SUCH was the relationship of the Wades when one morning the mail brought
them a letter from Sharon, Illinois. Rose wrote that she was miserably
unhappy with her step-mother. Could she live with them until she found
a job? She had been to business college and was a dandy stenographer.
Maybe Uncle Martin could help her get located in Fallon.
“Of course I will, if she's got her head set on working,” was his
comment. “I'll telegraph her to come right along. Might as well wire the
fare, too, while I'm about it and tell her to let us know exactly when
she can get here.”
Mrs. Wade looked up quickly at this unusual generosity, yet she was, she
realized, more startled than surprised. For had not little Rose been
the one creature Martin had loved and to whom he had enjoyed giving
pleasure? It had been charming--the response of the big, aloof man to
the merry child of seven, but that child was now a woman, and, in
all probability, a beautiful one. Wasn't there danger of far more
complicated emotions which might prove even uprooting in their
consequences? Mrs. Wade blushed. Really, she chided herself sternly, she
wouldn't have believed she could be such an old goose--going out of her
way to borrow trouble. If her husband was moved to be hospitable, she
ought to be wholly glad, not petty enough to resent it. She would put
such thoughts out of her mind, indeed she would, and welcome Rose as
she would have wanted Norah to have welcomed Bill, had the circumstances
been reversed. It would be lovely to have the girl about--she would be
so much company, and the atmosphere of light-hearted youth which she
would bring with her would be just what Billy needed. By the time
Rose's answer came, saying she would arrive in two weeks, her aunt was
genuinely enthusiastic.
“I wonder,” said Martin, “if we could build on an extra room by then.
If she's going to make this her home, she can't be crowded as if she was
just here for a short visit. I'll hunt up Fletcher this afternoon.”
Mrs. Wade's lips shut tight, as she grappled with an altogether new
kind of jealousy. To think that Martin should delight in giving to an
outsider a pleasure he had persistently denied his own son. How often
had she pleaded: “It's a shame to make Billy sleep in the parlor! A
boy ought to have one spot to himself where he can keep his own little
treasures.” But always she had been met with a plausible excuse or a
direct refusal. “I suppose I ought to be thankful someone can strike an
unselfish chord in him,” she thought, wearily.
“You'll have to get some furniture,” Martin continued placidly.
“Mahogany's the thing nowadays.”
“It's fearfully expensive,” she murmured.
“Oh, I don't know. Might as well get something good while we're buying.
And while you're at it, pick out some of those curtains that have
flowers and birds on 'em and a pretty rug or two. I'll have Fletcher put
down hard oak flooring; and I guess it won't make much more of a mess if
we go ahead and connect up the house with the rest of the Delco system.”
“It's about time,” put in Bill, who had been listening round-eyed, until
now actually more than half believing his father to be in cynical jest.
“We're known all over the county as the place that has electric lights
in the barns and lamps in the house.”
“It hasn't been convenient to do it before,” was the crisp answer.
Bill and his mother exchanged expressive glances. When was anything ever
convenient for Martin Wade unless he were to derive a direct, personal
satisfaction from it! Then it became a horse of quite another color. He
could even become lavish; everything must be of the best; nothing else
would do; no expense, as long as full value was received, was too great.
Mrs. Wade found herself searching her memory. She was positive that not
since those occasions upon which he had brought home the sacks of candy
for the sheer sunshine of watching little Rose's glee had anyone's
pleasure been of enough importance to him to become his own. All this
present concern for her comfort talked far more plainly than words.
This time, Mrs. Wade admitted bravely to herself that her jealousy was
not for Billy. It would have been far easier for her if she had known
that Martin was thinking of their coming guest as he had last seen her
thirteen years before. He realized, thoroughly, that she must have grown
up, but before his mental eyes there still danced the roguish little
girl he had held so tenderly in his arms and had so longed to protect
and cherish.
He experienced a distinct sense of shock, therefore, when, tall, slender
and smartly dressed, Rose stepped off the train and, throwing her arms
impulsively around his neck, gave him an affectionate kiss. The feel of
those soft, warm lips lingered strangely, setting his heart to pounding
as he guided her down the platform.
“Uncle Martin, you haven't changed a bit!” she exclaimed joyously. “I
was wondering if I'd recognise you--imagine! Somehow, I thought thirteen
years would make a lot of difference, but you don't look a day older.”
“You little blarney,” he smiled, pleased nevertheless. “Well, here we
are,” and he stopped before his fine Cadillac.
“Oh, Uncle Martin,” gasped Rose ecstatically. “What a perfectly gorgeous
car! I thought all farmers were supposed to have Fords.”
They laughed happily together.
“It's the best in these parts,” he admitted complacently.
“It's too wonderful to think that it is really yours. Oh, Uncle Martin,
do you suppose you could ever teach me to drive it?”
“It takes a good deal of strength to shift the gears, but you can have a
try at it anyway, tomorrow.”
“Oh-h-h!” she exulted, slipping naturally into their old comradeship.
Martin took her elbow as he helped her into the car. The firm young
flesh felt good--it was hard to let go. His thumb and under finger had
pressed the muscles slightly and they had moved under his touch. His
hand trembled a bit. The grace with which she stepped up gave him
another thrill. He was struck with her trim pump, and the several
inches of silk stocking that flashed before his eyes, so unaccustomed
to noticing dainty details, gave him a mingled sensation of delight
and embarrassment. It had been many a day, many a year, since he had
consciously observed his wife. She was too useful for him to permit
himself to be influenced by questions of beauty into underrating her
value, and he was a respectable husband, if not a kind one. They had
jogged on so long together that he would have said he had ceased to
be conscious of her appearance. But suddenly he felt that he could not
continue to endure, for another day, the sight of the spreading, flat
house-slippers which, because of her two hundred and forty pounds and
frequently rheumatic feet, she wore about her work. Moreover, it was
forcibly borne in upon him just what a source of irritation they had
been. And they were only as a drop in the bucket! Well, such thoughts
did no one any good. Thank heaven, from now on he would have Rose to
look at.
They settled down beside each other in the front seat and he was aware
that her lovely eyes, so violet-blue and ivory-white, were studying him
admiringly. Here was a man, she was deciding, who for his age was the
physical superior of any she had ever met. He was clearly one of those
whom toil did not bend, and while, she concluded further, he might be
taken for all of his fifty-four years it would be simply because of his
austere manner.
Martin sustained her scrutiny until they were well out of Fallon and
speeding along on a good level road. Then with a teasing “turn
about's fair play,” he, too, took a frank look, oddly stirred by the
sophisticated touches which added so subtly to her natural beauty. From
her soft, thick brown hair done up cleverly in the latest mode and her
narrow eyebrows arched, oh, so carefully, and penciled with such skill,
to that same trim provocative pump and disconcerting flash of
silk-clad ankle, Rose had dash. Hers was that gift of style which is as
unmistakable as the gift of song and which, like it, is sometimes to be
found unexpectedly in any village or small town.
Martin drank in every detail wonderingly, with a kind of awe. All his
life, it seemed to him, for the last thirteen years positively, he had
known that somewhere there must be just such a woman whose radiance
would set his heart beating with the rapture of this moment and whose
moods would blend so easily with his own that she would seem like a very
part of himself. And here she was, come true, sitting right beside him
in his own car. For the first time in his whole life, Martin understood
the meaning of the word happiness. It gripped and shook him and made his
heart ache with a delicious pain.
“It's hard to believe,” he murmured, “such a very small girl went away
and such a very grown up little woman has come back. Let's see--twenty
is it? My, you make me feel old--but you say I haven't changed much.”
“You haven't. A little bit of gray, a number of tiny wrinkles about your
eyes”--the tips of two dainty fingers touched them lightly--“and you're
a bit thinner--that's all. Why you look so good to me, Uncle Martin, I
could fall in love with you myself, if you weren't auntie's husband.”
It was an innocent remark, and he understood it as such, but its effect
on him was dynamic.
“You always were as pretty as a picture,” he said slowly, his nerves
tingling, “if a farmer's opinion is worth anything in that line.”
This was twaddle, of course, and Martin knew it. Rather it was the
city person's point of view he was inclined to belittle. He had the
confidence in his superiority that comes from complete economic security
and his pride of place was even more deeply rooted. Men of Martin's
class who are able to gaze, in at least one direction, as far as eye can
see over their own land, are shrewd, sharp, intelligent, and far better
informed on current events and phases of thought than the people of
commercial centers even imagine. There is nothing of the peasant about
them. Martin knew quite well that dressed in his best clothes and put
among a crowd of strange business men he would be taken for one of their
own--so easy was his bearing, so naturally correct his speech.
Something of all this had already registered in Rose's mind. “Come on,
Uncle Martin,” she laughed, “flatter me. I just love it!”
“Very well, then, I'll say that you've come back as pretty a little
woman as ever I've laid eyes on.”
“Is that all? Oh, Uncle Martin, just pretty? The boys usually say I'm
beautiful.”
“You are beautiful--as beautiful as a rose. That's what you are, a red,
red rose of Sharon--with your dove's eyes, your little white teeth
like a flock of even sheep and your sweet, pretty lips like a thread of
scarlet.”
“Why, Uncle Martin!” exclaimed the girl, a trifle puzzled by the
intensity of his quiet tone, and stressing their relationship ever so
lightly. “You're almost a poet.”
“You mean old King Solomon was,” he retrieved himself quickly. “Don't
you ever read the Bible?”
“I didn't know you did!”
“Oh, your old Uncle reads a little of everything,” he returned with
a reassuring commonplaceness of manner. He was thunderstruck at his
outburst. Never had he had occasion to talk in that vein. He remembered
how blunt he had been with the older Rose twenty years before--how he
had jumped to the point at the start and landed safely; clinched his
wooing, as he had since realized, by calling her his Rose of Sharon, and
now he was saying the same thing over again, but, oh, how differently.
If only he were thirty-four today, and unmarried!
“You always were the most wonderful person,” beamed Rose, completely at
her ease once more, “I used to simply adore you, and I'm beginning to
adore you again.”
“That's because you don't know what a glum old grouch I really am.”
“You--a grouch? Oh, Uncle Martin!” Her merry, infectious laugh left no
doubt of how ridiculous such a notion seemed.
“Oh, yes; I am.”
“Nonsense. You'll have to prove it to me.”
“Ask your aunt or Bill; they'll tell you.” The acrimony in his tone did
not escape her.
“Then they'll have to prove it to me,” she corrected, her gaiety now
a trifle forced. Aunt Rose never had appreciated him, was her quick
thought. Even as a child she had sensed that.
“How are they?” she added quickly. “Bill must be a great boy by this
time.”
“Only a few inches shorter than I am,” Martin answered indifferently.
“He's one of the kind who get their growth early--by the time he's
fifteen he'll be six feet.”
“I'm crazy to see them.”
“Well, there's your aunt now,” he resumed drily as they drew up before
the little house that contrasted so conspicuously with the fine brick
silos and imposing barns. Gleaming with windows, they loomed out of the
twilight, reminding one, in their slate-colored paint, of magnificent
battleships.
The bright glare of the auto picked Mrs. Wade out for them as
mercilessly as a searchlight. Where she had been stout thirteen years
before, she was now frankly fat. Four keen eyes noted the soft, cushiony
double chin, the heavy breasts, ample stomach, spreading hips, and thick
shoulders, rounded from many years of bending over her kitchen table.
Kansas wind, Kansas well-water and Kansas sun had played their usual
havoc, giving her skin the dull sand color so common in the Sunflower
State. She had come from her cooking and she was hot, beads of sweat
trickling from the deep folds of her neck. Withal, there was something
so comfortable and motherly about her, the kind, wise eyes behind the
gold-rimmed glasses were so misty with welcome and unspoken thoughts of
the dear mother Rose had lost, that the girl went out to her sincerely
even as she marvelled that the same years on the same farm which had
given one person added polish and had made him even more good looking
than ever, could have changed another so completely and turned her
into such a toil-scarred, frumpy, oldish woman. Why, when she had been
talking with Uncle Martin he had seemed no older than herself--well,
not quite that, of course, but she had just forgotten about his age
altogether--until she saw Aunt Rose. No wonder whenever he spoke of his
wife every intonation told how little he loved her. How could he care
any more--that way?
Rose's first look of astonishment and her darting glance in his own
direction were not lost on Martin. With an imperceptible smile, he
accepted the unintended compliment, but he felt a pang when he noticed
that to her Aunt went the same affectionate, impetuous embrace that she
had given to him at the station.
“You're losing your head,” he told himself sternly, driving into the
garage, where, stopping his engine, he continued to sit motionless
at the wheel. “That ought to be a lesson to you; she's just naturally
warm-hearted and loving. Always was. You're no more to her than anybody
else. Well, there's no fool like an old fool.” Yet, deeper than his
admitted thought was the positive conviction that already something was
up between them. If not, why this excitement and wild happiness? To be
sure, nothing had been said--really. It had all been so light. Rose was
just a bit of a born flirt. But he, having laughed at love all his life,
loved her deeply, desperately. Well, so much the worse for himself--it
couldn't lead anywhere. Yet in spite of all his logic he knew that
something was going to happen. Hang it all--just what? He was afraid to
answer his own question; not because of any dread of what his wife might
do--he was conscious only of a new, cold, impersonal hatred toward her
because she stood between him and his Rose; nor was it qualms about his
ability to win the girl's heart. Already, despite his inexperience with
love technique, he was, in some mysterious manner, making progress. The
community--his position in it? This was food for thought certainly, but
it was not what worried him. Then why this feeling of dismay when he
wanted to be only glad?
The question was still unanswered when he finally left the garage. With
all his powers of introspection, he had not yet fathomed the fact that
it was a fear of his own, until now utterly unsuspected, capacity for
recklessness. Heretofore, he had been able to count on the certainty
that his best judgment would govern all his actions. Now, he felt
himself clutching, almost frantically, at the hard sense of proportion
that never before had so much as threatened to desert him. He went
about his chores in a grave, automatic way, absorbed in anything but
agriculture. Hardly ever did he pass through his barn without paying
homage to his own progressiveness and oozing approval of the mechanical
milker, driven by his own electrical dynamo, the James Way stanchions
with electric lights above, the individual drinking fountains at the
head of each cow, the cork-brick floors, the scrupulously white-washed
walls, and the absence of odor, with the one exception of sweet,
fermented silage. But, tonight, he was not seeing these symbols of
material superiority. Instead he was thinking of a girl with eyes as
soft as a dove's, lips like a thread of scarlet and small white teeth as
even as a flock of his own Shropshire sheep. What else did that old King
Solomon say? God Almighty, he thought, there was a man who understood!
He'd try to get a chance to reread that Song of Songs that was breaking
his own heart with its joy and its sadness.
His reverie was broken abruptly by the jangling supper-bell. When he
reached the back door Bill was already at the table and Rose, in a
simple gown that brought out the appealing lines of her slim young body,
was deftly helping his wife in the final dishing up. As Martin stood
a moment, looking in at the bright scene and listening to the happy
chatter, he heard her ask if he had got her a job. At sight of him
she cried excitedly: “Oh, Uncle Martin! You can't think how I adore my
beautiful room! And Bill says it was you who first thought of building
it for me. You old darling! You and Aunt Rose are the best people in the
whole wide world. How can I ever thank you?”
“I'll tell you,” he smiled, “forget all about that job and just stay
around here and make us all young. Time enough to work when you have
to.”
Mrs. Wade noticed how Bill's eyes widened at these words, so unlike
his father, and soon she was acutely aware of her husband's marked
agreeableness whenever he directed his conversation toward Rose. He even
tried to include his son and herself in this new atmosphere, but
with each remark in their direction his manner changed subtly. Toward
herself, in particular, his feelings were too deep for him to succeed in
belying them.
As the meal progressed, she realized that her dim forebodings were fast
materializing into a certain danger. Unless she acted promptly this slip
of a girl was going to affect, fundamentally, all their lives. Already,
it seemed as though she had been amongst them a long time and had
colored the future of them all. Mrs. Wade understood far better than her
husband would have supposed that, in his own way, his married life had
been as starved as her own; oh, far more so, for she had her boy. And
while it was not at all likely, it was not wholly impossible that he
might seek a readjustment. It seemed far-fetched for her to sit thus and
feel that drama was entering their hard lives when nothing had really
happened, but nevertheless--she knew. As, outwardly so calm, she
speculated with tumbled thoughts on how it might end, she tried to
analyze why it was that the prospect of a shake-up filled her with such
a sense of disaster. Surely, it was not because of any reluctance to
separate from Martin. Her life would be far easier if they went their
own ways. With Bill, she could make a home anywhere, one that was far
more real, in a house from which broken promises did not sound as from a
trumpet. Ashes of resentment still smouldered against Martin because of
that failure of his to play fair. She recalled the years during which
she had helped him to earn with never an unexpected pleasure; reflected
with bitterness that never, since they had cast their lives together,
had he urged her to indulge in any sweet little extravagance, though he
had denied himself nothing that he really wished. It was no riddle to
her, as it had been to her niece earlier in the evening, why the same
hard work had dealt so benignly with Martin and so uncharitably with
herself. She comprehended only too well that it was not that alone which
had crushed her. It was his ceaseless domination over her, the utter
subjugation of her will, her complete lack of freedom. She glanced
across the table at him, astounded by his hearty laugh in response to
one of Rose's sallies. It seemed incredible that it could be really
Martin's. It had such a ring and came out so easily as if he were more
inclined to merriment than to silence. Usually, he seemed made of long
strips of thin steel, but under the inspiration of Rose's presence he
had become animated, brisk, interesting. No wonder she was being drawn
to him.
It was as if he had withheld from his wife a secret alchemy that had
kept him handsome and attractive, as compelling as when he had come in
search of herself so long ago. And now that the last vestige of her own
bloom was gone, he was laughing at her, inwardly, as a cunning person
does who plays a malicious trick on a simpler, more trusting, soul. Only
it had taken twenty years to spring the point of this one. Hatred welled
in her heart; a sad, weary hatred that knew no tears. She wished that
she might hurt him as he had hurt her. Yet, with her usual honesty, she
presently admitted how easy it would be for this malevolence to melt
away--a word, a look, a gesture from Martin and the heart in her
would flood with forgiveness; but the look did not come, the word was
unuttered.
He was squandering, she continued to observe, sufficient evidence of his
interest at the feet of this child who never would have missed it, while
she, herself, who could have lifted mountains from her breast with
one tenth of this appreciation, was left, as she always had been left,
without the love her being craved, the love of a mate, rising full and
strong to meet her own. It was a yearning that the most cherished of
children could never satisfy and as she watched Martin and Rose her
position seemed to her to be that of a hungry pauper, brought to the
table of a rich gourmand, there to look on helplessly while the other
toyed carelessly with the precious morsels of which she was in such
extreme need. And what rankled was that these thoughts were futile, that
too much water had run under the bridge, that it was her lot in Martin's
life merely to accept what was offered her. She knew that the marks of
her many hours of suppressed anguish, thousands of days of toil and long
series of disappointments were thick upon her. She realized, too, how
ironical it was that with all her work she should have grown to be so
ungainly although Martin retained the old magnetism of his gorgeous
physique. There was no doubt that if he chose, he could still hold a
woman's devotion. Yes, for him there was an open road from this gray
monotony, if he had the will and the courage to escape.
Suddenly, she found herself wondering what effect all this would have
on Bill. She stole a surreptitious glance at him, but he, too, seemed to
have been caught up by Rose's gay, good humor. Mrs. Wade sighed as she
remembered how everyone had flocked around Norah. Rose had inherited her
mother's charm. Such women were a race apart. They could no more be
held responsible for trying to please than a flower for exhaling its
fragrance. At what a lovely moment of life she was! Small wonder that
Martin was captivated, but not even the shadow of harm must fall on that
fresh young spirit while she was under their roof. If things went much
further she would have it out with him. And this decision reached, Mrs.
Wade felt her usual composure gradually return, nor did it again desert
her during the long evening through which it seemed to her as if her
husband must be some stranger.