IN WHICH MARY ADAMS TAKES A MUCH NEEDED REST
The changing seasons moved from autumn to winter, from winter to spring.
One gray, wet March day, Grant Adams stood by the counter asking Mr.
Brotherton to send to the city for roses.
"White roses, a dozen white roses." Mr. Brotherton turned his broad back
as he wrote the order, and said gently: "They'll be down on No. 11
to-night, Grant; I'll send 'em right out."
As Grant stood hesitating, ready to go, but dreading the street, Dr.
Nesbit came in. He pressed the youth's hand and did not speak. He bought
his tobacco and stood cleaning his pipe. "Could your father sleep any
after--when I left, Grant?" asked the Doctor.
The young man shook his head. "Mrs. Nesbit is out there, isn't she?" the
Doctor asked again.
"Yes," replied the youth, "she and Laura came out before we had
breakfast. And Mrs. Dexter is there."
"Has any one else come?" asked the Doctor, looking up sharply from his
pipe, and added, "I sent word to Margaret Mueller."
Grant shook his head and the Doctor left the shop. At the doorway he met
Captain Morton, and seemed to be telling him the news, for the Captain's
face showed the sorrow and concern that he felt. He hurried in and took
Grant's hand and held it affectionately.
"Grant, your mother was with my wife her last night on earth; I wish I
could help you, son. I'll run right down to your father."
And the Captain left in the corner of the store the model of a patent
coffee pot he was handling at the time and went away without his morning
paper. Mr. Van Dorn came in, picked up his paper, snipped off the end of
his cigar at the machine, lighted the cigar, considered his fine raiment
a moment, adjusted his soft hat at a proper angle, pulled up his tie,
and seeing the youth, said: "By George, young man, this is sad news I
hear; give the good father my sympathy. Too bad."
When Grant went home, the silence of death hung over the little house,
in spite of the bustling of Mrs. Nesbit. And Grant sat outside on a
stone by his father under the gray sky.
In the house the prattle of the child with the women made the house seem
pitifully lonesome. Jasper was expressing his sorrow by chopping wood
down in the timber. Jasper was an odd sheep in the flock; he was a Sands
after Daniel's own heart. So Grant and his father sat together mourning
in silence. Finally the father drew in a deep broken breath, and spoke
with his eyes on the ground:
"'These also died in the faith, without having received the promise!'"
Then he lifted up his face and mourned, "Mary--Mary--" and again, "Oh,
Mary, we need--" The child's voice inside the house calling fretfully,
"Mother! mother!" came to the two and brought a quick cramp to the older
man's throat and tears to his eyes. Finally, Amos found voice to say:
"I was thinking how we--you and I and Jasper need mother! But our need
is as nothing compared with the baby's. Poor--lonely little thing! I
don't know what to do for him, Grant." He turned to his son helplessly.
Again the little voice was lifted, and Laura Nesbit could be heard
hushing the child's complaint. Not looking at his father, Grant spoke:
"Dr. Nesbit said he had let Margaret know--"
The father shook his head and returned, "I presumed he would!" He looked
into his son's face and said: "Maggie doesn't see things as we do, son.
But, oh--what can we do! And the little fellow needs her--needs some
one, who will love him and take care of him. Oh, Mary--Mary--" he cried
from his bewildered heart. "Be with us, Mary, and show us what to do!"
Grant rose, went into the house, bundled up Kenyon and between showers
carried him and walked with him through the bleak woods of March, where
the red bird's joyous song only cut into his heart and made the young
man press closer to him the little form that snuggled in his arms.
At night Jasper went to his room above the kitchen and the father turned
to his lonely bed. In the cold parlor Mary Adams lay. Grant sat in the
kitchen by the stove, pressing to his face his mother's apron, only
three days before left hanging by her own hands on the kitchen door. He
clung to this last touch of her fingers, through the long night, and as
he sat there his heart filled with a blind, vague, rather impotent
purpose to take his mother's place with Kenyon. From time to time he
rose to put wood in the stove, but always when he went back to his
chair, and stroked the apron with his face, the baby seemed to be
clinging to him. The thought of the little hands forever tugging at her
apron racked him with sobs long after his tears were gone.
And so as responsibility rose in him he stepped across the border from
youth to manhood.
They made him dress in his Sunday best the next morning and he was still
so close to that borderland of boyhood that he was standing about the
yard near the gate, looking rather lost and awkward when the Nesbits
drove up with Kenyon, whom they had taken for the night. When the others
had gone into the house the Doctor asked:
"Did she come, Grant?"
The youth lifted his face to the Doctor and looked him squarely in the
eye as man to man and answered sharply, "No."
The Doctor cocked one eye reflectively and said slowly, "So--" and drove
away.
It was nearly dusk when the Adamses came back from the cemetery to the
empty house. But a bright fire was burning in the kitchen stove and the
kettle was boiling and the odor of food cooking in the oven was in the
air. Kenyon was moving fitfully about the front room. Mrs. Dexter was
quietly setting the table. Amos Adams hung up his hat, took off his
coat, and went to his rocker by the kitchen door; Jasper sat stiffly in
the front room. Grant met Mrs. Dexter in the dining room, and she saw
that the child had hold of the young man's finger and she heard the baby
calling, "Mother--mother! Grant, I want mother!" with a plaintive little
cry, over and over again. Grant played with the child, showed the little
fellow his toys and tried to stop the incessant call of
"Mother--mother--where's mother!" At last the boy's eyes filled. He
picked up the child, knocking his own new hat roughly to the floor. He
drew up his chin, straightened his trembling jaw, batted his eyes so
that the moisture left them and said to his father in a hard, low
voice--a man's voice:
"I am going to Margaret; she must help."
It was dark when he came to town and walked up Congress Street with the
little one snuggled in his arms. Just before he arrived at the house,
the restless child had asked to walk, and they went hand in hand up the
steps of the house where Margaret Mueller lived. She was sitting alone on
the veranda--clearly waiting for some one, and when she saw who was
coming up the steps she rose and hurried to them, greeting them on the
very threshold of the veranda. She was white and her bosom was
fluttering as she asked in a tense whisper:
"What do you want--quick, what do you want?"
She stood before Grant, as if stopping his progress. The child's
plaintive cry, "Mother--Grant, I want mother!" not in grief, but in a
great question, was the answer.
He looked into her staring, terror-stricken eyes until they drooped and
for a moment he dominated her. But she came back from some outpost of
her nature with reenforcements.
"Get out of here--get out of here. Don't come here with your brat--get
out," she snarled in a whisper. The child went to her, plucked her
skirts and cried, "Mother, mother." Grant pointed to the baby and broke
out: "Oh, Maggie--what's to become of Kenyon?--what can I do! He's only
got you now. Oh, Maggie, won't you come?" He saw fear flit across her
face in a tense second before she answered. Then fear left and she
crouched at him trembling, red-eyed, gaping, mouthed, the embodiment of
determined hate; swiping the child's little hands away from her, she
snapped:
"Get out of here!--leave! quick!" He stood stubbornly before her and
only the child's voice crying, "Grant, Grant, I want to go home to
mother," filled the silence. Finally she spoke again, cutting through
the baby's complaint. "I shall never, never, never take that child; I
loathe him, and I hate you and I want both of you always to keep away
from me."
Without looking at her again, he caught up the toddling child, lifted it
to his shoulder and walked down the steps. As they turned into the
street they ran into Henry Fenn, who in his free choice of a mate was
hurrying to one who he thought would give him a home--a home and
children, many children to stand between him and his own insatiate
devil. Henry greeted Grant:
"Why, boy--oh, yes, been to see Maggie? I wish she could help you,
Grant."
And from the veranda came a sweet, rich voice, crying:
"Yes, Henry--do you know where they can get a good nurse girl?"