PART IV

1

After much searching of road-maps and timetables, tables, she discovered that Pelham was distant only a long day’s drive. Dorilliam, now a tall youth of nineteen, had bought the doctor’s old car and would take them. Her one problem that seemed unsurmountable was the disposal of Jenny. The child had become dear to her. She could not set her adrift on the sea of chance, subject her to the uncertain tides of charity, yet she could not take her where she was going.

She explained a little to Dorilliam’s mother. Mrs. Wells would know what to say to the others. The neighbors came for farewell visits, even those she knew best wearing an unaccustomed formality that she understood. It was their tribute to the unusual, the unexpected. None questioned her. Mrs. Ware, whose house was already fuller of children than any other, said to her, “You let Jenny come stay with us. There’s plenty of room. The twins’d love having her.”

Yet in the end the problem was solved by means of Miss Abby. “Well,” she sighed, as she stood up to leave, “you had a nice home here.”

Anne was inspired. “Miss Abby, would you be able to come here and live here with Jenny? I should be so delighted to give you the place free. I couldn’t offer much else; but there’s four dollars a week for Jenny’s board, and----”

“Land,” said Miss Abby, “I never saw that much money a week in my life. It wouldn’t cost that to live, not with the garden. I guess maybe my brother’d let me have wood.” She gave Anne a quick look. “I never had a house of my own.”

So it was arranged. Jenny’s comment was, “Gee, us’ll be two old maids together.”

“What’s old maids?” Warren asked.

“It’s ladies that don’t get married.”

Warren stared at her. “Aren’t you going to marry Dorilliam?”

But Jenny’s self-consciousness had grown in a year. “Oh--Dorilliam! He’s not so much!”

“Well, Dorilliam ought to get married. Mr. Ware says a farmer does better when he’s married. He could marry Miss Abby. I’ll tell him. I like her, myself.”

Jenny rolled her eyes at Anne.

There were things to be done. She began to take count of her appearance. She did not want to appear before Brice in the guise of poverty. She wanted to make no appeal of any sort to him. Long ago George Copeland had re-invested for her what was left of the four thousand dollars after Ranney’s venture with it; she had used some of it at the time of Warren’s illness. Each month a check brought her the minute income. Now the roof needed mending; that would have to be done before she left. She wrote to Alice, asking that George should in some way place part of her little capital at her disposal; Warren must be properly clothed, and would Alice choose a ready-made suit and a blouse? She made herself two new house-dresses, mended, contrived, got Jenny ready for summer. Dorilliam plowed the garden, Anne planted it. Through everything she moved deliberately, for she knew now what to do.

The last days rain came down steadily. “It won’t matter. The doctor goes everywhere in the rain,” she told Dorilliam.

“You’re a brave woman, Anne,” Kent said, standing in her little parlor the evening before she left.

She looked at him meditatively. “I don’t think it’s that, Rufus,” she said, slowly. “It’s the next thing to do.”

“How you do take it,” said he.

She shook her head. “It’s taking me. Life does.” After a while she said, “I wonder why the enlightening word in all our crises comes from outside.”

“Have to be guide-posts, I suppose. So many paths.”

“Yes. And mercifully they are really paths. Worn. Trodden.”

He turned and looked down on her. “Was that your enlightening word?”

“Oh, something on Sunday. One of the prophets, I think. ‘This day I am going the way of all the earth: and ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all which the Lord your God spake concerning you: all are come to pass.’ It leaped at me out of the reading. Experience--we always think our own is unique. But the path has been trodden.”

He slowly nodded, staring at nothing; then abruptly he threw his head back. “Only--dear God!--sometimes----”

She stood up, laid a hand on his shoulder. “Courage, Rufus,” she said.

He took her hand, gripped it. “Thanks, Anne,” he said after a moment. “That’s your enlightening word to me.”

They embarked in Dorilliam’s car the next morning. The rain continued, trickled in rivulets around the curtains. From the front seat Warren chattered ceaselessly with Dorilliam. It was mid-afternoon when a long descent brought them out on a road where a battered sign-post pointed the way to Pelham. At last the hills closed in; the stream ran torrential below the road. At last a bridge, a cross-road, a jam of logs and a mill.

“Yeah, he lives up there in the last house. Ain’t here today, though. Don’t know whether he’ll get back tonight or not,” someone said to Anne’s question.

Out of the car into the rain. No answer to their knock on the door. Their things carried into a shanty of a room or two.

“Don’t seem right to leave you like this,” Dorilliam said, “But I got to get home by morning.”

Inside the place Warren looked about him. “You said we were going somewhere, Mums. This don’t look much like somewhere.”

Anne did not answer. She too was looking around. This room they were in--its walls were of board with maps and blue-prints here and there, and flamboyant calendars, some of them three years old. A big iron stove, round, its rusty sides corrugated, the fire dead. A few wooden arm-chairs and a table. A cheap morris chair, its cushions sagged to the left. Her hand went to her throat.

“What are you doing that for? I don’t like this place. I want to go home.” Warren was frowning. His lip trembled a little after he spoke.

She crossed the floor to a door that stood ajar. An oil-stove there, a table covered with oilcloth, an open cupboard with shelves, some dishes and canned things. The place was neat. A third room opened off from the large one. There too was neatness, the bed made, gray blankets pulled up. She remembered something. Cozy--Brice’s word--cozy....

“I want to go home,” said Warren. “I’m hungry.”

She opened the remnant of the lunch she had brought. “How long are we going to stay here, anyway?” Warren asked when he had eaten.

“I don’t know,” she said shortly. Even the muscles of her arms were braced against the boy’s chatter, against that ceaseless downpour of rain. The room was becoming shadowy.

Someone was whistling tunelessly. The sound penetrated the patter, came on. There was a step on the porch. The door opened. Warren went forward.

“Hello!” said he.

The man in oilskins stopped abruptly, then smiled with that slight softening about the eyes of the man who loves children. “Why, hello, Bill! What are you doing in here?”

Warren laughed, went nearer, looked up. “What makes you think my name’s Bill? I don’t know you. Do you live here?”

Across the child’s head Brice saw Anne.

He looked again at the boy. He flushed slowly, as though it were painfully. Even in that fading light she saw a vein stand out on his temple.

“Is it?” he asked. “Is your name Bill?”

Warren thrust his hands into his trouser’s-pockets. “Well, not ezackly, you know. It’s Warren Denison, ’s a matter of fact. But I like Bill better.” Man and boy, they stared at each other. “My mother’s name is Mrs. Denison,” Warren further elucidated. “What’s yours?”

Again the man looked over the child’s head at Anne. She shook her head. Her voice sounded strange. “Nothing. It seemed--fairer.” Her hands were cold. She felt stiff, rigid and stiff.

Presently Brice asked: “How did you happen to come here, Bill?”

“Why, in Dorilliam’s car. He paid a hundred and fifteen dollars for that car, cash. It’s a pretty good car.” The man said nothing. Warren shuffled his feet. “But I don’t like this place much. Mums said we were going somewhere. Is this somewhere? Why don’t you say something? Is this somewhere?”

Still the man did not answer.

“What did you say your name was?” asked Warren.

“My name is Denison, too----”

Warren laughed. “Sort of funny! You might get mixed up with me. What’ll I call you? Where’s the rest of your folks?”

Abruptly the man’s control broke. He raised his hands. “Oh my God!” he cried.

He turned, went blindly into the frame of the door, rebounded, blundered out into the rain.

In the morning the rain had stopped. “Well, I guess I’ll go take a walk,” Warren said, in Dorilliam’s best manner. “You can come along, too, if you want to.”

“I think I’ll stay here,” Anne said lightly.

During the morning a boy came up the hill with a basket. “The boss sent it,” he said. “If there’s anything else you want I’m to bring it up from the store. I’ll bring the milk in the evening.”

At noon Warren came home, his eyes gleaming. “Say, I met that feller again. I like him. He asked me to dinner, but I told him my mother’d be expecting me back. Gosh, I’m hungry.”

He had been over the mill with Brice; he gave her details. “The next time he invites you to stay with him, you may,” she told him.

For three days after that she had dinner alone. She did not leave the house. She had a sense of things impending. The utmost she could do was to wait and to appear as usual to Warren. On the fifth evening after the boy was asleep she was sitting beside the kerosene lamp, her hands in her lap. She did not hear his step on the porch. The knock at the door made her raise her head, but she could not get up. He came in, met her eyes. Then his glance took in the room.

“He is in there,” she said, “asleep.”

He crossed the floor. She knew that he stood in the doorway looking into that other room. After a while he came back, sat down in the chair that sagged to his shape. Presently he asked:

“Why did you come?”

“I brought Wanny.”

He laughed shortly. “After these years!”

She nodded. “He was born at the end of that year!”

After a pause he asked, “Did you know--before?”

“No.”

“Was it why you didn’t--” he swallowed,--“Copeland----”

“No. I said that because I wanted to hurt you.”

They sat in silence for a time that seemed interminable. She thought the silence would never break.

“I don’t see that it’s going to do either of us any good to hark back,” he said at last. “What do you propose to do?”

“I am not proposing anything. I brought your son.”

“After these years. God----!”

She crowded back words that were on her lips.

“Why don’t you say it?” he flung at her.

Her head moved. “It’s there between us, anyway. But even if I had known at first where you were, I would not have brought him. Not then.”

“Why do you tell me that?”

“I am ready to tell you anything. Or do anything.”

He sat frowning, puzzled, suspicious, resentful. “You don’t mean that. You’re working something again.”

She clasped her hands tighter.

“Words, words! Something you mean to get! What is it?”

She did not answer.

“What are you after? What do you intend to do?”

“Whatever is right. I don’t know.”

“Ha! Would you give me the boy?”

Her head went back. “If that is right.”

He laughed again in that way that was not mirthful. “Who’s to decide that? What are you up to?”

She sat very still. He looked at her curiously. No flare-up of anger. A woman controlled.

“What do you mean by right?”

“It’s not what we need, either of us. It’s what he needs. He’s growing up. That’s as far as I see.”

They did not look at each other. Presently she knew that he had taken the attitude she remembered, leaning forward, his hands dropped between his knees, looking intently at nothing.

“You can’t live in this place,” he said at last.

She did not look up.

“There are no comforts. Nothing you have been used to.”

“I went to old Willy. Warren was born there. I’ve learned to do things.”

After a while he crossed the floor again and went into the room where Warren slept. When he came back he hesitated a moment, then went out, without speaking.

2

During the days the intermittent whine of the saw-mill reached her. During the evenings she sat alone. She put no restraint upon Warren; his air of importance grew enormously.

“I’ve got to hurry,” he said one morning. “We’re putting on a new belt today.”

He described the workings of the machinery, told how the logs came down the river, called various men by name. For a time he did not come home for the mid-day meal; he regaled her at supper with boastful tales of wondrous food he had had, things hitherto forbidden him, pies, corned-beef, dumplings. When she refrained from the comment he evidently expected he eyed her speculatively.

“You don’t cook things like that,” he said. “I like that man.”

But one noon he appeared, frowning. He threw his cap across the floor. “He made me come home,” he told her. “He says I can stay tomorrow.”

After a few days she understood. Brice was sharing him. As her first dread wore off she accepted it. There was nothing to do but live in the moment; the moments hung heavily. She could not plan, and she would not think. There was little to do in the shack. She explored the woods, walked up the road past the house where she and Brice had once stayed. Polish people lived there now. When she had been there a week or two she went to the store. From a distance she saw them together, father and son. They were standing on the boxed runway beside the dam, identical in posture, their heads identical in tilt and color.

One or two women in the store eyed her curiously and slipped out.

“Good morning, Mrs. Denison,” the store-keeper said.

So she was known. Yet she expected that, knew what surmises and comments must be going about. She took home some yarn, some packets of seeds. The cabin had been built over the cellar-hole of a house long since burned; at the back was a weedy place where a garden had once been. She grubbed up the dried stuff, went to the nearest house to borrow a spade.

“You come here to stay?” the woman asked.

“Long enough to make a garden, anyway,” Anne replied, smiling. “Long enough to get acquainted with folks, too, I hope.”

“Well, it’ll be nice for Mr. Denison. The little feller does favor his pa.”

“I wish you’d leave your baby with me, sometime,” Anne returned, and the relationship was established.

“Run over again,” said the woman, and Anne returned, “You, too.”

She spaded and planted. It was good to be at work, again, normal work, accustomed work. One morning a few weeks later she was there on her knees grubbing out the first weeds when she heard Warren calling. He came around the house, Brice with him. The man stood still as Anne rose.

“We’re going off to one of the camps,” said Wanny. “Can we?”

Anne brushed the hair out of her eyes, looked at Brice. But he was frowning at the garden. “Who did that?” he demanded.

“It’s not done yet. Rather weedy.”

“You?”

“Oh, I always have a garden.”

“Well, I help,” Warren put in. “Though of course this year I’ve been rather busy. Say, Mums, can we? Can we go?”

She looked inquiringly at Brice.

“It will be late when we get back,” he said. “I didn’t like to take him without asking you.”

She brushed the earth from her hands. “Just wait a minute. I’ll put up a lunch,” she said, and walked off into the house. From the kitchen she heard Warren’s crescendo of questions, finally his “What’s the matter with you, Dad? Why don’t you answer? Say, Dad, why don’t you answer?” A glance showed her Brice staring at the bit of raw land....

When they had gone she went thoughtfully back to her weeding. Weeds, little things that crept in overnight, things that grew so swiftly. Some might go on to blossom, all would drop seed if let grow. And they were not wanted; they got in the way of human intention, interfered with human endeavor. Yet nature loved them. Even in a garden they had their uses. If one pulled them out, their roots loosened the soil about worthier plants. What weeds were there now between her and Brice? She did not know. Old things between them. She knew that, knew that he still resented them. She had known that he must, even before their one interview. Was he letting those die now, wilt in the sun of Warren? She did not know. And she must not think. Things went on, carried one with them. That was all she could do now. Wait, let herself be carried along. There had been many times when she would have doubted the current. She was doing all she could to yield herself to it. Now she did not so much as know what she wanted. To want was not vital. The only thing was to go on.

It was midnight when they came home. She heard them, opened the door, holding the lamp high. Warren was blinking as though he had just awakened. Anne laughed.

“You’d better get him to bed,” she said. She set the lamp on the table, went off to the kitchen. She did not return until she heard the door close behind Brice, half an hour later. He had not spoken.

Gradually she made friends with more of the women. For the most part they were not like the old neighbors, being of alien birth or else of that class that drifts from place to place as their men grow dissatisfied with one job and seek out another. There was no church, the school-house was closed. The woman from whom she borrowed the spade had her fifth baby that summer, the last one just creeping, the oldest a boy of seven. Anne saw the doctor’s car there in the morning, went over and helped. The woman was tired; the case prolonged itself. It was Wanny’s day to be home for dinner, but she could not leave. She trusted to the child’s returning to Brice, and that night Brice came up the hill with him at supper time. The day had been hot and wearying. She was sitting on the unpainted steps of the porch.

“Bill said you weren’t here,” Brice said. “Anything wrong?”

“No. The Cadigan baby came. I was down there helping.”

He gave her a sharp look, nodded, turned away.

A week or two later he stood in the door with Warren tugging at his hand. “C’m’on in! Say, Mums, I asked him to supper. He said he liked radishes.”

She looked in from the kitchen. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll put on another plate.”

“There, sit down,” she said a while later. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll bring in the things.”

Brice was not looking at her. He was awkward, silent. When Warren offered him the radishes he flushed. “We grow them pretty good, don’t we?” asked Warren, complacently.

“Biscuits?” Anne hurriedly suggested. “Here’s your coffee, Brice.”

Warren stared at her. “What did you call him that for?” he asked.

She laughed. “That’s his name,” she informed him. “Why not?”

Warren looked at the man for confirmation. “Is it?”

Brice grinned. “It is.”

Warren’s eyes were round. “How did you know, Mums? Did you know him before we came here?”

“Of course. Years before.”

“Did you know he was my father?”

Brice’s hands dropped in his lap. He stared at his son, gave a brief glance at Anne, stared again.

“Yes, I knew that, too.”

“Then all I got to say is I think you were awful slow about handing him over,” said Warren. “But anyway, I’m glad I got him now. My father could wollop Johnny Ware’s father. He could beat up most anybody, I guess.”

“Thanks,” said Brice.

Warren eyed him over a glass of milk. “But there’s one thing about fathers I don’t like very much,” said he. “I might as well tell you.”

“Shoot,” said Brice, his lips twitching.

“Well. Johnny Ware’s father gave him a licking once when he hadn’t done a single thing but just lied a little bit, and I don’t think I’d like to get----”

Brice pushed his chair back, leaned across the table towards his son, shaking a finger. “Now look here,” said he, “you may like it or not. If I ever catch you lying, friend Bill, what Johnny Ware’s father did to him won’t be a patch on what you will get. Understand?”

Warren frowned and flushed. His eyes were on Brice’s. “Yes,” he said after a moment, in a weaker tone.

“Say ‘Yes, sir!’”

“Yes, sir,” Warren meekly repeated.

Anne, her hands full of dishes, went hastily out of the room. As she passed back and forth she caught bits of their talk. Brice was standing, filling his pipe, smoking.

“You ought not to be doing this,” he said to her abruptly. She stood still.

“This?” she asked, honestly wondering.

“This work. I saw washing on a line. That garden.”

“Oh, work’s good for everybody. Besides, I honestly like it.”

Presently she seated herself by the lamp and took up her knitting. “Bedtime, young man,” she said.

“I’m not going to bed just yet,” the young man informed her. “You see, I’ve got company.”

“Do as your mother tells you,” from Brice.

The child looked from one to the other. “Will you come tell me a story after I get in bed?”

“No. You don’t get rewarded for what you ought to do. Off with you.”

When the door closed behind the boy he knocked the ashes from his pipe and put it into his pocket. He was standing beyond the table. “I don’t get you, Anne,” he said. She looked up from her knitting. “This work. You can’t stay on here. There are no other women.”

“I’m not lonely, if that’s what you mean. And there are other women. I’ve been making their acquaintance.” His head moved impatiently. “I mean of your own sort. Naturally.”

“They are women who have lived. I have, too.”

“You, digging in a garden, washing dishes.”

She laughed. “You ought to have seen my first garden, Brice. I weeded up all the beets.” She changed needles. She knew that he was looking down at her. He took a turn across the room and back, lighted a pipe.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked at last. “You’re trying to put over something.”

Her knitting dropped in her lap. “I am not trying to put anything over. I’m not trying to do anything. But I don’t blame you for thinking it.”

“Oh, blame!” He threw himself into the big chair, leaning forward, elbows on knees, staring off. Presently he said, “I was a beast, Anne, to light out as I did. That was a scoundrelly trick.”

“Old Willy said once that people are always getting mixed up about sins and mistakes. We are, aren’t we?”

He laughed shortly. “One’s an easier word to say than the other.”

“Yes. But I think we were guilty of both, really.” She spoke slowly, thinking it out. “Sin isn’t only transgressing the law.”

“But I did transgress the law. Even seeing it as a mere contract, I didn’t stand up to my job.”

She shook her head. “It went deeper than that, Brice. Ours was a spiritual sin. Neither of us saw that we were transgressing an ideal. I didn’t even know there was one. And if I had known, I wouldn’t have cared.”

He smoked for a moment in silence. “Just what do you mean?” he asked.

“I’m not clever. Perhaps I can’t make it clear. But marriage is something more than a contract. It ought to be, anyway. Life is.”

“Life is that, too.”

“Yes. But it’s only when we work inside of the terms of the contract, of life, marriage, anything, that we make anything of it. It’s only when we don’t strain at things that we’re free.”

“We strained at things. And they broke.”

“Broke. We didn’t see.”

“See what?”

“Oh. All life is a part of life, Brice. It’s when we don’t go along with it, don’t see there’s something that carries us along....”

“What do you mean?” he asked again.

She hesitated. He could scarcely hear the words. “There have been times when I have seen God.”

After a moment he said, “You weren’t religious.”

“I’m not speaking in terms of religion. Not thinking that way.”

“How, then?”

“Terms of nature, perhaps. The earth goes on--autumn and spring, sunlight, storms, but on and on, carried along. There are scars. Things crowd into growth to cover them up. I’ve lived among farmers, bad seasons, good seasons. People, too--we enjoy, grow, suffer. Something carries us on. There is something sustaining. Something at work through everything, urging us, binding us, banding us. So we go on.”

“Is that what you mean by having seen God?”

“The force is there. And at work. Why be afraid of terms, of names?”

“But force. I think of force as something to use.”

“I, too,” she murmured.

He filled his pipe again. “Use--God?”

“God, force. We do use it. Whatever’s at work sees that we do, whether we know it or not.”

“Unconsciously. Haphazard.”

“Not haphazard. We don’t see the whole scheme. That does not make us less a part of it. Nor less important. And it can be used consciously.”

“No.”

“Yes. I have used it consciously.”

“How?”

“By faith.” He stirred impatiently, and she looked at him. “That word offends you. I mean it only as a reaching out with one’s soul, a willingness to let the force that is God carry us along.”

He sat for minutes without speaking. When at last he spoke it was in a different tone. “I don’t know you, Anne.”

“Well, there is Warren! He is our going on.” Presently she added, without looking up, “You had better look in on him before you go.”

After that night there was more ease between them. Frequently he came up with the boy to supper; then his coming became a matter of course. One evening he dropped an envelope at Anne’s place. She looked at him inquiringly. He flushed, avoided her eyes.

“Money,” he said shortly. “Thought you’d be needing it.”

She laughed. “Did you ever know a woman who didn’t? Many thanks!”

“Thanks--” he repeated.

She caught his embarrassment, hurried on. “But you’ve been good about sending up food, and there’s not much to spend money for here. I’ve rather fallen out of the way of spending.” She stopped abruptly.

“Look here, Anne--I’ve wondered.... How did you manage?”

“Ambrose bought the house finally. And George got back the money from Ranney.”

Even now his face clouded at the name. “Where did you live?”

“I told you--in Heathville.”

“Heathville----?”

“With Willy.”

“She went away to her father,” Warren remarked. “He must be a pretty old man by now.”

Anne’s eyes gleamed at Brice. “I went there right after I found out about--Wanny. Willy left me the place, and----”

“What did you find out about me?” Warren demanded.

“You eat your supper,” said Brice. “Don’t interrupt.”

“--and I--I think I learned how to live--there.”

“I know how to live,” said Warren. “You just breathe and breathe----”

“I told you not to interrupt!” said Brice.

“I wasn’t interrupting, Dad! I was just talking.”

“That was interrupting, and you know it.”

“Well--I forgot.”

“A gentleman does not forget things he ought to remember, young man.”

“Are you a gentleman?” asked Warren, eyes as blandly innocent as a newsboy’s. “Because of course if you are I’m perfectly willing to be one, too.”

Brice glanced swiftly at Anne, flushing painfully.

“Warren,” said she, “I rather suspect that you are trying to discover whether you can answer your father back. Suppose you go to your room and think about it.”

“I haven’t finished my supper.”

“Do as your mother tells you,” said Brice; and Warren departed.

They looked at each other; Anne laughed deprecatingly. “He needs you,” she said.

“But he had me there. A gentleman does not forget things he ought to remember.”

“Don’t, Brice,” she said, her hands trembling.

It was true that the child led them, but before the summer was gone she knew that her own going on was through Brice as well. Not with the old love, that fragile, incomplete thing that had failed them both. Before, she had been unaware of Brice’s thought unless it concerned herself

## actively, or else she had mentally shrugged it aside, or set herself

against it. Of things deeper than thought, formative, unseen broodings of the spirit, she had been wholly ignorant. She had taken no account of Brice except in his outward aspects, slow-moving, slow-thinking; as to most things inarticulate except when she stung him or lured him to speech. She had had no sensitiveness towards him; now she was becoming sensitive to his every look, every mood. When he watched Warren, she understood why. When his lips twitched or a look of surprise or deliberation was on his face, she knew what he was thinking. When after some word of hers he sat silent, her thoughts followed his. He was a guest in the house of her mind, he who had dwelt there in such varying guises. New contacts, new apprehensions were revealing him.

As for Brice’s attitude towards herself, she knew that his first distrust was wearing off. She knew that he watched her and wondered. She knew that she had made him think. In earlier days she had wanted him to think her way; now she was content, more than content, to trust to his thinking for himself. She respected him. He was no longer the stoop-shouldered, plodding commuter, either in mind or body. He had aged more than the years could account for. He was broader, heavier than the man who used to push the lawn-mower and yearn to go fishing. In place of the plodding contentment of those days there was the alertness of active purpose about him.

On a bleak day in May, one of those days when winter seems to return for a final flaunt of his power, Warren came in to supper with unwonted quietness, wearing an air of complacency, his hair damp. They questioned him.

“Sure,” he admitted. “I went in swimming. All the fellers went in.”

“What did I tell you?” asked Brice.

“You said not to go in ’cause the water’s cold. It wasn’t a bit cold today. So I went in.”

“What else did I tell you?”

“What else?”

“What else did I tell you?”

“Me?”

Brice’s hand came down on the table.

“Oh, yes,” said Warren. “You said not to go in until I could swim. Well, I can swim now.”

“I told you not to go into the water until I had taught you to swim.”

Warren reached for a biscuit. “Maybe you did, come to think of it,” he admitted. “I guess I forgot.”

“You did not forget. You disobeyed. Tomorrow you will stay in your room all day. Your mother will take you your meals, or I will. For the whole day you will stay there alone. You’ll have time to make up your mind that remembering pays. Understand?”

That night he was restless and feverish, but in the morning he appeared, dressed and smiling, ignoring the slight hoarseness in his voice.

“What’s this?” asked Brice.

“Well, I got to go to school, I suppose. I suppose you wouldn’t want me to miss school.”

Brice laid a hand on his shoulder and marched him, protesting and kicking, into the bedroom, took him his oatmeal and milk.

“Don’t I get any toast?” asked Warren.

“You do not,” said Brice, with emphasis. “Nor sugar.” He turned the key in the lock.

At noon he asked, “Any sounds from up there? Any protests?”

“Not a murmur,” Anne told him. They smiled. She gave him a plate, a glass of milk.

At his exclamation Anne ran in from the kitchen. The bedroom was empty, the window open.

The sun high, the sun low, night coming, then darkness.

The sun high: after an hour or two the whine of the mill suddenly stopping. Without hat or coat Anne ran up the road. Men pouring out, separating in groups, going off into the woods, up the road. A woman came to Anne’s side.

“Don’t you worry like that, Mis’ Denison,” she said. “They’ll find him. He can’t have gone far.”

Later the schoolteacher, tears in her frightened eyes. “Oh, Mrs. Denison, I am so sorry! I thought you were keeping him home for something. I ought to have sent to find out.”

Anne, her lips dry, shook her head.

“Isn’t there something I can do?” the girl asked.

Something that she could do!

The sun low: dusk, and from across the river came the woman whom Anne had stood by in her travail. “Sure, an’ don’t ye go frettin’ yourself like that, ma’am. It won’t do any good to fret.”

That numbness, that quietness--fretting!

Night coming: and Brice coming in for a flash-light and lanterns, avoiding her eyes. Those lines by his mouth, the dark under his eyes. The blacksmith’s wife there in the room with her, deep-bosomed, untidy, kind.

“They’ll be wanting some coffee,” she told Anne. “You help me, my dear. There’s nothing like work.”

Down the hill with the pail of steaming brew between them, cups handed out to the men who passed by, twos and threes, singly, stopping only to quaff down the drink, avoiding Anne’s eyes.

Darkness: people there in the house, in the room, whisperings, a door opened upon the night. The cool night, the sweet night, night sounds and stars, and somewhere out there Warren, alone, perhaps stumbling, perhaps fallen, perhaps going on and on, losing himself over and over, like those lanterns that came and went through the woods.

Towards midnight the house became quieter. People had slipped away. Only Mrs. Cadigan remained.

“You ought to go back to the children,” Anne said.

“Sure, they can do without me the night.”

Before dawn the sound of men running. Anne rushed to the road. “Have they----”

“Not yet. But don’t you go down, ma’am. They’re getting things ready to drag the mill-pond.”

Blindly into the house again. Morning. Women entering quietly, as though they were gathering for a.... Anne went into her bedroom, fell on her knees. Not prayer, nothing that words could be found for. Weakness. Her spirit clutching at something that was not there, held by human suffering to human Weakness, faltering but reaching out.

So far off, at first. Sounds, all part of the horror. Part of the encompassing agony. Then a voice at the door.

“Mis’ Denison! Quick----!”

Herself in the door, women crowding about her, supporting her, laughing and crying. Their words with no meaning. Those sounds coming nearer. Men shouting and calling, waving their hats, swinging their lanterns. Brice in the doorway. Over his shoulder, Warren.

“Here’s hot milk, Mis’ Denison.” That, from one of the women. Another was on her knees, chafing his feet. Another came presently with a pail of hot water to bathe them in. The dear weight on her lap, his head on her shoulder, and Brice standing by, watching them both.

“We’ll come back by and by and red up a bit,” one of the women said. Anne smiled at them. They looked so very far off. They were shadows. In her arms was the substance of life. The door closed behind them.

Warren’s arm went about her neck. He whimpered a little. “You were so mean, Mums, you and Dad. I ran away. I wanted to show you.”

Brice carried him to bed. He was asleep before they undressed him.

Later, facing each other, the night and the years there between them.

“Brice, did you hear what he said?”

He nodded. “I was thinking--all the time there in the woods--if he should be--if we didn’t find him.... You would go, too.... Oh, my God, Anne! I need you so!”

END

Transcriber’s Note

• Italics represented with surrounding _underscores_.

• Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

• Obvious typographic errors and omissions silently corrected.

• Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original. Except for the following:

p. 201 “to-day” to “today”