Читать книгу Man of Strife - Grove Wilson - Страница 13

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WHAT was this turmoil through which he passed? It was threefold. From that moment he thought of his mother as dead, and he thought of her as passing through untold miseries before she died, and he was torn with fierce regret at his lack of kindness in the past. He despaired, yet he raged and his rage was wasted. He was in the midst of a wild life and he was alone. With what tenacity he had clung to his mother only a youngest son can realize.

The thought that she would not return, that he would never again see her alive, did not occur to him. That instant her dissolution was complete. She had wholly withdrawn herself out of his life. He had rested upon her as upon a firm rock in a raging sea. Without warning, the rock had sunk. He was tossed and buffeted; and these first desperate blows were but the prelude to long years of unsheltered abuse. These pains were compounded in part of vanity and self-pity: the bases for most grief.

Still he was not wholly absorbed in his own loss. He had somehow the feeling of the son who saw his mother dragged forth by the inquisition. He knew, in general, the methods employed by this eastern quack—plasters externally applied to draw the malignant growth out of the body, through stomach walls, flesh and skin. It was horrible. It was impossible; yet with acutest torture it was attempted. He writhed. His body was racked and twisted. It was maddening. It was beyond the power of reason to endure.

Exhausted, he sank to the ground. His sobs became controllable, ceased. Little by little the noises of the night came back to him. Over on Hennepin Avenue the yellow steel-gated cars clanged. The raucous cry of the automobiles split the darkness. The wind moaned through the trees and sighed around the house. The clouds had piled heavily and only a soft diffused light came from the moon, in the midst of which the street lamps shone garishly, disillusioning.

He sat on the door step, his head in his hands, waiting. For what? For that which, during all the rest of his life, would never return to him. For her who had completed him, given him symmetry, justified him. He might be turned into stone, like Niobe, and sit there for a thousand years but the solace of her love would not again tranquilize him.

He forgot Cora, who, within, was waiting impatiently. She had set the room to rights, she had put on her coat. She was ready to go. She did not understand his tragedy, hence she was annoyed. Each instant her irritation increased. “One would think his mother was already dead,” she thought. It was irrational. She stepped to the door. “Bruce!” she called sharply. He rose at once. “Are we to stay here all night?”

“Has it been long? I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

Cora switched off the lights and came out. As they walked away Bruce looked back. The house was black, foreboding. The window where she had stood night after night to wave him a final kiss was blank. He shuddered and Cora snatched her arm away from him. She resented the acuteness of his imagination—for a long time, perhaps always, had resented it. If so, at one period she had dissembled. ...

He and Cora were walking through the pine woods, near her home in Hubbard County—close to the source of the Mississippi. Beneath their feet was spread a thick carpet of needles and cones. Above them the giant trees moaned and sighed because of their great age. From far away came the demented laugh of a loon, that appalling sound that curdles the nerves. An old “nester,” bent nearly double and moving slowly, appeared, crossed their line of vision, vanished.

A moment later Bruce had assumed a similar attitude. He leaned far forward, his face drawn, his hands crooked, deformed. Upon his back was laid a burden of great pain. It was frightful.

“Oh, Bruce, Bruce, what is it?”

He recovered himself as one coming from a deep sleep. With difficulty he regained a normal position. He flexed his fingers to relieve the strain. “That old man,” he said. “I got to thinking how it would seem if one were like that.”

She put her arms around him, holding him close and murmured, “You make yourself suffer so! ...”

They were on First Avenue South, passing a church. A man was at work on the roof. A rope fastened to a belt around his waist seemed, at that distance, a mere thread suspending him over destruction. Bruce, white-faced, clung to the palings of the fence.

“Bruce! What is it? Are you ill?”

Dumbly he shook his head. Following the direction of his fixed stare, she saw the man and understood. “Bruce, I do wish you’d stop being silly. The man isn’t going to fall and if he did it wouldn’t hurt you. You aren’t a child and this is pure affectation. It’s tiresome. If you had a little more imagination, you’d understand that it’s not very nice for me....”

He was too exhausted to notice her gesture of removal, of disdain at his unconscious shudder as he looked back at his mother’s window. They walked on in silence. Consciously he expected nothing from her. She could be deeply sympathetic, but the need must be obvious. She could be tender but she had no faculty for sustaining that emotion. Protracted suffering irritated her, like a personal affront. Her favorite brother Frank had died following an attack of typhoid fever. He had been a long time dying and his pains had worn him to a skeleton. His condition had tormented Bruce, but Cora, when not indifferent, was annoyed. When he died, she was heartbroken....

Beneath his consciousness, he longed for something—a word, an attitude of mind—a hint of harmony. He was too dulled to be aware of discord, but it lay sharply on deep nerves. It was the moment of a crisis in their lives; but neither realized it, not then. Not until long afterwards did Bruce get a glimpse of the significance of his profound loneliness in that hour. Doubtless to Cora it remained ever an irritation, a part of the emotional silliness that was Bruce. Nevertheless, their steps had drawn apart and they were not again to go forward as one person.