It was a clear beautiful afternoon toward the end of May. And as the train
puffing up the grade wound along the Connecticut River, Roger sat looking
out of the window. The orchards were pink and white on the hills. Slowly
the day wore away. The river narrowed, the hills reared high, and in the
sloping meadows gray ribs and shoulders of granite appeared. The air had a
tang of the mountains. Everywhere were signs of spring, of new vigor and
fresh life. But the voices at each station sounded drowsier than at the
last, the eyes appeared more stolid, and to Roger it felt like a journey
far back into old ways of living, old beliefs and old ideals. He had always
had this feeling, and always he had relished it, this dive into his
boyhood. But it was different to-day, for this was more than a journey, it
was a migration, too. Close about him in the car were Edith and her
children, bound for a new home up there in the very heart and stronghold of
all old things in America.
Old things dear to Edith's heart. As she sat by the window staring out, he
watched her shapely little head; he noted the hardening lines on her
forehead and the gray which had come in her hair. It had been no easy move
for her, this, she'd shown pluck to take it so quietly. He saw her smile a
little, then frown and go on with her thinking. What was she thinking
about, he wondered--all she had left behind in New York, or the rest of her
life which lay ahead? She had always longed for things simple and old.
Well, she would have them now with a vengeance, summer and winter, the year
'round, in the battered frame house on the mountain side, the birthplace of
her family. A recollection came to him of a summer's dusk two years ago
and a woman with a lawn mower cutting the grass on the family graves. Would
Edith ever be like that, a mere custodian of the past? If she did, he
thought, she would be false to the very traditions she tried to preserve.
For her forefathers had never been mere guardians of things gone by. Always
they had been pioneers. That house had not been old to them, but a
thrilling new adventure. Their old homes they had left behind, far down in
the valleys to the east. And even those valley homes had been new to the
rugged men come over the sea. Would Edith ever understand? Would she see
that for herself the new must emerge from her children, from the ideas,
desires and plans already teeming in their minds? Would she show keen
interest, sympathy? Would she be able to keep her hold?
In the seat behind her mother, Betsy was sitting with Bruce in her lap,
looking over a picture book. Quietly Roger watched the girl.
"What are you going to be?" he asked. "A woman's college president, a
surgeon or a senator? And what will your mother think of you then?"
They changed cars, and on a train made up of antiquated coaches they wound
through a side valley, down which rushing and tumbling came the river that
bore Roger's name. He went into the smoking car, and presently George
joined him there. George did not yet smoke, (with his elders), but he had
bought a package of gum and he was chewing absorbedly. Plainly the lad was
excited over the great existence which he saw opening close ahead. Roger
glanced at the boy's broad shoulders, noticed the eager lines of his jaw,
looked down at his enormous hands, unformed as yet, ungainly; but in them
was a hungriness that caused a glow in Roger's breast. One more of the
family starting out.
"It's all going to depend on you," Roger gravely counseled. "Your whole
life will depend on the start you make. Either you're going to settle down,
like so many of your neighbors up there, or you're going to hustle, plan
out your day, keep on with your studies and go to college--the State
Agricultural College, I mean. In short, keep up to date, my boy, and become
in time a big figure in farming."
"I'm going to do it," George replied. His grandfather glanced again at his
face, so scowling, so determined. And a gleam of compassion and yearning
came for a moment in Roger's eyes. His heavy hand lay on George's knee.
"That's right, son," he grunted. "Make the family proud of you. I'll do all
I can to help you start. My business is picking up, thank God, and I'll be
able to back you now. I'll stay up here a good part of the summer. We've
both of us got a lot to learn--and not only from books--we want to remember
we've plenty to learn from the neighbors, too. Take old Dave Royce, for
instance, who when all is said and done has worked our farm for twenty odd
years and never once run me into debt."
"But, Gee!" demurred George. "He's so 'way out of date!"
"I know he is, son, but we've got to go slow." And Roger's look passed
furtively along the faces in the car. "We don't want to forget," he warned,
"that this is still New England. Every new idea we have we want to go easy
with, snake it in."
"I've got an awful lot of 'em," the boy muttered hungrily.
* * * * *
At the farm, the next morning at daybreak, Roger was awakened by the sound
of George's voice. It was just beneath his window:
"But cattle are only part of it, Dave," the boy declared, in earnest tones,
"just part of what we can have up here. Think what we've got--over three
hundred acres! And we want to make every acre count! We want to get in a
whole lot more of hogs--Belted Hampshires, if we can afford 'em--and a
couple of hundred hens. White Leghorns ought to fill the bill. Of course
that's just a starter. I've got a scheme for some incubators--electric--run
by the dynamo which we'll put in down by the dam. And we can do wonders
with bees, too, Dave--I've got a book on 'em I'd like you to read. And
besides, there's big money in squab these days. Rich women in New York
hotels eat thousands of 'em every night. And ducks, of course, and turkeys.
I'd like a white gobbler right at the start, if we knew where we could get
one cheap." The voice broke off and there was a pause. "We can do an awful
lot with this place."
Then Dave's deep drawl:
"That's so, George--yes, I guess that's so. Only we don't want to fool
ourselves. That ain't Noah's Ark over thar--it's a barn. And just for a
starter, if I was you--" Here Dave deliberated. "Of course it's none of my
business," he said, "it's for you and your grandfather to decide--and I
don't propose to interfere in what ain't any of my affair--"
"Yes, yes, Dave, sure! That's all right! But go on! _What_, just for a
starter?"
"Cows," came the tranquil answer. "I've been hunting around since you wrut
me last month. And I know of three good milkers--"
"Three? Why, Dave, I wrote we want thirty or forty!"
"Yes--you wrut," Dave answered. "But I've druv all around these parts--and
there ain't but three that I can find. And I ain't so sure of that third
one. She looks like she might--" George cut in.
"But you only had a buggy, Dave! Gee! I'm going to have a Ford!"
"That so, George?"
"You bet it's so! And we'll go on a cow hunt all over the State!"
"Well--I dunno but what you're right," Dave responded cautiously. "You
might get more cows if you had a Ford--an' got so you could run it. Yes, I
guess it's a pretty good scheme. I believe in being conservative,
George--but I dunno now but what a Ford--"
Their voices passed from under the window, and Roger relaxed and smiled to
himself. It was a good beginning, he thought.
They bought a Ford soon afterwards and in the next few weeks of June they
searched the farms for miles around, slowly adding to their herd. To
Roger's surprise he found many signs of a new life stirring there--the
farmers buying "autos" and improved machinery, thinking of new processes;
and down in the lower valleys they found several big stock farms which were
decidedly modern affairs. At one such place, the man in charge took a fancy
to George and asked him to drop over often.
"You bet I'll drop over often!" George replied, as he climbed excitedly
into his Ford. "I want to see more of those milking machines! We're going
to have 'em some day ourselves! A dynamo too!"
And at home, down by the ruined mill he again set about rebuilding the dam.
Roger felt himself growing stronger. His sleeps were sound, and his
appetite had come back to a surprising degree. The mountain air had got
into his blood and George's warm vigor into his soul. One afternoon,
watching the herd come home, some thirty huge animals swinging along with a
slow heavy power in their limbs, he breathed the strong sweet scent of them
on the mountain breeze. George came running by them and stopped a moment by
Roger's side, watching closely and eagerly every animal as it passed. And
Roger glanced at George's face. The herd passed on and George followed
behind, his collie dog leaping and barking beside him. And Roger looked up
at a billowy cloud resting on a mountain top and wondered whether after all
that New York doctor had been right.
He followed the herd into the barn. In two long rows, the great heads of
the cattle turned hungrily, lowing and sniffing deep, breathing harshly,
stamping, as the fodder cart came down the lines. What a splendidly
wholesome work for a lad, growing up with his roots in the soil, in these
massive simple forces of life. What of Edith's other children? Would they
be willing to stay here long? Each morning Roger breakfasted with Bruce the
baby by his side. "What a thing for you, little lad," he thought, "if you
could live here all your days. But will you? Will you want to stay? Won't
you, too, get the fever, as I did, for the city?" In the joyous, shining,
mysterious eyes of the baby he found no reply. He had many long talks with
Betsy, who was eager to go away to school, and with Bob and little Tad who
were going to school in the village that fall. And the feeling came to
Roger that surely he would see these lives, at least for many years ahead.
They were so familiar and so real, so fresh and filled with hopes and
dreams. And he felt himself so a part of them all.
But one morning, climbing the steep upper field to a spring George wanted
to show him, Roger suddenly swayed, turned faint. He caught hold of a
boulder on the wall and held himself rigid, breathing hard. It passed, and
he looked at his grandson. But George had noticed nothing. The boy had
turned and his brown eyes were fixed on a fallow field below. Wistfully
Roger watched his face. They both stood motionless for a long time.
As the summer drew slowly to a close, Roger spent many quiet hours alone by
the copse of birches, where the glory of autumn was already stealing in and
out among the tall slender stems of the trees. And he thought of the silent
winter there, and of the spring which would come again, and the long
fragrant summer. And he watched the glow on the mountains above and the
rolling splendors of the clouds. At dusk he heard the voices of animals,
birds and insects, murmuring up from all the broad valley, then gradually
sinking to deep repose, many never to wake again. And the span of his life,
from the boyhood which he could recall so vividly here among these
children, seemed brief to him as a summer's day, only a part of a mighty
whole made up of the innumerable lives, the many generations, of his
family, his own flesh and blood, come out of a past he could never know,
and going on without him now, branching, dividing, widening out to what his
eyes would never see.
Vaguely he pictured them groping their way, just as he himself had done. It
seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some
rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting
very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all. And so it
had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith's,
and so it would be with those many others--always groping, blundering,
starting--children, only children all. And yet what lives they were to
lead, what joys and revelations and disasters would be theirs, in the
strange remote world they would live in--"my flesh and blood that I never
shall know."
But the stars were quiet and serene. The meadows and the forests on the
broad sweep of the mountain side took on still brighter, warmer hues. And
there was no gloom in these long good-byes.
* * * * *
On a frosty night in September, he left the farm to go to the city. From
his seat in the small automobile Roger looked back at the pleasant old
house with its brightly lighted windows, and then he turned to George by
his side:
"We're in good shape for the winter, son."
But George did not get his full meaning.
At the little station, there were no other passengers. They walked the
platform for some time. Then the train with a scream came around the curve.
A quick grip on George's hand, and Roger climbed into the car. Inside, a
moment later, he looked out through the window. By a trainman with a
lantern, George stood watching, smiling up, and he waved his hand as the
train pulled out.