's mind did not work.
The tragedy of that morning was that, as he was enjoying himself
thus, the runabout, driven by one of the hired men, glided up to the
door, and Mrs. Quidmore, dressed for shopping, and very alert, sprang
out. As she rarely came into Bere, and almost never in the morning
when she had her work to do, Tom's surprise was tinged at once with
fear. Recognizing the lorry, Mrs. Quidmore rushed into the drug store.
Except for the young man, wearing a white coat, who tended it, the
long narrow slit was empty. As he peeped above his glass, with the two
straws between his lips, Tom saw the wrath of the wronged when close
on the track of the wrong-doer. Wheeling round, she caught him looking
conscious and guilty.
"Oh! So you're here? Where is he?"
Tom answered truthfully. "He said he had an errand to do. He didn't
tell me what it was."
"And is he coming back for you here?"
"He said he would."
"Then I'll wait."
To wait she sat down at Tom's side, having Bertha's house within range.
Whether she suspected anything or not Tom couldn't tell, since he
hardly suspected anything himself. That there was danger in the air he
knew by the violence with which she rejected his proposal to refresh
herself with ice cream.
"There he is!"
They watched him while he came down the steps, hesitated a minute,
and turned in the direction away from where they were waiting. Tom
understood this move.
"He's going to Jenkins's about that new tire."
As she jumped to her feet her movements had a fierceness of activity he
had never before seen in her.
"That's all I want. I'm goin' back. Don't you say you seen me, or that
I've been over here at all."
Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, she bade the hired
man turn round again for home.
What happened between that Saturday and the next Tom never knew
exactly. A few years later, when his powers of deduction had developed,
he was able to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no
accurate information. That there were bitter quarrels he inferred
from the sullenness they left behind; but he never witnessed them.
Not having witnessed them, he had little or no sense of a strain more
serious than usual.
On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in the potato field,
picking off the ugly reddish bugs and killing them. Suddenly he heard
himself called. On rising and looking round he found the runabout car
stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired men, beckoning
him to approach. Brushing his hands against each other, he stepped
carefully over the rows of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway.
"Get in," Billy Peet ordered, briefly. "The boss sent me over to fetch
you."
"Sent you over to fetch me--in the machine? What's up?" His eye fell on
a small straw suitcase in the back of the car. "What's that for?"
"Get in, and I'll tell you as we go along." Tom clambered in beside the
driver. "Mis' Quidmore's sick."
"What's the matter with her?"
"I'd'n know. Awful sick, they say."
When they passed the Quidmore entrance without turning in Tom began to
be startled. "Say! Where we going?"
"You're not going home. Doctor don't want you there. Boss telephoned
over to Mrs. Tollivant, and she's goin' to keep you till Mis'
Quidmore's better--or somethin'."
The boy was not often resentful, but he did resent being trundled about
like a package. If his mother was sick his place was at home. He could
light the fire, bring in the water from the well, and do the score of
little things for which a small boy can be useful. To be shunted off
like this, as if he could only be an additional care, was an indignity
to the thirteen years he was now supposed to have attained to. But what
could he do? Protest was useless. There was nothing for it but to go
where he was driven, like Geraldine or the dilapidated car.
And yet at Harfrey he settled down among the Tollivants naturally.
No State ward having succeeded him, his room under the eaves was
still vacant. Once within its familiar shelter, he soon began to
feel as if he had never been away. The family welcomed him with the
shades of warmth which went with their ages and characters--Mr. and
Mrs. Tollivant overcoming their repugnance to a born waif with that
Christian charity which doubtless is all the nobler for being visibly
against the grain; Art, now a swaggering fellow of sixteen, with
patronizing good nature; Cilly, who affected baby-blue ribbons on a
blond pigtail, with airs and condescension; Bertie, the cripple,
with satiric cordiality. If it was not exactly a home-coming, it was
at least as good as a visit to old friends. He was touched by being
included almost as a member of the family in Mr. Tollivant's evening
prayer.
"And, O Heavenly Father, take this young wanderer as Thy child, even
as we offer him a shelter. Visit not Thine anger upon him, lest he be
tempted overmuch."
At the thought of being tempted overmuch Tom felt a pleasing sense of
importance. It offered, too, a loophole for excuse in case he should
fall. If God didn't intervene on his behalf, easing temptation up, then
God would be responsible. And yet, such was the lack of fairness he was
bidden to see in God, He would knock a fellow down and then punish him
when he tumbled.
In the midst of these reflections a thought of the Quidmore household
choked him with unexpected homesickness. The people who had been kind
to him were in trouble, and he was not there! He wondered what they
would do without him. He could sometimes catch the man's cruelties and
turn them into pleasantries before they reached the wife. He could
sometimes forestall the wife's complaints and twist them into little
mollifying compliments. Would there be anyone to do that now? Would
they keep the peace? He wished Mr. Tollivant would pray for them. He
tried to pray for them himself, but, as with his effort of the previous
year, the right kind of words would not come. If only God could be
addressed without so much Thee and Thou! If only He could read a
little boy's heart without calling for fine language! For lack of fine
language he had to remain dumb, leaving God, who might possibly have
helped Martin and Anna Quidmore, with no information about them.
Nevertheless, with the facile emotions of youth, a half hour later he
was playing checkers with Bertie, in full enjoyment of the game. He
slept soundly that night, and on Sunday fell into the old routine of
church and Sunday school. Monday and Tuesday bored him, because for
most of the day school claimed the children; but when they came home,
and played and squabbled as usual, life took on its old zest. Only now
and then did the thought of the sick woman and the lonely man sweep
across him in a spasm of pain; after which he could forget them and be
cheerful.
But on Wednesday forenoon, as he was turning away from watching the
Plymouth Rocks pecking at their feed, his father arrived in the old
runabout. Dashing up the hill, Tom reached the back door in time to see
him enter by the front.
"How's ma?"
He got no answer, because Quidmore followed Mrs. Tollivant into the
front parlor, where they shut the door. In anticipation of being taken
home, the boy ran up to his room and packed his bag.
"How's ma?"
He called out the question from halfway down the stairs. Quidmore,
emerging from the parlor with Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding
good-by to his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he went
through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety almost amounting to
anguish to convince her of the truth of something he had said.
"How's ma?"
They were in the car at last so that he could no longer be denied.
"She's--she's--not there."
All the events of the past year focussed themselves into the question
that now burst on Tom's lips. "Is she--dead?"