"Oh, the waiting in the watches of the night!
In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight;
The ever-weary memory that ever weary goes,
Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows,
The ever-weary eyelids gasping ever for repose--
In the dreary, weary watches of the night!"
"The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts, and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright."
One day, shortly after the ragman's call, old Mr. Carroll came to have
a talk with Mr. Deans. He did this often. It was not that he had any
particular liking for Henry Deans or his wife, but the forced inaction
of the former left him unoccupied all day long, and Mr. Carroll dearly
liked "to have his talk out" when once he commenced. As a prelude to
the talk proper, they discussed for an hour or so the affairs of the
village, the crops of their neighbors, the scarcity of pasture and the
great number of tramps. Into this part of the conversation Mrs. Deans
entered heartily. After these matters were canvassed thoroughly, the
men settled themselves more easily in their chairs, and took up the
more serious business of the hour.
Now there were only two subjects that Mr. Carroll thoroughly enjoyed
talking about--politics and war; the former he regarded as the "root of
all evil," the latter as the only means of reform. Mr. Deans only
cared to discuss religion and crops.
Each talked in his own strain about his own hobby, without regard to
what his companion was saying. While one was speaking the other
waited, absent-eyed, for the first pause for breath, when he promptly
took up his parable where he had left off when forced to pause for
breath himself. The one never heard what the other said, each being
too much occupied in thinking what he should say next to bother about
listening to any one else. They derived much of the same mutual
benefit and amusement from these conversations as two dogs do when they
race madly up and down opposite sides of a fence, barking at each
other. Many learned arguments, held in high places, are conducted upon
these same lines.
The sunny afternoon wore along. Mrs. Deans had yawned several times,
yawned audibly and significantly; but her husband, in full cry after
the errors of the Catholics and the bigotry of the Church of England,
disregarded the danger signal, and went on his conversational way
rejoicing. Mr. Carroll, winding his way through the intricacies of the
bribery and corruption and scandals of the last election, was oblivious
of her yawns, their meaning, and even--ungallant as it may seem--of her
presence.
Gamaliel, coming in from his plough to refill his water-jug, looked
slyly through the door at the trio.
"She's putting her ears back," said he to himself, with pleasurable
anticipation of a row, as he looked at his mother. He waited a few
moments in expectation of a crisis, but at the instant when his hopes
were highest an interruption occurred in the arrival of Mrs. Wilson.
Mr. Carroll loathed Mrs. Wilson, a well-fed-looking but lugubrious
woman, chronically aggrieved. From her own account, she had inherited
and endured "all the ills the flesh is heir to," but nevertheless she
was plump and comfortable-looking. Her dark eyes were bright, her red
cheeks rosy, her nose a pug; her lips showed red against the whiteness
of her false teeth--when the teeth were in her lips pouted, when the
teeth were out her lips pursed.
Mrs. Wilson was somewhat perilously given over to vanities, and had
fringe on her black merino dress and a white muslin rose in her black
bonnet. She had her knitting with her, an index of her intention to
stay for tea, and an encouragement to Mrs. Deans to insist that she
should remain. Mrs. Wilson protested she had had no intention of
staying, and Mrs. Deans insisted that she should stay. Mrs. Wilson's
protestations continued all the while she was laying off her bonnet,
and Mrs. Deans' persuasive eloquence flowed freely; finally, with a
fine assumption of compulsion, Mrs. Wilson ceased protesting, and
allowed herself, knitting in hand, to be led back to the dining-room.
By the time the two ladies emerged, Mr. Carroll was hobbling out of the
gate and Mr. Deans was enjoying a long-deferred chew. The two women
sat down opposite each other in rocking-chairs. Mrs. Wilson produced a
black apron, which she donned, and then felt in her pocket for the
goose-quill she carried to hold the end of her knitting needle, stuck
it in her belt, and proceeded to turn the heel of a carpet-warp sock;
at the same time to give Mrs. Deans a full and particular account of
her sufferings from erysipelas. Mrs. Deans herself had had some
experience with that disease, having once seen a woman in St. Ann's who
was bald from its effects.
Mrs. Wilson's needles clicked; Mrs. Deans' waxed thread hummed as she
vigorously sewed carpet-rags; a distant thud-thud told that Myron
Holder was churning.
The sun began to sink. Suddenly Mrs. Wilson dropped her hands and her
knitting into her lap, and asked, with an explosive abruptness only
excusable as an indication of the startling character of the question:
"Say, Jane--I want to ask you something! Has Myron Holder named her
young one?"
Mrs. Deans struck one hand into the other.
"Well, it beats all! I never! If you'll believe me, I don't know."
"I just wondered whether she had or not, but I never saw you to ask, or
if I saw you I forgot, and I didn't hear tell of its being named yet.
Now what do you suppose, Jane, speaking confidential between ourselves,
and knowing it'll go no further--if you was asked, now, what would you
say she'd call it, if 'twas put to you?"
"Well, Marian," replied Mrs. Deans, with the air of a baffled
astrologer, "since you ask me plain, I'll tell you one thing--I can see
as far through a ladder as most people, and if I go falling it ain't
through going about with my eyes shut; but all I know about it is one
thing, and that ain't two; whatever Myron Holder calls the young one
she won't call it Jed, for that old Mrs. Holder won't allow at no
rate--for no favor. Not that Myron said anything about it; that ain't
her way. She's close--terrible close is Myron, and deep beyond belief.
But old Mrs. Holder says--and what she says she'll stick to, being
stubborn and fixed in her notions--she says, 'No naming of such brats
after my son.' No--not if Myron asks on bended knee, Mrs. Holder won't
give in."
"But say, Jane," hazarded Mrs. Wilson, as one who advances an
improbable and wild suggestion, "supposing Myron Holder don't ask, but
just does it? Do you suppose she'd dare?"
"'Tain't hardly likely," returned Mrs. Deans, looking judicial; "that
would be pretty serious, even for Myron Holder. But I don't know;
she's bad clean through--that's easy enough seen; why she makes the
greatest time over that young one you ever seen. Why, Mrs. Warner told
me that the other Sunday, when she went to Holder's well for a pail of
water, that the house being very quiet, she went and looked in the
windows, knowing old Mrs. Holder was out to Disney's for milk. She
couldn't see nothing in the front room nor the kitchen, but in the
bedroom there she seen Myron Holder with the boy. The boy was asleep,
and she was kneeling by the bed, talking away to the sleeping
child!--'s good's praying to it, Mrs. Warner said."
"I've no patience with such goings on as them," said Mrs. Wilson,
clicking her needles agitatedly. "I should think she'd be ashamed to
act up like that, considering all that's come and gone."
"Well, you'd think so," agreed Mrs. Deans, winding up her ball of rags.
"But there, Marian! There's no use talking, her kind don't care for
nothing."
"Well, it's to be hoped she don't throw no slurs on any decent fellow,
like your Male or my Homer," said Mrs. Wilson, with dismal foreboding
in her voice. "It would be just like her to pick on some fine name.
But I warn her of one thing: slurs is something I can't abide and won't
put up with."
"Nor me, Marian, nor me," said Mia. Deans, her spirit rising in
anticipation of the imaginary fray. "Let Myron Holder call her brat
Gamaliel, and I'll let her know for once, in her life, that respectable
people has their rights. Just only let her, once, and that's all. If
I don't show her pretty prompt what's what, blame me!"
"Well, 'twould be a most terrible slur on any fellow, that's all I can
say," returned Mrs. Wilson.
After tea Homer Wilson called for his mother and drove her away, her
white muslin rose nodding above the black barége veil she tied across
her forehead to ward off neuralgia, her hands clasping lovingly a
bottle of liniment distilled from dried "smartweed," which Mrs. Deans
had bestowed upon her. Mrs. Deans watched their departure from the
veranda; presently she voiced her reflections aloud:
"Marian don't crack up Homer as much as she used to do; guess that shoe
pinches a bit. Well, served her right! Nobody but a fool gives away
his clothes before he's done with them! They shouldn't have been so
smart giving Homer the deed."
"No, I don't hold with doing that. Don't catch me doing any such
business, not I," said Mr. Deans' voice from the kitchen.
Mrs. Deans jerked her shoulders impatiently, and took herself and her
meditations out of her husband's hearing. She was gone some little
time, having walked down to the pasture to look at the lambs. As she
entered the cook-house she murmured to herself, "I can't make my mind
up to it somehow, but she was anxious, was Marian, terrible anxious
about the name--Homer Wilson."
Homer Wilson and his mother drove homeward. They passed Myron Holder
entering the gate of her home. She had taken off her sunbonnet and
held it by the strings, as she fastened the gate. Her hair, loosened
and roughened, was massed about her head in such a way as to form a
soft, shadowy background, from which the pale oval of her face shone
forth almost startlingly.
"Guess Mrs. Deans is taking her money's worth out of Myron Holder,"
said Homer after they passed. "She looks mighty tired out."
"Oh, goodness, Homer," said his mother, "don't take up with that girl.
'Tired out!' Serve her right if she is! It's pure charity Jane Deans'
having her; and as for stubbornness and badness, Jane says she can't be
beat. I guess her old grandmother has a tough time of it! Old folks
has a poor chance when young ones get the whip-hand. Give--give--and
when you've given all you've got you're no more good! Well, time's
short here any way, and a good thing it is! No pleasure after one gets
old--only burdens on other people." Here Mrs. Wilson sniffed loudly,
and ostentatiously wiped away an imaginary tear.
Homer's face burned in the dusk; his heart rose hot against the
reflection his mother's speech was meant to cast upon him. But he made
no answer; he was used to such things; they drove on without further
speech. The loose links in the horses' traces jingled; their
hoof-beats sounded soft on the sandy road. They drew near the house
before Mrs. Wilson spoke again; then she said briskly: "Homer, don't go
speaking to Myron Holder if you meet her; she's a dangerous girl."
"She looks it," said Homer, with a touch of sarcasm. "I don't think
I'll be hurt by passing a good day with her, though."
"That's right--I might have known as much. Get mixed up with her next,
as if I hadn't had enough trouble," whined his mother.
Homer was getting exasperated. The knowledge that he had that very
morning passed Myron Holder in absent-minded silence added to the
irritation of his mood. His mother's persistent misconstruction of his
motives and actions was at times almost unbearable. He answered out of
pure perversity: "She's the best looking girl in the village, by long
odds; and as for not speaking to her, I fancy the women do plenty of
'passing by on the other side' business without the men helping them.
You won't find many men, I reckon, unwilling to speak to Myron Holder."
A strange conviction of the absolute truth of what he was saying smote
across his mind, and suddenly Myron Holder's pale face seemed to show
out of the gloom before him, as he had seen it a little while before
against the dark background of her hair. His mother almost groaned
aloud; a dreadful thought flittered momentarily through her mind, but
Homer was already pulling up the horses.
He helped her out carefully, and she entered the house absorbed in
peevish self-pity.
Old Mr. Wilson was ready to receive her and eager to hear the "news."
When Homer finished attending to his horses and came into the house, he
found they had already retired. He heard the murmur of his mother's
voice, broken only by a sharp exclamation or a short interrogation from
his father. He blew out the lamp and sat down at the open window,
laying his head on his hands. The frogs in the pond were uttering
their weird and dismal note. No other sound has a more melancholy
echo, a more desolate tone. An earthy breath of wind was wafted from
across the newly ploughed land near the house. In the sunshine the
aroma from fresh furrows is sweeter than the breath of sweet grass; at
night it brings the odor of the charnel.
The wind died down; it was very still and dark. The dew fell.
Presently Homer Wilson rose, and, still in the dark, found his way
softly upstairs. His thick brown hair was laden with the night damps,
but even the first heavy dews of spring do not leave long, glistening,
smarting furrows on the cheeks--do not fall in slow-wrung, scalding
drops upon clinched hands, do not linger in salt traces about the lips
they touch.
When Homer Wilson avowed conversion in the little Methodist Church, his
mother confided to Mrs. Deans that she was exceedingly glad thereat.
"I can let him go to the city with an easier mind, now that I know he's
got religion," she said. Homer had gone to the anxious-seat the night
before, during the revival meeting, had been prayed over, and sung
over, and had avowed, in a few jerky, hesitating sentences, that "he
felt better--happier--there is a load off my mind--I--" But his
testimony had been interrupted at this point, greatly to his own relief
and his mother's wrath, by enthusiastic Sister Warner beginning to
sing, in a high, shrill treble:
"Once I was blind,
But now I can see;
The Light of the World is Jesus."
Homer retired from the meeting feeling a little dazed. He knew he had
done what was expected of him, and believed it was the right thing to
do, but was a bit confused as to the impulse which had prompted him to
take the step.
The next morning he started for the commercial college, where he was
about to take a course. He was alert to the possibilities of life, and
was clear-headed enough to see that without education his chances were
nil.
He had gone, winter after winter, to the village school, and had a wide
reputation among the villagers as a mathematician.
"It's pretty hard to fool Homer Wilson on figgers," was the general
verdict.
He was too progressive to dream of spending his life in that little
hamlet, so he saved all his earnings, and at last had enough to cover
the low expenses of a two-year course at the business college--an
institution which, among its numerous advantages, promised "to secure
good situations for such of the students as shall obtain our diploma."
When Homer Wilson started from the village, he was a good specimen of
the country Hercules; tall, sinewy, resolute, with unflinching will and
bulldog courage. His conversion, if it had not sprung from his inmost
soul or stirred the deepest depths of his heart, had at least awakened
and strengthened his better resolutions; his mind was eager to receive
the knowledge that he knew meant power. His hopes were high, his heart
and temper generous.
He met _Her_ shortly after he commenced his course. Her brother was
attending the college and took Homer to his home one night. Homer
thought her perfection, for his standard of comparison was not high.
She had fluffy yellow hair, and pretty eyes, and pretty ways, and
pretty speeches galore. She was winning and cordial, and he thought
her absurd questions about country ways and country doings very
entertaining. She was bright and quick and quite charmed this keen
young man, who, for all his shrewdness, proved an easy prey to these
trivial acts which girls of her caste exercise so unsparingly. He
confided to her all his ambitions, and she listened eagerly.
Perhaps he gave her a rather too glowing account of the farm at home.
The peaches and grapes were, perhaps, hardly so plentiful, and
certainly were not so easily obtained. The harvests were, perhaps, not
quite so golden, the garden perhaps not so lovely, as he depicted it,
nor his father so admirable, nor his mother so benevolently kind to
everybody. But he had left home for the first time, and, after all,
despite his ambitions, his heart was yet in the country, with the
fields, the sun, the birds and the trees.
Under these circumstances a man is prone to forget the tedious process
of planting and nursing and cultivating the peach trees until they are
fit for fruiting--to overlook the ploughing and sowing and harrowing,
and the long days of toil before the fields "whiten to the harvest,"
and to think and speak of both fruit and grain as springing, with all
the beauty of spontaneity, from the gracious Mother Earth. And his
listener, if she be a selfish, shallow creature, unthinking and
unheeding, is prone to think only of results, and not at all of the
toil they represent.
So life slipped along with Homer Wilson, studying and loving and
writing home. Then came a summer day when he took _Her_ for a day's
trip to his home in Jamestown. His mother had outdone herself
preparing country dainties. It was the time of strawberries, and there
were strawberries and cream, and strawberry shortcake, and crullers,
and pies, and boiled ham, and the sun was shining, and _She_ fluttered
about, genuinely pleased with many things and affecting to be delighted
by everything.
Old Mr. Wilson had been at his best. Mrs. Wilson was urbane in a new
dress, and Homer strode about, showing _Her_ the farm, erect and
happily excited. It was the halcyon day of his life. In the evening
there was the trip back to the city, Homer taking care of the basket of
strawberries his mother had bestowed upon _Her_.
That night she promised to marry him. He wrote to his people, and his
mother returned a somewhat unintentionally lugubrious epistle,
conveying their good wishes and consent.
Weeks and months sped, and Homer had never been home since that day.
His old people did not take that amiss, for travelling, as they knew,
cost money.
But there came a day when his course was completed, the coveted diploma
bestowed upon him, and a situation secured for him as bookkeeper in a
lumber-yard, at thirty-five dollars a month. He made up his mind to go
home for a day or two before starting work. He reached the village
elate--fortune seemed within his grasp.
His father was surly and harassed-looking; his mother's face looked
older and with genuine lines of trouble about the lips, far more
significant than the peevish wrinkles of self-pity that creased her
brow.
He soon learned the cause of these things. The mortgage, which had
always seemed as much a matter of course to him as the taxes or the
road-work, was about to be foreclosed. The man who had lent them the
money would not renew it; he hinted that he feared for his interest, as
it seemed there was no young man to take hold of the place, and in the
event of the property deteriorating he feared for his principal.
The old people before this dilemma seemed numbed. They could think of
no expedient, and were apparently incapable of deciding what course to
pursue.
Homer listened to it all in sick wonder that he had not been told,
rejoicing inwardly that he had cost them nothing at least for two years
back, though he also realized with bitterness that he had helped them
none. He went to his old room that night to fight a hard battle with
himself, and to conquer--to give up his ambitions, which, humble as
they seem, were yet great to him; to relinquish the joy of seeing _Her_
daily; to return to the old, hopeless struggle of striving to make ends
meet, to bend his energies to the circumscribed field of making the
most of the few acres of the old farm; to come back and be called a
failure by his friends; to have to wait a long, long time before he
could call Her "wife." But while that last idea held the bitterest
thought of all, in it also lay the kernel of the hope which was to keep
his heart alive. He felt he had a sure and certain hope of a happy
future, no matter how long deferred, and he remembered, with a pang of
pity, that his father and mother had only a past.
His brothers and sisters were all married long since, and each had
struggle enough to keep the wolf from the door. No help from any one
but himself could relieve his old people.
The dawn found him resolved. He told his father and mother at the
breakfast-table. They were both delighted, but did not know very well
how to express it. To a stranger's mind there might have been some
doubt as to whether they appreciated the sacrifice or not. They did
not in full. No one save, perhaps, a woman who loved him could have
known the magnitude of his renunciation.
His father and he went that day to see the old man who held the
mortgage. He was a shrewd old miser, and was fain to secure himself in
every way against anxiety and loss. He insisted that the new mortgage
should be made out in Homer's name. He wanted this open-browed,
strong, resolute young man for his debtor, and not the vacillating old
man, who looked as if no responsibility would trouble him long. So the
farm was transferred to Homer's name, and the mortgage also.
Homer resumed his old life unfalteringly. He wrote and told _Her_ all
about his change of plans, and she replied to his letters regularly.
Her letters were not very satisfying; women of her fibre are not
usually very fascinating on paper. So Homer felt trebly the sacrifice
he was making, for he attributed none of his sense of loss to the lack
of real feeling in her letters. On the contrary, he thought those
letters, with their stilted beginning and spidery writing, the sweetest
of all epistles; and thought to himself how altogether lovely she was,
when even such letters as these left him unsatisfied and with
heart-hunger unappeased.
Homer was not one to put his hand to the plough and then draw back. He
threw into his work all the energy of his resolute will, and backed it
by the severest physical toil he was capable of. It was up-hill and
disheartening work, but he toiled on. He had disappointments enough
and to spare, but he wrote them all down to _Her_, and forgot them when
he read that she was "so sorry."
He had progressive ideas which sometimes worried him sorely, for it was
trying to see others availing themselves of modern appliances for
cultivating, etc., while Homer felt bound to struggle on with the old
implements his father possessed, which called for double the
expenditure of labor and time, and even then did not yield satisfactory
results.
In the spring, too, it took the heart out of him to walk the rows of
his peach orchard and find a third of the trees killed, girdled by the
teeth of the field-mice. Homer's heart almost failed him when he
discovered this last mishap, for he was oppressed by the knowledge that
he could have prevented it. It was true that he could not afford the
expensive shields of metal for his trees that some of his neighbors
had, but if, immediately after that heavy snowstorm of last winter, he
had gone out and tramped the snow tightly round each tree, then they
would not have been girdled; for the snow, if left undisturbed, never
clings close to a peach tree; there is always a space between, and the
mice creep round and round the tree in this space, gnawing it to the
height of the snow. The peach trees next the fence, where the snow had
drifted, were girdled completely up to a height of three or four feet.
Homer had visited _Her_ in the winter. The week after the heavy
snowstorm had been spent with her. His mother reminded him of this,
and he flung out of the house angrily. He was fairly sick over the
loss of his trees, and to have anything cold said about Her was too
much. He wrote _Her_ all about it; perhaps in his desperate longing
for sympathy, loving sympathy and comprehension, he depicted the
disaster as even more serious than it really was.
He waited for her letter eagerly. It came. Her frivolous, mercenary
soul had taken fright. She sheltered herself behind the old excuse for
disloyalty--worn thread-bare by women of all stations. She wrote that
she felt she "did not love him as she should if she was to be his wife."
He had sent the little Home-boy to the Post-Office for the letter; he
brought it to the field where Homer was planting out tomato-plants.
Homer Wilson read his letter twice or thrice, put it carefully in its
envelope, and then safely in his pocket. He went on with his
task--slowly--slowly, though, with none of the tremulous haste with
which he had been exhausting himself for months. He packed the roots
with soil; it was some relief, the hard, resistent pressure of the
earth; there was something left to battle against, if nothing left to
fight for. So he continued his row, feeling a fierce wrath if one of
the shaky little plants would not stand straight, and hushing the
Home-boy's chatter with a terrible, pale look.
He completed his task, and went about his other work in an atmosphere
of enforced calm that was torture. By some chance none of his tasks
that day called for any output of physical strength. It was a day of
small things, trivial tasks which maddened him by their helpless need
for patience, not strength.
But the weariest hours pass, and night fell over the village as a veil.
Then he wrote to Her a few straightforward, manly lines, setting her
free; telling her she had acted rightly if she did not love him. Then
he lay down for another night of poignant thought. He recalled Her
visit to the farm, and remembered how impatient he had felt when his
mother maundered on about sending back the basket the strawberries went
in. He had felt a little ashamed of his mother's thrift just then.
When the morning came Homer was ready for work, but there had been a
distinct decadence in him during the night that was past. He had no
longer anything to live for but money; he rose to search for this only
good with eager, greedy eyes. For this poor countryman had come of a
long race of penurious, grasping men and women, and that mercenary
craving for money and land had been latent in his nature since his
birth. When he went to the business college it stirred within him
vaguely, and might then have developed, but better ambitions ousted it.
But these aspirations were gone, and in their place flourished--grown
to its full height in a single night--the Upas Tree of Greed.
He told his people next day. His mother promptly said, "I knowed how
it would be! A big-feeling, handless creature, idle and good for
nothing! With her airified ways and her notions; I told you so all
along, Homer," etc., etc. But Homer, ere even the second word was
spoken, was out of the house and striding along with black brows to his
tomatoes. The row he had planted the day before looked limp; by night
they were yellow--withered--dead. In replanting them he found each
stalk broken clean off below the earth; he had indulged his strength
too much in packing the earth about them. Day by day the change in him
went on--gradually, almost imperceptibly, but startlingly apparent, had
any one contrasted the Homer of the present with the man of the past.
It was very pitiful. Worst of all, he was conscious himself of the
change, but could not analyze it, so could do nothing to arrest the
atrophy of his soul.
He began to prosper by fits and starts; later more steadily. He had a
balance at the end of the summers now, and invested it in better stock,
new implements and fine varieties of fruit. He hid his aching heart
under an offensively blustering manner, and was so morbidly afraid of
any one knowing his secret that he was too carelessly gay--too full of
pointless jests. Often, after a gathering of the village young people,
he strolled home under the stars, dazed and wondering, his throat harsh
with much speech, his head aching with tuneless laughter. Was he
really the man who had chattered on so a few minutes since? he asked
himself. And the other young people said, among themselves, "Homer
Wilson does like to show off so!"
It was an anguish to him when he saw, now and then, a young man leave
the village, win what he considered success, and come back smiling,
content, and well dressed, for a brief holiday; then back to the world
outside again.
His temper became irascible. When his horses were refractory he was
unmerciful; but after any outbreak against a dumb animal his stifled
manhood rose against this last, worst outrage against it. But the
horses did not recall the extra feeding and light work as they did the
blow, and they shrank and shivered and started nervously when he
approached. He noted this, and it cut him to the heart, or stung him
into dull wrath against them, as his mood was.
The farm did better and better, and well it might; all the honest and
generous part of a man's nature was being sunk in it. He began to pay
the principal of the loan in instalments; at last he had the farm clear.
His brothers and sisters murmured against him. Homer had stolen their
birthright, they whispered; he had got hold of the farm just when the
hard times were past; he had wheedled the old people into giving it all
to him, they said, and they each and every one had worked as hard as he
had, and besides he had all his own way, while they had had to work
under the old man's orders.
So the boys came home with their families, and paid long visits and
impressed upon the old man how Homer had "bested him." And the girls
returned with their children, and condoled with their mother. They
departed, leaving the old man morose, irritable and repining, the old
woman in tearful self-pity; and Homer saw it all and smiled grimly, but
said no word.
So the old people saw grudgingly his hard-won success, although they
shared it fully, and spoke of their other children always with the
prefix "poor," as if contrasting Homer's prosperous and happy lot with
theirs.
He had, after all, a grim sense of humor, and this Jacob-like light in
which his family viewed him filled him with sneering mirth. Verily
they were a miserable tribe of Esaus. But the mirth died out at last,
leaving a residuum of rage against his kin, who so persistently
misjudged him, and one bitter night he lay and cursed the resolution
which had brought him back to rescue his old people from the slough of
despond.
With the acknowledgment of this regret, the disintegration of his soul
would seem to be complete.