THE very next day, Mrs. Wade rented a room for Bill in the same home in
which Rose boarded, and for the rest of the winter she and Martin went
on as before--working as hard as ever and making money even faster,
while peace settled over their household, a peace so profound that, in
her more intuitive moments, Bill's mother felt in it an ominous quality.
The storm broke with the summer vacation and the boy's point-blank
refusal to return to farm work. His father laid down an ultimatum: until
he came home he should not have a cent even from his mother, and home he
should not come, at all, until he was willing to carry his share of the
farm work willingly, and without further argument. “You see,” he pointed
out to his wife, “that's the thanks I get for managing along without
him this winter. The ungrateful young rascal! If he doesn't come to his
senses shortly--”
“Oh, Martin, don't do anything rash,” implored Mrs. Wade. “Nearly all
boys go through this period. Just be patient with him.”
But even she was shaken when his Aunt Nellie, over ostensibly for an
afternoon of sociable carpet-rag sewing, began abruptly: “Do you know
what Bill is doing, Rose?”
“Working in the mines,” returned his mother easily. “Isn't it strange,
Nellie, that he should be digging coal right under this farm, the very
coal that gave Martin his start?”
“Well, I'm not going to beat about the bush,” continued her
sister-in-law abruptly. “He's working in the mines all right, but he
isn't digging coal at all, though that would be bad enough. I wouldn't
say a word about it, but I think you ought to know the truth and put a
stop to such a risky business--he's firing shots.”
Rose's heart jumped, but she continued to wind up her large ball with
the same uninterrupted motion.
“Are you sure?”
“I made Frank find out for certain. It's an extra dangerous mine because
gas forms in it unusually often, and he gets fifteen dollars a day
for the one hour he works. There's a contract, but he's told them he's
twenty-one, and when you prove he's under age they'll make him stop.”
Rose still wound and wound, her clear eyes, looking over her glasses,
fixed on Nellie.
“It's bad enough, I'll say,” rapped out the spare, angular woman, “to
have everybody talking about the way Martin has ditched his son, without
having the boy scattered to bits, or burned to a cinder. Already he's
been blown twenty feet by one windy shot, and more than once he's had to
lie flat while those horrible gases burned themselves out right over his
head. His 'buddie,' the Italian who fires in the other part of the mine
at the same time, told Harry Brown, the nightman, and he told Frank,
himself. Why, they say if he'd have moved the least bit it would have
fanned the fire downward and he'd have been in a fine mess. Sooner or
later all shot-firers meet a tragic end. You want to put your foot down,
Rose, and put it down hard--for once in your life--if you can,” she
added, half under her breath.
“It isn't altogether Martin's fault,” began Rose, but Nellie cut her off
with a short: “Now, don't you tell me a word about that precious brother
of mine! It's as plain to me as the nose on your face that between his
bull-headed hardness and your wishy-washy softness you're fixing to ruin
one of the best boys God ever put on this earth.”
“I'll talk to Billy,” Rose promised.
It was the first time she ever had found herself definitely in
opposition to her boy, but she felt serene in the confidence of her
own power to dissuade him from anything so perilous. She understood the
general routine of mining, and had been daily picturing him going down
in the cage to the bottom, travelling through a long entry until he
was under his home farm and located in one of the low, three-foot rooms
where a Kansas miner must stoop all day. Oh, how it had hurt--that
thought of those fine young shoulders bending, bending! She had
visualized him filling his car, and mentally had followed his coal as it
was carried up to the surface to be dumped into the hopper, weighed and
dropped down the chute into the flat cars. Of course, there was always
the danger of a loosened rock falling on him, but wasn't there always
the possibility of accidents on a farm, too? Didn't the company's man
always go down, first, into the mine to test the air and make certain
it was all right? Rose had convinced herself that the risk was not so
great, after all, though she could not help sharing a little of her
husband's wonder that the boy could prefer to work underground instead
of in the sweet, fresh sunshine. But she had thought it was because in
the desperation of his complete revolt from Martin's domination
anything else seemed to him preferable. Now, in a lightning flash, she
understood. This reaction from a life whose duties had begun before
sun-up and ended long after sundown, made danger seem as nothing in
comparison with the marvellous chance to earn a comfortable living with
only one hour's work a day.
Her conversation with Bill proved that she had been only too right. The
boy was intoxicated with his own liberty. “I know I ought to have told
you, mother,” he confessed. “I wanted to. Honest, I did, but I was
afraid you'd worry, though you needn't. The man who taught me how to
fire has been doing it over twenty years. A lot of it's up to a fellow,
himself. You can pretty near tell if the air is all right by the way
it blows--the less the better it is. And if you're right careful to see
that the tool-boxes the boys leave are all locked--so's no powder can
catch, you know--and always start lighting against the air, so that if
there's gas and it catches the fire'll blow away from you instead of
following you up--and if you examine the fuses to see they're long
enough and the powder is tamped in just right--each miner does that
before he leaves and lots of firers just give 'em a hasty once-over
instead of a real look--and then shake your heels good and fast after
you do fire--”
“Billy!” Rose was white. “I can't bear it--to hear you go on so lightly,
when it's your life, your LIFE, you're playing with. For my sake, son,
give it up.”
With an odd sinking of the heart, she observed the expression in his
face which she had seen so often in his father's--the one that said as
plainly as words that nothing could shake his determination. “A fellow's
got a right to some good times in this world,” he said very low, “and
I'm getting mine now. I'm not going to grind away and grind away all my
life like father and you've done. If anything did happen I'd have had a
chance to dream and think and read instead of getting to be old without
ever having any fun out of it all. Maybe you won't believe it, but
some days for hours I just lie in the sun like a darky boy, not even
thinking. Gee! it feels great! And sometimes I read all day until I have
to go to the mine. There's one thing I'm going to tell you square,” he
went on, a firm ring in his voice, boyish for all its deep, bass note,
“I'm never going back to the farm, never! Mother,” he cried, suddenly,
coming over to take her hand in both his. “Will you leave father? We
could rent a little house and you'd have hardly anything to do. I'm
making more than lots of men with families. And I'd give you my envelope
without opening it every pay-day.” “Oh, Billy, you don't know what
you're saying! I couldn't leave your father. I couldn't think of it.”
“What I don't see is how you can stand it to stay with him. He's always
been a brute to you. He's never cared a red cent for either of us.”
Rose was abashed before the harsh logic of youth. “Oh, son,” she
murmured brokenly, “there are things one can't explain. I suppose it may
seem strange to you--but his life has been so empty. He has missed so
much! Everything, Billy.”
“Then it's his own fault,” judged the boy. “If ever anybody's always had
his own way and done just as he darn pleased it's father. I wish he'd
die, that's what I wish.”
“Bill!” His mother's tone was stern.
“There you are!” he marvelled. “You must have wished it lots of times
yourself. I know you have. Yet you always talk as if you loved him.”
In Rose's eyes, the habitual look of patience and understanding
deepened. How could Bill, as yet scarcely tried by life, comprehend the
purging flames through which she had passed or realize time's power to
reveal unsuspected truths.
“When you've been married to a man nearly twenty-two years and have
built up a place together, there's bound to be a bond between you,” she
eluded. “He just lives for this farm. It's almost as dear to him as
you are to me, son, and it's a wonderful heritage, Bill, a magnificent
heritage. Just think! Two generations have labored to build it out of
the dust. Your father's whole life is in it. Your father's and mine. And
your grandmother's. If only you could ever come to care for it!”
Bill fidgeted uneasily. “You mean you want me to go on with it?”
he demanded. “You want me to come back to it, settle down to be a
farmer--like father?”
The tone in which he asked this question made Rose choose her words
carefully.
“What are your plans, son? What do you want to be--not just now, but
finally?”
“I can't see what difference it makes what a fellow is--except that in
one business a man makes more than in another. And I can't see either
that it does a person a bit of good to have money. I'm having more fun
right now than father or you ever had--more fun than anybody I know.
Mother,” and his face was solemn as if with a great discovery, “I've
figured it out that it's silly to do as most people--just live to work.
I'm going to work just enough to live comfortably. Not one scrap more,
either. You can't think how I hate the very thought of it.”
Rose sighed. Couldn't she, indeed! She understood only too well how
deeply this rebellion was rooted. The hours when he had been dragged up
from the far shores of a dreamful slumber to shiver forth in the
chill darkness to milk and chore, still rankled. Those tangy frosty
afternoons, when he had been forced to clean barns and plow while the
other boys went rabbit and possum hunting or nutting, were afternoons
whose loss he still mourned. Nothing had yet atoned for the evenings
when he had been torn from his reading and sent sternly to bed
because he must get up so early. Always work had stolen from him these
treasures--dreams, recreation and knowledge. He had been obliged to
fight the farm and his father for even a modicum of them--the things
that made life worth living. And the irony of it--that eventually it
would be this farm and Martin's driving methods which, if he became
reconciled to his father, would make it possible for him to drink all
the fullness of leisure.
It was too tragic that the very thing which should have stood for
opportunity to the boy had been used to embitter him and drive him into
danger. But he must not lose his birthright. An almost passionate desire
welled in Rose's heart to hold on to it for him. True, she too had been
a slave to the farm. Yet not so much a slave to it, she distinguished,
as to Martin's absorption in its development. And of late years there
had been for her, running through all the humdrum days, a satisfaction
in perfecting it. In her mind now floated clearly the ideal toward which
her husband was striving. She had not guessed how much it had become her
own until she felt herself being drawn relentlessly by Bill's quiet,
but implacable determination to have her leave it all behind. If only he
would try again, she felt sure all would be so different! His father
had learned a lesson, of that she was positive, and though he would
not promise it, would not be so hard on the boy. And with this new
independence of Bill's to strengthen her, they could resist Martin more
successfully as different issues came up. She could manage to help her
boy get what he wanted out of life without his having to pay such a
terrible price as, the mine on one hand, and his father's displeasure on
the other, might exact, for she knew that if he persisted too long, the
break with Martin could never be bridged and that in the end his father
would evoke the full powers of the law to disinherit him and tie her own
hands as completely as possible in that direction.
But she was far too wise to press such arguments in her son's present
mood. They would have to drift for a while, she saw that clearly, until
she could gradually impress upon him how different farming would be if
he were his own master. In time, he might even come to understand how
much Martin needed her.
“Say you will,” Bill, pleading, insistent, broke in on her train of
reflections, “I've always dreamed of this day, when we'd go away, and
now it's come. I can take care of you.”
As he stood there, a glorious figure in his youthful self-confidence, a
turn of his head reminded her a second time of Martin, recalling sharply
the way her husband had looked the night he told her of his love for
the other Rose. He had been bothered by no fine qualms about abandoning
herself. She thought of his final surrender of love to wisdom. It was
only youth that dared pursue happiness--to purchase delicious idleness
by gambling with death. Billy was her boy. His dreams and hopes should
be hers; her way of life, the one that gave him the most joy. She would
follow him, if need be, to the end of the earth.
“Very well, son,” she said simply, her voice breaking over the few
words. “If a year from now you still feel like this, I'll do as you
wish.”
“You don't know how I hate him,” muttered the boy. “It's only when I'm
tramping in the woods, or in the middle of some book I like that I can
forgive him for living. No, mother, I don't mean all that,” he laughed,
giving her a bear-like hug.
It was in this more reasonable side, this ability to change his point of
view quickly when he became convinced he was wrong, that Mrs. Wade now
put her faith. She would give him plenty of rope, she decided, not
try to drive him. It would all come right, if she only waited, and she
prayed, nightly, with an increasing tranquillity, that he might be kept
safe from harm, taking deep comfort in the new light of contentment that
was gradually stealing into his face. After all, each one had to work
out his destiny in his own way, she supposed.
It was less than a month later that her telephone rang, and Rose, calmly
laying aside her sewing and getting up rather stiffly because of her
rheumatism, answered, thinking it probably a call from Martin, who had
left earlier in the evening, to wind up a little matter of a chattel on
some growing wheat. It had just begun to rain and she feared he might be
stuck in the road somewhere, calling to tell her to come for him. But it
was not Martin's voice that answered.
“Mrs. Wade?”
“Yes.”
“Why”--there was a forbidding break that made her shudder. A second
later she convinced herself that it seemed a natural halt--people do
such things without any apparent cause; but she could not help shaking a
little.
“Is it about Mr. Wade?” and as she asked this question she wondered why
she had spoken her husband's name when it was Bill's that really had
rushed through her mind.
“No, ma'am, it ain't about Martin Wade I'm callin' you up, it ain't him
at all--”
“I see.” She said this calmly and quietly, as though to impress her
informant and reassure him. “What is it?” It was almost unnecessary to
ask, for she knew already what had happened, knew that the boy had flung
his dice and lost.
“It's your son, Mrs. Wade; it's him I'm a-callin' about. We're about to
bring him home to you--an'--and I thought it'd be better to call you up
first so's you might expect us an' not take on with the suddenness of
it all. This is Brown--Harry Brown--the nightman at the mine down here.
We've got the ambulance here and we're about ready to start.” There was
an evenness about the strange voice that she understood better than its
words. If Bill had been hurt the man would have been quick and jerky in
his speaking as though he were feeling the boy's pain with him; but he
was so even about it all--as even as Death.
“Then I'll phone for Dr. Bradley so he'll be here by the time you come,”
said Rose, wondering how she could think of so practical a thing. Her
mind had wrapped itself in a protecting armor, forbidding the shock of
it all to strike with a single blow. She couldn't understand why she was
not screaming.
“You can--if you want to, but Bill don't need him, Mrs. Wade,--he's
dead.”
Slowly she hung up the receiver, the wall still around her brain,
holding it tight and keeping her nerves taut, afraid to release them
for fear they might snap. She stood there looking at the receiver as her
hands came together.
As though she were talking to a person instead of the telephone before
her, she gasped: “So--so THIS is what it has all been for--this. Into
the world, into Martin's world--and this way out of it. Burned to
death--Billy.”
The rain had lessened a little and now the wind began to shake the
house, rattle the windows and scream as it tore its way over the plains.
The sky flared white and the world lighted up suddenly, as though the
sun had been turned on from an electric switch. At the same instant she
saw a bolt of lightning strike a young tree by the roadside, heard the
sharp click as it hit and then watched the flash dance about, now on
the road, now along the barbed wire fencing. Then the world went black
again. And a rumble quickly grew to an earth-shaking blast of thunder.
It was as though that tree were Billy--struck by a gush of flying fire.
The next bolt broke above the house, and the light it threw showed
her the stripling split and lying on the ground. In the impenetrable
darkness she realized that the house fuse of their Delco system must
have been blown out, and she groped blindly for a match. She could hear
the rain coming down again, now in rivers. There was unchained wrath in
the downpour, viciousness. It was a madman rushing in to rend and tear.
It frothed, and writhed, and spat hatred. Rose shook as though gripped
by a strong hand. She was afraid--of the rain, the lightning, the
thunder, the darkness; alone there, waiting for them to bring her Billy.
She was too terrified to add her weeping to the wail of the wind--it
would have been too ghastly. Would she never find a match! As she lit
the lamp, like the stab of a needle in the midst of agony, came the
thought of how long it had been after Martin had put in his electrical
system and connected up his barns before she had been permitted to have
this convenience in the house. What would he think now? She wished he
were home. Anyone would be better than this awful waiting alone. She
could only stand there, away from the window, looking out at the sheets
of water running down the panes and shivering with the frightfulness and
savageness of it all.
Her ears caught a rumble, fainter than thunder, and the splash of
horses' hoofs--“it's too muddy for the motor ambulance,” she thought,
mechanically. “They're using the old one,” and her heart contracting,
twisting, a queer dryness in her throat, she opened the door as they
stopped, her hand shading the lamp against the sudden inrush of wind and
rain. “In there, through the parlor,” she said dully, indicating the
new room and thinking, bitterly, as she followed them, that now, when
it could mean nothing to Billy, Martin would offer no objections to its
being given over to him.
The scuffling of feet, the low, matter-of-fact orders of a directing
voice: “Easy now, boys--all together, lift. Watch out; pull that
sheet back up over him,” and a brawny, work-stooped man saying to her
awkwardly: “I wouldn't look at him if I was you, Mrs. Wade, till the
undertaker fixes him up,” and she was once more alone.
As if transfixed, she continued to stand, looking beyond the lamp,
beyond the bed on which her son's large figure was outlined by the
sheet, beyond the front door which faced her, beyond--into the night,
looking for Martin, waiting for him to come home to his boy. She asked
herself again and again how she had been so restrained when her Billy
had been carried in. After what seemed interminable ages, she heard
heavy steps on the back porch and knew that her husband had returned
at last. He brought in with him a gust of wind that caused the lamp to
smoke. She held it with both hands, afraid that she might drop it, and
carrying it to the dining-room table set it down slowly, looking at him.
He seemed huger than ever with his hulk sinking into the gray darkness
behind him. There was something elephantine about him as he stood there,
soaked to the skin, bending forward a little, breathing slowly and
deeply, his fine nostrils distending with perfect regularity, his face
in the dim light, yellow, with the large lines almost black. He was
hatless and his tawny-gray hair was flat with wetness, coming down
almost to his eyes, so clear and far-seeing.
“What's the matter with the lights? Fuse blown out?” he asked, spitting
imaginary rain out of his mouth.
Rose did not answer.
“Awful night for visiting,” Martin announced roughly, as he took off his
coat. “But it was lucky I went, or all would have been pretty bad
for me. Do you know, that rascal was delivering the wheat to the
elevator--wheat on which I held a chattel--and I got to Tom Mayer just
as he was figuring up the weights. You should have seen Johnson's face
when I came in. He knew I had him cornered. 'Here,' I said, 'what's up?'
And that lying rascal turned as white as death and said something about
getting ready to bring me a check. I told him I was much obliged, but
I would take it along with me--and I did. Here it is--fourteen hundred
dollars, plus interest. And I got it by the skin of my teeth. I didn't
stop to argue with him for I saw the storm coming on. I went racing, but
a half mile north I skidded into the ditch. I really feel like leaving
the car there all night, but it would do a lot of damage. I'll have
to get a team and drag it in. I call it a good day's work. What do you
say?” He looked at her closely, for the first time noticing her drawn
face and far-away look.
“What's the matter? You look goopy--”
Rose settled herself heavily in the rocker close to the table.
“You're not sick, are you?”
She shook her head a few times and answered: “He's in there--”
“Who?” Martin straightened up ready for anything.
“Billy--”
“Oh!” A light flashed into Martin's face. “So he has come back, has he?
Back home? What made him change toward this place? Is he here to stay?”
“No, Martin--”
“Then if he hasn't come to his senses, what is he doing here--here in my
house, the home he hates--”
“He doesn't hate it now,” Rose replied, struggling for words that she
might express herself and end this cruel conversation, but all she could
do was to point nervously toward the spare room.
“What is he doing in there? It's the one spot that Rose can call her
own, poor child.”
“He's on the bed, Martin--”
“What's the matter with the davenport he's always slept on? Is he sick?
What in heaven's name is going on in this house?”
As Martin started toward the bedroom, his wife opened her lips to tell
him the truth but the words refused to come; at the same instant it
struck her that not to speak was brutal, yet just. She would let
Martin go to this bed with words of anger on his lips, with feelings of
unkindness in his heart. She would do this. Savage? Yes, but why not?
There seemed to be something fair about it. Then her heart-strings
pulled more strongly than ever. No; it was too hard. She must stop him,
tell him, prepare him. But before the words came, he was out of the room
and when she spoke he did not hear her because of the rain.
He saw the vague lines of the boy's body, hidden by the sheet, and
thought quickly, “Bill's old ostrich-like trick,” and while at the same
instant something told him that a terrible thing had happened, the idea
did not register completely until he had his hand on the linen. Then,
with a short yank, he pulled away the cover and saw the boy's head. Dark
as it was, it was enough to show him the truth. With a quick move he
covered him again. There was a smeary wetness on his fingers, which he
wiped away on the side of his trousers. They were drenched with rain,
but he distinguished the sticky feel of blood leaving his hand as he
rubbed it nervously.
His first emotion was one of anger with Rose. He was sure she had played
this sinister jest deliberately to torture him and he had fallen into
the trap. He wanted to rush back into the other room and strike her
down. He would show her! But he dismissed this impulse, for he did not
want her to see him like this, no hold on himself and his mind without
direction. Sitting there, she would have the advantage. Without so much
as a sound except for the slight noise he made in walking, Martin went
through the parlor towards the front door and out to the steps, where he
leaned for a moment against the weather-boarding, letting the rain fall
on him as he stared dully down at the ground. It felt good to stand
there. No eyes were on him, and the rain was refreshing. This had
been too much for him. Never had he known himself to be so near to
bewilderment. How fortunate that he had escaped by this simple trick of
leaving the house. Then he thought of the car--a half-mile north--and
the horses in the stable. He must do something. He would bring the car
into the garage. It was relieving to hurry across the dripping grass
toward the barn. How wonderful it was to keep the body doing something
when the breath in him was short, his heart battering like an engine
with burned-out bearings, his brain in insane chaos. As he applied a
match to the lantern he thought of his wife again, and his face regained
its scowl.
Only when he had his great heavy team in the yard, his lantern hanging
from his arm, the reins in his hands, and was pulling back with all his
strength as he followed the horses--only then did he permit himself to
think about the tragedy that had befallen.
“He's dead--killed,” he groaned. “It had to come. Shot-firers don't last
long. Whoa, there, Lottie; not so fast, Jet, whoa!” His protesting team
in control again, he trudged heavily behind. “It's terrible to die that
way--not a chance in a thousand. And a kid of sixteen didn't have the
judgment--couldn't have. But Bill knew what he was facing every evening.
He didn't go in blindly. They'll blame me, as though it was my fault.
I didn't want him to go there. I wanted him to take a hand here, to run
the place by himself in good time. It was his mother who sent him away
first.” He went on like that, justifying himself more positively as
excuse after excuse suggested itself.
Not until he had convinced himself that he was in no way responsible,
did he allow his heart to beat a little for this boy of his. “Poor
Bill,” he thought on, “it has been a tough game for him. Lost in the
shuffle. Born into something he didn't like and trying to escape, only
to get caught. What did he expect out of life, anyway? Why didn't
he learn that it's only a lot of senseless pain? Every moment of it
pain--from coming into the world to going out. Oh, Bill, why didn't you
learn what I know? You had brains, boy, but it would have been better
if you had never used them. I've brains, too, but I've always managed
to keep them tied down--buckled to the farm, to investments, and
work--thinking about things that make us forget life. It's all dust and
dust, with rain once in a while, only the rain steams off and it's dust
again.”
Martin began to review the course of his own past, and smiled bitterly.
Others were able to live the same kind of an existence, but, unlike
himself, took it as a preparation for another day, another existence
which, it seemed to him, was measured and cut to order by professionals
who understood how to fix up the meaning of life so that it would
soothe and satisfy. He thought how much better it was to be a dumb,
unquestioning beast, or a human being conscious of his soul, than to be
as he was--alone, a materialist, who saw the meaninglessness of
matter and whose mind, in some manner which he did not understand, had
developed a slant that made him doubt what others accepted so easily as
facts. Martin knew he was bound to things of substance but he followed
the lure of property and accumulation as he might have followed some
other game had he learned it, knowing all along that it was a delusion
and at the same time acknowledging that for him there was nothing else
as sufficing.
How simple, if Bill's future could be a settled thing in his mind as
it was to the boy's mother. Or his own future! If only he could
believe--then how different it would be for him. He could go on placidly
and die with a smile. But he could not believe. His atheism was both
mental and instinctive. It was something he could not understand, and
which he knew he could never change, try as he might. Take this very
evening. Here was death in his home. And he was escaping a lot of
anguish, not by praying for Bill's soul or his own forgiveness, but by
the simple process of harnessing a team and dragging a car through the
mud. It was a great game, work was--the one weapon with which to meet
life. This was not a cut and dried philosophy with him, but a glimmer
that, though always suggesting itself but dimly, never failed when put
to the test. Martin felt better. He began to probe a little farther,
albeit with an aimlessness about his questions that almost frightened
him. He asked himself whether he loved Bill, now that he was dead, and
he had to admit that he did not. The boy had always been something other
than he had expected--a disappointment. Did he love anyone? No. Not a
person; not even any longer that lovely Rose of Sharon who had flowered
in his dust for a brief hour. His wife? God Almighty, no. Then who?
Himself? No, his very selfishness had other springs than that. He was
one of those men, not so uncommon either, he surmised, who loved no one
on the whole wide earth.
When he re-entered the house, he found his wife still seated in the
rocker, softly weeping, the tears flowing down her cheeks and dropping
unheeded into her lap. He pitied her.
“I feel as though he didn't die tonight,” she mourned, looking at Martin
through full eyes. “He died when he was born, like the first one.”
“I know how you feel,” said Martin, sympathy in his voice.
“I made him so many promises before he came, but I wasn't able to keep a
single one of them.”
“I'm sorry; I wish I could help you in some way.”
“Oh, Martin, I know you're not a praying man--but if you could only
learn.”
Martin looked at her respectfully but with profound curiosity.
“There must be an answer to all this,” Rose went on brokenly. “There
must! Billy is lying in the arms of Jesus now--no pain, only sweet rest.
I believe that.”
“I'm glad you have the faith that can put such meaning into it all.”
“Martin, I want to pray for strength to bear it.”
“Yes, Rose.”
“You'll pray with me, won't you?”
“You just said I wasn't a praying man.”
“Yes, but I can't pray alone, with him in there alone, too, and you here
with me, scoffing.”
“I can't be other than I am, Rose; but you pray, and as you pray I'll
bow my head.”