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Christopher Marlowe - "Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Buch 6"

Jules Verne - "In Search of the Castaways"

Stendhal - "La Chartreuse de Parme"

Dust

M >> Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman Julius >> Dust




"No, but you have tried to rub it into his soul and it just can't
be done. You're not to be blamed for being what you are, nor is
Billy--I'll milk his cows."

"I'm not asking that."

"But I will, Martin."

"And let him stand by and watch you?"

"Put it that way if you will. Billy must get away from here. I
see that now."

"I haven't suggested it."

"But I do. I want him to be happy. We'll let him board in Fallon
the rest of the year. The butter and egg money will be enough to
carry him through. It won't cost much. If we don't send him,
he'll run away. I know him. He's my boy, and your son, Martin. I
won't see him suffer in a strange world, learning his lessons
from bitter experiences. I want him to be taken care of."

"Very well, have it as you say. I'm not putting anything in the
way. I thought this was his home, but I see it isn't. It isn't a
prison. He can go, and good luck go with him." And after a long
silence: "He would tear down this farm--the best in the county!
Tear it down--board from board!"



IX

MARTIN'S SON SHAKES OFF THE DUST

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.

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