Boy's Grief

MARY was going away. Her father had been transferred to another city, and they were leaving that night at eight o’clock. For two weeks I had known that she was going away; but the fact had no meaning for me. Simply, it had no meaning.

With a friend of mine, Harry, and another girl, we were to walk to the station together. We four had made up a little group and had been together constantly on walks and picnics and at parties. Harry was sixteen — a year older than I. His girl’s name was Eunice. Mary was my age. She was small, quiet, with a pale, pretty face. She rarely laughed, but had a way of looking long into my eyes.

When I left the house, my father was sitting on the veranda smoking his pipe. I told him where I was going, and he got up and walked a block with me.

‘You ‘ll come back as soon as you can, son,’ he said, when he left me.

When I reached Mary’s house, Harry and Eunice were already there. Mary’s house was on one side of the town, and the station on the other. Harry and Eunice walked ahead. I had little to say to Mary. My mind was filled with one great urgency. I wanted to kiss Mary before she left. I had never kissed her — never even held her hand. I knew that boys kissed the girls they went with; that Harry kissed Eunice; and I knew that Mary expected me to kiss her — wanted me to. But something always held me back.

Block after block we went through the clinging warmth of the summer night, and everv step I said to myself, ‘Now I’ll do it.’

But I did n’t.

‘In the shade of that clump of trees I ‘ll stop and put my arms around Mary and kiss her.’

But we walked right by the trees, and I did n’t even take my hands out of my pockets. It was as if there were two of me — one thinking, resolving desperately; the other walking, walking, oblivious of the command.

Then we came to the lighted streets of downtown, and I began planning that, in the darkness of the streets that lay the other side of town, I would have my wish. And so strong was the thought that the thing was as good as done, and I was exultant. I had no doubt that I should do it. The image of my kissing her filled my mind tumultuously. But without so much as a pause we came into the lights of the station.

Mary’s parents were there; but the train was ten minutes late, and I asked Mary to walk around the station with me. On the unlighted platform of the lower end I would kiss her.

She responded readily, and in the shadows, beyond the sputtering arclights, I felt Mary pause and draw close to me. I heard her say, ‘Oh, Peter!’ with a little catch in her voice.

‘Now, now,’ I kept saying to myself.

And then the great clangor of the incoming train was upon us, and we were trapped in the glare of the headlight. There was a confusion of sounds — hoarse shouts, a bell that beat brazenly, people, strangers, all hurrying, meeting, parting— the shrill scream of a child.

But one thought swelled within me: ‘When I say good-bye, then I’ll kiss her.’

Eunice and Mary were crying as they clung to one another. Mary’s father was hurrying his party together.

‘Good-bye, Mary,’ shouted Harry, ‘ be good! ‘

‘Good-bye, Harry.’

My turn came, I stepped forward, and Mary held out her hand. It trembled as it lay in mine, warm, confiding, infinitely dear.

‘Good-bye, Peter. You — you won’t forget me?’

‘Good-bye, Mary. I’ll never forget you.’

‘Come, Mary!’ Her father hurried her on to the train. I caught a glimpse of her as she disappeared into the cavern of the coach.

A trainman with a swinging lantern shouted something horrible in my ear. The bell beat more brazenly. The locomotive belched steam. The train started and gained motion imperceptibly. Mary was going away from me, and I had not kissed her. I could not believe it.

I walked along by the steps of the moving coach that was bearing Mary away from me. Then I grasped the hand rail and swung myself up. Now, snatching victory from defeat, in some mad way, I was to do it.

A man on the platform seized me by the waist and pulled me off.

‘You darned little fool! Trying to kill yourself?’

Dumb with an amazement of grief,

I turned away. I could not see. But I could hear the rapidly diminishing percussions of the train that was taking Mary away from me.

And I had not kissed her. I never should kiss her.

The night was an incredible agony of regrets. But, because I was young, I slept, and awoke with an ache that had but one voice: Mary had gone; and I had not kissed her! If I had but kissed her, I should not be so unhappy.

It was vacation, and there was nothing that offered to fill my time. The thought of the day ahead of me was unbearable. In my despair, I turned to the one source of comfort that I knew. Before I was up, my father had left the house for the sandbank which he operated. The sandbank was about a mile from the house and I walked in that direction. The bank was dug from the side of an isolated hill, upon which there was an abandoned graveyard.

When I neared the place, I could see my father standing near a group of men who were shoveling sand into wagons. When a wagon was filled, the driver would take the reins and whistle at the horses. But the wheels were sunk deep in the sand, and frequently the horses, though they strained and plunged, could not move it. Then my father would take the reins and swing the team around so the wheels were cramped.

I could hear the high ring of his ‘G’lang there! Get out o’ here!’ And the horses would throw themselves into their collars, sink their feet into the soft earth — and the load would start.

But I could not bring myself to expose my naked grief before the men, so I climbed by a twisting path up the hill to the cemetery. There I walked about, reading the queer old inscriptions, and trying dully to re-create the identities of those whose bodies had once been placed beneath the mounds. Then I sought a spot that I had claimed as my own.

On the farther slope of the hill was a detached grave, with a partly ruined tombstone on which I had been able to make out the words,—

‘WILLY. AGED 11. 1854.’

Near by there had been planted long years ago a bush, and it had grown into a sort of bower, into the refuge of which I could creep and be all but hidden. There I gave myself up utterly to my grief.

But it was n’t so much the loss of Mary that hurt me as it was my failure to kiss her good-bye. If I had done that, I should have felt badly, I knew. But even in my sorrow there would have been a triumph.

‘Son!’

My father must have seen me climb the hill, and he had followed me to my retreat. I was his only child. My mother had died when I was five. My father and I had been together constantly, sometimes alone, with a housekeeper, sometimes in a boardinghouse. Until Mary came, my father had filled my world.

Father was a big, fine-looking man, with dark, curly hair and a moustache that curled over his full mouth. His eyes were small and twinkling. His skin was tanned a coppery red. I always thought him the handsomest man I ever saw.

‘Son — want to go for a ride? ‘

I got up and followed my father down the twisting path to a shed where he kept his horses and buckboard. Father was a great horseman, and always had a pair of fine driving-horses. Even when we were poor — as we often were — he always had horses to drive. He never kept the same horses very long, but was always trading, or buying and selling.

At that time he was driving a matched team of bay colts — Colonel and Kitty. They were high-strung, and when we got into the road he let them out. I always admired the strength and skill with which my father managed his horses when he drove. He held the reins in one hand close to his body, and, even when the horses were mettlesome, never seemed to pay any attention to them.

We swung along at a spanking gait, mile after mile, until the colts were willing to slacken their speed a little. We had reached a road that I loved best of all those over which my father and I used to drive. A ‘back road,’they called it, because it was used so little. It wound around the shoulders of a great hill, and was bordered by tangles of sumac, elderberry, and wild rose. The hedgerows were full of birds, and the bees were zooming on every hand. At our left, every break in the thicket gave the most enchanting glimpse of the valley below.

My father drew the colts to a walk. The road was deeply shaded, and the air heavy with fragrance. The sound of the horses’ hoofs was smothered in the dust.

Then my father began to sing, and, after a bit, I joined in. We always sang when we rode together. Most of our songs my father had learned when he was at school or in the army. Some of our favorites were ‘I Love a Sixpence,’ ‘The Boys of Sixty-three,’and ‘Sweet Evelina.’

My father usually carried the air, and I sang an alto. He thought it was quite wonderful that I could make up a part to a song.

Finally, at a curve in the road where the view was unusually beautiful, my father stopped the horses. For some time he was silent. Then he began to hum a little nameless tune, over and over.

I knew that when he hummed that tune he was thinking of my mother. I cannot say how I knew it.

‘My son,’ he said, ‘it was right here that I asked your mother to marry me — for the first time.’

We had never talked much about my mother. There was a sort of understanding between us that we should n’t. For me, the subject had a sacredness about it. My heart swelled with pride that my father should refer to her as he had. His arm lay along the seat back of me. When I touched him, some quality always seemed to pass from him to me.

‘Right here — twenty years ago. And I was driving a team of colts then, too — only they were gray instead of bay. I had n’t known her but a week. She lived in New Jersey, where your uncle Bedford lives, you know. She was visiting a girl who knew her at school. I suppose I had always been a pretty gay young blade in those days — a lady’s man, I guess you would call it. But when I saw Ellen—well, there were n’t any other girls for me after that.

‘I did n’t waste any time, I tell you. If it was n’t a drive, it was a walk or a picnic, or something or other. But usually we went driving, for my grays were the best team in the country, and Ellen loved to ride behind them. And this was her favorite road, too.

‘I did n’t think I had a chance. I was just a rough young fellow, with only a couple of years at the academy. Ellen — she was fine — finely bred, finely educated. Her people did n’t have much money, but they managed to give her the best of everything.

‘The first time I proposed, she just laughed at me. She did n’t take me seriously. It hurt my feelings terribly, I remember. But she did n’t say no; and I kept right on trying. Then she told me she had to go home. I thought the world was going to come to an end right there. But she went away without giving me an answer, one way or the other.

‘We wrote frequently; but I was n’t much of a hand with a pen. Then there came a letter in which Ellen said that she was in great trouble — that she had told her parents about me and they refused to let her have anything to do with me.

‘That letter gave me great hope; for, I thought, if her parents took the trouble to object to me, Ellen must have given them reason to think that there was something serious.

‘No letter came for several days, and I had half made up my mind to go to her. Then I got word from Ellen’s friend to come over to her house. I went — and there was Ellen. She had taken matters in her own hand, and come.

‘ We were married the next day.’

Then my father fell silent for a time. After a while I found courage to ask, ‘Father, when — when my mother went away, did you — kiss her good-bye?’

My father gave me a strange look, before he answered.

‘The first time she went, you mean? No, son, I did n’t. I wanted to like everything. But I did n’t dare. I’ll never forget, either, how I felt when the train pulled out and left me there on the platform.’

My father let me drive the colts all t he way back to the bank. There were some men waiting to see him, and I climbed up the hill to my place by Willy’s grave. When I got there, I lay down on the hot earth, with my head on the mound, and cried and cried. But I did n’t know whether I was crying because Mary had left, or because I had not kissed her, or because my father had told me what he did.

Then I went to sleep. When I awoke, the sun was shining in my eyes, and I was thirsty. I stood up and looked around at the good earth. I could hear the voices of the men at work at the sand-bank — my father’s above the rest. And then I remembered about Mary.

I tried the thought slowly at first, afraid of the hurt. But the hurt did n’t come. It was like something that had happened to me long before, when I was a little boy. Then I tried to make it hurt. But it would n’t.

So I ran down the hill to the bank — not by the twisting path, but straight down the cut where the bank was, taking long bounds in the yielding sand.

When my father saw me, he shouted,

’Want a job, son ? ‘

‘Sure,’ I answered.

‘Take the colts and go get a new kingbolt for this wagon. We ‘ve had a breakdown.’

And I did, proud as Lucifer that my father let me drive the colts alone.