The last night, before his departure, when Mary came in for the customary kiss, they conversed restrainedly at first. Soon she was crying, and he was sobbing as if his throat would break.
"Mother's little boy! I don't know who I will turn to, when you're so far away."
"It won't be for long, mother. And I'll write all the time."
He went to sleep finally, his head pillowed upon her breast, as when he had been her baby, her only son.
She could not go to the station to see him off,—there was so much to be done on the mountain; but he held her tightly against him for a long, long hug and kiss, and walked bravely away.
He sat down on the big stone by the dummy gap-gate. A racking tendency to cry tore at his throat. He was a man, going out into the world of men. He beat the rock with clenched hands.
He was not bidding good-by to his mother, and the mountain. He shut them from him when he went to sleep each night; in the morning they were his again. This was only a longer separation. He was going north not to leave them, but to make himself a better son of his mother, a better son of the mountain. He would return, and then,—
One of his youthful magic rites came to him. Standing on his toes, facing the mountain,—stretching to his full height, with head thrown back and hands spread above his head, he posed, a taut, slim figure, poised beneath climbing tree-trunks of gray, and the leafy clouds above them. For a long moment the world stood still for him. This was his farewell and his benediction.
He slung his raincoat over his shoulder, adjusted the tennis racket and shiny suit-case in his left hand, and passed through the gate.