"I've got to stick to him," he was saying to himself. "He's been awful good to me. In a kind of a way he's my father. I must stand by him, and see him through, just as if I was his son."
It was his first grown-up resolution.
XVII
Grown-up life began at once. His chief care hitherto had been as to what others would do for him; now he was preoccupied with what he could do for some one else. It was a matter of watching, planning, cheering, comforting, and as he expressed it to himself, of bucking up. Of bucking up especially he was prodigal. The man had become as limp as on the day when he had thrown himself face downward in the grass. Mad once with desire to act, he was terrified now at what he had done. Though, as far as Tom could judge, no one blamed or suspected him, there was hardly a minute in the day in which he did not betray himself. He betrayed himself to the boy even if to no one else, though betraying himself in such a way that there was nothing definite to take hold of. "I'm sure—and yet I'm not sure," was Tom's own summing up. He stressed the fact that he was not sure, and in this he was helped by the common opinion of the countryside.
Toward the bereaved husband and his adopted son this was sympathetic. The woman had always been neurasthenic, slipshod, and impossible. With a wife to help him, Martin Quidmore could have been a success as a market gardener as easily as anybody else. As it was, he would get over the shock of this tragedy and find a woman who would be the right kind of mother to a growing boy. Here, the mention of Bertha was with no more than the usual spice of village scandal, tolerant and unresentful.
Of all this Tom was aware chiefly through the observations of Blanche, the colored woman who came in by the day to do the housework.
"Law, Mr. Tom, yo' pappa don't need to feel so bad. Nobody in this yere town what blame him, not a little mite. Po' Mis' Quidmo', nobody couldn't please her nohow. Don't I know? Ain't I wash her, and iron her, and do her housecleanin', ever since she come to this yere community, and Mr. Quidmo' he buy this yere lot off old Aaron Bidbury? No, suh! Nobody can't tell me! Them there giddy things what nobody can't please 'em they can't please theirselves, and some day they go to work and do somefin' despe'ate, just like po' Mis' Quidmo'. A little cup o' tea, she take. No mo'n that. See, boy! I keep that there brown teapot, what look as innocent as a baby, all the time incriminated to her memo'y."
Nevertheless, Tom found his father obsessed by fear, with nothing to be afraid of. The obsession had shown itself as soon as they entered the house on their return from Harfrey. He was afraid of the house, afraid of the kitchen especially. When Gimlets barked he jumped, cursing the dog for its noise. When a buggy drove up to the door he peeped out at the occupant before showing himself to the neighbor coming to offer his condolences. If the telephone rang Tom hastened to answer it, knowing that it set his father shivering.