XXXVIII

It was a clear beautiful afternoon toward the end of May. And as the train puffing up the grade wound along the Connecticut River, Roger sat looking out of the window. The orchards were pink and white on the hills. Slowly the day wore away. The river narrowed, the hills reared high, and in the sloping meadows gray ribs and shoulders of granite appeared. The air had a tang of the mountains. Everywhere were signs of spring, of new vigor and fresh life. But the voices at each station sounded drowsier than at the last, the eyes appeared more stolid, and to Roger it felt like a journey far back into old ways of living, old beliefs and old ideals. He had always had this feeling, and always he had relished it, this dive into his boyhood. But it was different today, for this was more than a journey, it was a migration, too. Close about him in the car were Edith and her children, bound for a new home up there in the very heart and stronghold of all old things in America.

Old things dear to Edith’s heart. As she sat by the window staring out, he watched her shapely little head; he noted the hardening lines on her forehead and the gray which had come in her hair. It had been no easy move for her, this, she’d shown pluck to take it so quietly. He saw her smile a little, then frown and go on with her thinking. What was she thinking about, he wondered⁠—all she had left behind in New York, or the rest of her life which lay ahead? She had always longed for things simple and old. Well, she would have them now with a vengeance, summer and winter, the year ’round, in the battered frame house on the mountain side, the birthplace of her family. A recollection came to him of a summer’s dusk two years ago and a woman with a lawn mower cutting the grass on the family graves. Would Edith ever be like that, a mere custodian of the past? If she did, he thought, she would be false to the very traditions she tried to preserve. For her forefathers had never been mere guardians of things gone by. Always they had been pioneers. That house had not been old to them, but a thrilling new adventure. Their old homes they had left behind, far down in the valleys to the east. And even those valley homes had been new to the rugged men come over the sea. Would Edith ever understand? Would she see that for herself the new must emerge from her children, from the ideas, desires and plans already teeming in their minds? Would she show keen interest, sympathy? Would she be able to keep her hold?

In the seat behind her mother, Betsy was sitting with Bruce in her lap, looking over a picture book. Quietly Roger watched the girl.

“What are you going to be?” he asked. “A woman’s college president, a surgeon or a senator? And what will your mother think of you then?”

They changed cars, and on a train made up of antiquated coaches they wound through a side valley, down which rushing and tumbling came the river that bore Roger’s name. He went into the smoking car, and presently George joined him there. George did not yet smoke, (with his elders), but he had bought a package of gum and he was chewing absorbedly. Plainly the lad was excited over the great existence which he saw opening close ahead. Roger glanced at the boy’s broad shoulders, noticed the eager lines of his jaw, looked down at his enormous hands, unformed as yet, ungainly; but in them was a hungriness that caused a glow in Roger’s breast. One more of the family starting out.

“It’s all going to depend on you,” Roger gravely counseled. “Your whole life will depend on the start you make. Either you’re going to settle down, like so many of your neighbors up there, or you’re going to hustle, plan out your day, keep on with your studies and go to college⁠—the State Agricultural College, I mean. In short, keep up to date, my boy, and become in time a big figure in farming.”

“I’m going to do it,” George replied. His grandfather glanced again at his face, so scowling, so determined. And a gleam of compassion and yearning came for a moment in Roger’s eyes. His heavy hand lay on George’s knee.

“That’s right, son,” he grunted. “Make the family proud of you. I’ll do all I can to help you start. My business is picking up, thank God, and I’ll be able to back you now. I’ll stay up here a good part of the summer. We’ve both of us got a lot to learn⁠—and not only from books⁠—we want to remember we’ve plenty to learn from the neighbors, too. Take old Dave Royce, for instance, who when all is said and done has worked our farm for twenty odd years and never once run me into debt.”

“But, Gee!” demurred George. “He’s so ’way out of date!”

“I know he is, son, but we’ve got to go slow.” And Roger’s look passed furtively along the faces in the car. “We don’t want to forget,” he warned, “that this is still New England. Every new idea we have we want to go easy with, snake it in.”

“I’ve got an awful lot of ’em,” the boy muttered hungrily.

At the farm, the next morning at daybreak, Roger was awakened by the sound of George’s voice. It was just beneath his window:

“But cattle are only part of it, Dave,” the boy declared, in earnest tones, “just part of what we can have up here. Think what we’ve got⁠—over three hundred acres! And we want to make every acre count! We want to get in a whole lot more of hogs⁠—Belted Hampshires, if we can afford ’em⁠—and a couple of hundred hens. White Leghorns ought to fill the bill. Of course that’s just a starter. I’ve got a scheme for some incubators⁠—electric⁠—run by the dynamo which we’ll put in down by the dam. And we can do wonders with bees, too, Dave⁠—I’ve got a book on ’em I’d like you to read. And besides, there’s big money in squab these days. Rich women in New York hotels eat thousands of ’em every night. And ducks, of course, and turkeys. I’d like a white gobbler right at the start, if we knew where we could get one cheap.” The voice broke off and there was a pause. “We can do an awful lot with this place.”

Then Dave’s deep drawl:

“That’s so, George⁠—yes, I guess that’s so. Only we don’t want to fool ourselves. That ain’t Noah’s Ark over thar⁠—it’s a barn. And just for a starter, if I was you⁠—” Here Dave deliberated. “Of course it’s none of my business,” he said, “it’s for you and your grandfather to decide⁠—and I don’t propose to interfere in what ain’t any of my affair⁠—”

“Yes, yes, Dave, sure! That’s all right! But go on! What, just for a starter?”

“Cows,” came the tranquil answer. “I’ve been hunting around since you wrut me last month. And I know of three good milkers⁠—”

“Three? Why, Dave, I wrote we want thirty or forty!”

“Yes⁠—you wrut,” Dave answered. “But I’ve druv all around these parts⁠—and there ain’t but three that I can find. And I ain’t so sure of that third one. She looks like she might⁠—” George cut in.

“But you only had a buggy, Dave! Gee! I’m going to have a Ford!”

“That so, George?”

“You bet it’s so! And we’ll go on a cow hunt all over the State!”

“Well⁠—I dunno but what you’re right,” Dave responded cautiously. “You might get more cows if you had a Ford⁠—an’ got so you could run it. Yes, I guess it’s a pretty good scheme. I believe in being conservative, George⁠—but I dunno now but what a Ford⁠—”

Their voices passed from under the window, and Roger relaxed and smiled to himself. It was a good beginning, he thought.

They bought a Ford soon afterwards and in the next few weeks of June they searched the farms for miles around, slowly adding to their herd. To Roger’s surprise he found many signs of a new life stirring there⁠—the farmers buying “autos” and improved machinery, thinking of new processes; and down in the lower valleys they found several big stock farms which were decidedly modern affairs. At one such place, the man in charge took a fancy to George and asked him to drop over often.

“You bet I’ll drop over often!” George replied, as he climbed excitedly into his Ford. “I want to see more of those milking machines! We’re going to have ’em some day ourselves! A dynamo too!”

And at home, down by the ruined mill he again set about rebuilding the dam.

Roger felt himself growing stronger. His sleeps were sound, and his appetite had come back to a surprising degree. The mountain air had got into his blood and George’s warm vigor into his soul. One afternoon, watching the herd come home, some thirty huge animals swinging along with a slow heavy power in their limbs, he breathed the strong sweet scent of them on the mountain breeze. George came running by them and stopped a moment by Roger’s side, watching closely and eagerly every animal as it passed. And Roger glanced at George’s face. The herd passed on and George followed behind, his collie dog leaping and barking beside him. And Roger looked up at a billowy cloud resting on a mountain top and wondered whether after all that New York doctor had been right.

He followed the herd into the barn. In two long rows, the great heads of the cattle turned hungrily, lowing and sniffing deep, breathing harshly, stamping, as the fodder cart came down the lines. What a splendidly wholesome work for a lad, growing up with his roots in the soil, in these massive simple forces of life. What of Edith’s other children? Would they be willing to stay here long? Each morning Roger breakfasted with Bruce the baby by his side. “What a thing for you, little lad,” he thought, “if you could live here all your days. But will you? Will you want to stay? Won’t you, too, get the fever, as I did, for the city?” In the joyous, shining, mysterious eyes of the baby he found no reply. He had many long talks with Betsy, who was eager to go away to school, and with Bob and little Tad who were going to school in the village that fall. And the feeling came to Roger that surely he would see these lives, at least for many years ahead. They were so familiar and so real, so fresh and filled with hopes and dreams. And he felt himself so a part of them all.

But one morning, climbing the steep upper field to a spring George wanted to show him, Roger suddenly swayed, turned faint. He caught hold of a boulder on the wall and held himself rigid, breathing hard. It passed, and he looked at his grandson. But George had noticed nothing. The boy had turned and his brown eyes were fixed on a fallow field below. Wistfully Roger watched his face. They both stood motionless for a long time.

As the summer drew slowly to a close, Roger spent many quiet hours alone by the copse of birches, where the glory of autumn was already stealing in and out among the tall slender stems of the trees. And he thought of the silent winter there, and of the spring which would come again, and the long fragrant summer. And he watched the glow on the mountains above and the rolling splendors of the clouds. At dusk he heard the voices of animals, birds and insects, murmuring up from all the broad valley, then gradually sinking to deep repose, many never to wake again. And the span of his life, from the boyhood which he could recall so vividly here among these children, seemed brief to him as a summer’s day, only a part of a mighty whole made up of the innumerable lives, the many generations, of his family, his own flesh and blood, come out of a past he could never know, and going on without him now, branching, dividing, widening out to what his eyes would never see.

Vaguely he pictured them groping their way, just as he himself had done. It seemed to Roger that all his days he had been only entering life, as some rich bewildering thicket like this copse of birches here, never getting very deep, never seeing very clearly, never understanding all. And so it had been with his children, and so it was with these children of Edith’s, and so it would be with those many others⁠—always groping, blundering, starting⁠—children, only children all. And yet what lives they were to lead, what joys and revelations and disasters would be theirs, in the strange remote world they would live in⁠—“my flesh and blood that I never shall know.”

But the stars were quiet and serene. The meadows and the forests on the broad sweep of the mountain side took on still brighter, warmer hues. And there was no gloom in these long goodbyes.

On a frosty night in September, he left the farm to go to the city. From his seat in the small automobile Roger looked back at the pleasant old house with its brightly lighted windows, and then he turned to George by his side:

“We’re in good shape for the winter, son.”

But George did not get his full meaning.

At the little station, there were no other passengers. They walked the platform for some time. Then the train with a scream came around the curve. A quick grip on George’s hand, and Roger climbed into the car. Inside, a moment later, he looked out through the window. By a trainman with a lantern, George stood watching, smiling up, and he waved his hand as the train pulled out.