I
The old road came pouring down from the wooded hills to the westward,
flowed round the foot of other hills, skirting a meadow and a pond, and
then went on easterly about its business. Almost overhanging the road,
like a mill jutting upon its journeyman stream, was an aged house. Still
older were the two lofty oaks standing mid-meadow and imaged again in
the pond. Younger than oaks or house or road, yet as old as Scripture
allots, was the man who stalked across the porch and slumped into a
chair. He always slumped into a chair, for his muscles still remembered
the days when he had sat only when he was worn out. Younger than oaks,
house, road, or man, yet older than a woman wants to be, was the woman
in the garden.
"What you doin', Maw?" the man called across the rail, though he could
see perfectly well.
"Just putterin' 'round in the garden. What you been doin', Paw?"
"Just putterin' 'round the barn. Better come in out the hot sun and rest
your old back."
Evidently the idea appealed to her, for the sunbonnet overhanging the
meek potato-flowers like a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood
erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few
uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the
porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She
carried a dish-pan full of green peas, and as her gaze wandered over the
beloved scene her wrinkled fingers were busy among the pods, shelling
them expertly, as if they knew their way about alone.
The old man sighed, the deep sigh of ultimate contentment. "Well, Maw,
as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."
"Here we are again, Paw."
They always said the same thing about this time of year, when they
wearied of the splendid home they had established as the capital of
their estate and came back to the ground from which they had sprung.
James Coburn always said:
"Well, Maw, as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."
And Sarah Gregg Coburn always answered:
"Here we are again, Paw."
This place was to them what old slippers are to tired feet. Here they
put off the manners and the dignities their servants expected of them,
and lapsed into shabby clothes and colloquialisms, such as they had been
used to when they were first married, long before he became the master
of a thousand acres, of cattle upon a hundred hills, of blooded
thoroughbreds and patriarchal stallions, of town lots and a bank, and
of a record as Congressman for two terms. This pilgrimage had become a
sort of annual elopement, the mischief of two white-haired runaways. Now
that the graveyard or the city had robbed them of all their children,
they loved to turn back and play at an Indian-summer honeymoon.
This year, for the first time, Maw had consented to the aid of a "hired
girl." She refused to bring one of the maids or the cook from the big
house, and engaged a woman from the village nearest at hand--and then
tried to pretend the woman wasn't there. It hurt her to admit the
triumph of age in her bones, but there was compensation in the privilege
of hearing some one else faintly clattering over the dish-washing of
evenings, while she sat on the porch with Paw and watched the sunset
trail its gorgeous banners along the heavens and across the little toy
sky of the pond.
It was pleasant in the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence,
hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After
breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the
bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins
in the green aisles of the garden. But mostly the old couple just
pretended to do their chores, and sat on the porch and watched the
clouds go by and the frogs flop into the pond.
"Mail come yet, Maw?"
"Susan's gone for it."
He glanced up the road to a sunbonneted figure blurred in the glare, and
sniffed amiably. "Humph! Country's getting so citified the morning
papers are here almost before breakfast's cleared off. Remember when we
used to drive eleven mile to get the _Weekly Tribune_, Maw?"
"I remember. And it took you about a week to read it. Sometimes you got
one number behind. Nowadays you finish your paper in about five
minutes."
"Nothing much in the papers nowadays except murder trials and divorce
cases. I guess Susan must have a mash on that mail-carrier."
"I wish she'd come on home and not gabble so much."
"Expectin' a letter from the boy?"
"Ought to be one this morning."
"You've said that every mornin' for three weeks. I s'pose he's so busy
in town he don't realize how much his letters mean to us."
"I hate to have him in the city with its dangers--he's so reckless with
his motor, and then there's the temptations and the scramble for money.
I wish Stevie had been contented to settle down with us. We've got
enough, goodness knows. But I suppose he feels he must be a millionaire
or nothing, and what you've made don't seem a drop in the bucket."
The old man winced. He thought how often the boy had found occasion to
draw on him for help in financing his "sure things" and paying up the
losses on the "sure things" that had gone wrong. Those letters had been
sent to the bank in town and had not been mentioned at home, except now
and then, long afterward, when the wife pressed the old man too hard
about holding back money from the boy. Then he would unfold a few
figures. They dazed her, but they never convinced her.
Who ever convinced a woman? Persuaded? Yes, since Eve! Convinced? Not
yet!
It hurts a man's pride to hear his wife impliedly disparage his own
achievements in contrast with his son's. Not that he is jealous of his
son; not that he does not hope and expect that the boy will climb to
peaks he has never dared; not that he would not give his all and bend
his own back as a stepping-stone to his son's ascension; but just that
comparisons are odious. This disparagement is natural, though, to wives,
for they compare what their husbands have done with what their sons are
going to do.
It was an old source of peevishness with Paw Coburn, and he was moved to
say--answering only by implication what she had unconsciously implied,
and seeming to take his theme from the landscape about them:
"When my father died all he left me was this little--bungalow they'd
call it nowadays, I suppose, and a few acres 'round it. You remember,
Maw, how, when the sun first came sneakin' over that knob off to the
left, the shadow of those two oaks used to just touch the stone wall on
the western border of father's property, and when the sun was just
crawlin' into bed behind those woods off yonder the shadow of the oaks
just overlapped the rail fence on the eastern border? That's all my
father left me--that and the mortgage. That's all I brought you home to,
Maw. I'm not disparaging my father. He was a great man. When he left his
own home in the East and came out here all this was woods, woods, woods,
far as you can see. Even that pond wasn't there then. My father cleared
it all--cut down everything except those two oak-trees. He used to call
them the Twin Oaks, but they always seemed to me like man and wife. I
kind o' like to think that they're you and me. And like you and me
they're all that's left standin' of the old trees. They were big trees,
too, and those were big days."
The greatness of his thoughts rendered him mute. He was a plain man, but
he was hearing the unwritten music of the American epic of the ax and
the plow, the more than Trojan war, the more than ten years' war,
against forests and savages. His wife brought him back from
hyper-Homeric vision to the concrete.
"Thank Heaven, Susan's finished gossipin' and started home."
The mail-carrier in his little umbrellaed cart was vanishing up the
hill, and the sunbonnet was floating down the road. The sky was an
unmitigated blue, save for a few masses of cloud, like piles of new
fleece on a shearing-floor. Green woods, gray road, blue sky, pale
clouds, all were steeped in heat and silence so intense it seemed that
something must break. And something broke.
Appallingly, abruptly, came a shattering crash, a streak of blinding
fire, an unendurable noise, a searing blast of blaze as if the sun had
been dynamite exploded, splintering the very joists of heaven. The whole
air rocked like a tidal wave breaking on a reef; the house writhed in
all its timbers. Then silence--unbearable silence.
The old woman, made a child again by a paralytic stroke of terror, found
herself on her knees, clinging frantically to her husband. The cheek
buried in his breast felt the lurch and leap of his pounding heart.
Manlike, he found courage in his woman's fright, but his hand quivered
upon her hair; she heard his shaken voice saying:
"There, there, Maw, it's all over."
When he dared to open his eyes he was blinded and dazed like the
stricken Saul. When he could see again he found the world unchanged. The
sky was still there, and still azure; the clouds swam serenely; the road
still poured down from the unaltered hills. He tried to laugh; it was a
sickly sound he made.
"I guess that was what the fellow calls a bolt from the blue. I've often
heard of 'em, but it's the first I ever saw. No harm's done, Maw,
except to Susan's feelings. She's pickin' herself up out the dust and
hurryin' home like two-forty. I guess the concussion must have knocked
her over."
The old woman, her heart still fluttering madly, rose from her knees
with the tremulous aid of the old man and opened her eyes. She could
hardly believe that she would not find the earth an apocalyptic ruin of
uprooted hills. She breathed deeply of the relief, and her eyes ran
along the remembered things as if calling the roll. Suddenly her eyes
paused, widened. Her hand went out to clutch her husband's arm.
"Look, Paw! The oaks, the oaks!"
The lightning had leaped upon them like a mad panther, rending their
branches from them, ripping off great strips of bark, and leaving long,
gaping wounds, dripping with the white blood of trees. The lesser of the
two oaks had felt the greater blow, and would have toppled to the ground
had it not fallen across its mate; and its mate, though grievously
riven, held it up, with branches interlocking like cherishing arms.
To that human couple the tragedy of the trees they had looked upon as
the very emblems of stability was pitiful. The old woman's eyes swam
with tears. She made no shame of her sobs. The old man tried to comfort
her with a commonplace:
"I was readin' only the other day, Maw, that oaks attract the lightning
more than any other trees," and then he broke down. "Father always
called 'em the Twin Oaks, but I always called 'em you and me."
The panic-racked Susan came stumbling up the steps, gasping with
experiences. But the aged couple either did not hear or did not heed.
With old hand embracing old hand they sat staring at the rapine of the
lightning, the tigerish atrocity that had butchered and mutilated their
beloved trees. Susan dropped into Mrs. Coburn's lap what mail she
brought and hurried inside to faint.
The old couple sat in a stupor long and long before Mrs. Coburn found
that she was idly fingering letters and papers. She glanced down, and a
familiar writing brought her from her trance.
"Oh, Paw, here's a letter from the boy! Here's a letter from Stevie. And
here's your paper."
He took the paper, but did not open it, turning instead to ask, "What
does the boy say?"
With hands awkwardly eager she ripped the envelope, tore out the letter,
and spread it open on her lap, then pulled her spectacles down from her
hair, and read with loving inflection:
"MY DARLING MOTHER AND DAD,--It is simply heinous the way I neglect
to write you, but somehow the rush of things here keeps me putting
it off from day to day. If remembrances were letters you would have
them in flocks, for I think of you always and I am homesick for the
sight of your blessed faces.
"I should like to come out and see you in your little old nest, but
business piles up about me till I can't see my way out at present.
I do wish you could run down here and make me a good long visit,
but I suppose that is impossible, too. There are two or three big
deals pending that look promising, and if any one of them wins out
I shall clean up enough to be a gentleman of leisure. The first
place I turn will be home. My heart aches for the rest and comfort
of your love.
"Write me often and tell me how you both are, and believe me, with
all the affection in the world,
"Your devoted son,
"STEPHEN."
She pushed her dewy spectacles back in her gray hair and pressed the
letter to her lips; she was smiling as only old mothers smile over
letters from their far-off children. The man's face softened, too, with
the ache that battle-scarred fathers feel, thinking of their sons in the
thick of the fight. Then he unfolded his paper, set his glasses on his
big nose, and pursed his lips to read what was new in the world at
large. His wife sat still, just remembering, perusing old files and back
numbers of the gazettes of her boy's past, remembering him from her
first vague thrill of him to his slow youth, to manhood, and the last
good-by kiss.
Nothing was heard from either of them for a long while, save the creak
of her chair and the rustle of his paper as he turned to the page
recording the results in the incessant Gettysburgs over the prices of
corn, pork, poultry, butter, and eggs. They were history to him. He
could grow angry over a drop in December wheat, and he could glow at a
sign of feverishness in oats. To-day he was profoundly moved to read
that October ribs had opened at 10.95 and closed at 11.01, and
depressed to see that September lard had dropped from 11.67 to 11.65.
As he turned the paper his eye was caught by the head-lines of an old
and notorious trial at law, and he was confirmed in his wrath. He
growled:
"Good Lord, ain't that dog hung yet?"
"What you talkin' about, Paw?"
"I was just noticin' that the third trial of Tom Carey is in full swing
again. It's cost the State a hundred thousand dollars already, and the
scoundrel ain't punished yet."
"What did he do, Paw?"
The old man blushed like a boy as he stammered: "You're too young to
know all he did, Maw. If I told you, you wouldn't understand. But it
ended in murder. If he'd been a low-browed dago they'd have had him
railroaded to Jericho in no time. But the lawyers are above the law, and
they've kept this fellow from his deserts till folks have almost forgot
what it was he did. It's disgraceful. It makes our courts the
laughing-stock of the world. It gives the anarchists an excuse for
saying that there's one law for the poor and another for the rich."
After the thunder of his ire had rolled away there was a gentle murmur
from the old woman. "It's a terrible thing to put a man to death."
"So it is, Maw, and if this fellow had only realized it he'd have kept
out of trouble."
"He was excited, most likely, and out of his head. What I mean is, it's
a terrible thing for a judge and a jury to try a man and take his life
away from him."
"Oh, it's terrible, of course, Maw, but we've got to have laws to hold
the world together, ain't we? And if we don't enforce 'em, what's the
use of havin' 'em?"
Silence and a far-away look on the wrinkled face resting on the wrinkled
hand and then a quiet question:
"Suppose it was our Steve?"
"I won't suppose any such thing. Thank God there's been no stain on any
of our family, either side; just plain hard-workin' folks--no crazy
ones, no criminals."
"But supposing it was our boy, Paw?"
"Oh, what's the use of arguin' with a woman! I love you for it, Maw,
but--well, I'm sorry I spoke."
He returned to his paper, growling now and then as he read of some new
quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as
surreptitiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He
turned again with mock indignation.
"Here, here! What you turning up about now?"
"I want to see my boy. I'm worried. He may be sick. He'd never let us
know."
The old man tried to cajole her from her forebodings, tried to reason
them away, laugh them away. At last he said, with a poor effort at
gruffness:
"Well, for the Lord's sake, why don't you go? He's always askin' us to
come and see him. I'm kind o' homesick for a sight of the boy m'self.
You haven't been to town for a month of Sundays. Throw a few things in a
valise and I'll hitch up. We'll just about make the next train from the
village."
She needed no coercion from without. She rose at once. As she opened the
squeaky screen-door he was clumping down the steps. He paused to call
back:
"Oh, Maw!"
"Yes, Paw!"
"Better tuck in a jar of those preserves you been puttin' up. The boy
always liked those better 'n most anything. Don't wrap 'em in my
nightshirt, though."
She called out, "All right," and the slap of the screen-door was echoed
a moment later by a similar sound in the barn, accompanied by the old
man's voice:
"Give over, Fan."