The child scrambled to her feet and, seated on his broad shoulder, granted the demand for toll. Her aunt's eyes filled. This was the first time she had ever heard Martin ask for something as sentimental as a kiss. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself for it—it was really too absurd!—but she felt jealousy, an emotion that had never bothered her since they had been married. And this bit of chattering femininity had caused it. Mrs. Wade worked faster.
The kiss was like the touch of silk against Martin's cheek. He felt inexplicably sad as he put the child down again among her playthings. There was, he realized with a shock, much that he was missing, things he was letting work supplant. He wished that boy of theirs could have lived. All might have been different. He had almost forgotten that disappointment, had never understood until this moment what a misfortune it had been, and here he was being gripped by a more poignant sense of loss than he had ever before felt, even when he had lost his mother.
Wonderful as little Rose was, she was not his own. But, he wondered suddenly, wasn't this aching sense of need perhaps something utterly different from unsatisfied paternal instinct? He turned his head toward the kitchen where his Rag-weed was working and asked himself if she were gone and some other woman were here—such as little Rose might be when she grew up, one to whom he went out spontaneously, would not his life be more complete and far more worth while? What a fool he was, to bother his head with such get-nowhere questions! He dismissed them roughly, but new processes of thought had been opened, new emotions awakened.
Meanwhile, little Rose's response to his clumsy tenderness taught him many unsuspected lessons. He never would have believed the pleasure there could be in simply watching a child's eyes light with glee over a five-cent bag of candy. It began to be a regular thing for him to bring one home from Fallon, each trip, and the gay hunts that followed as she searched for it—sometimes to find the treasure in Martin's hat, sometimes under the buggy seat, sometimes in a knobby hump under the table-cloth at her plate—more than once brought his rare smile. For years afterward, the memory of one evening lingered with him. He was resting in an old chair tipped back against the house, thinking deeply, when the little girl, tired from her play, climbed into his lap and, making a cozy nest for herself in the crook of his arm, fell asleep. He had finished planning out the work upon which he had been concentrating and had been about to take her into the house when he suddenly became aware of the child's loveliness. In the silvery moonlight all the fairy, flower-like quality of her was enhanced. Martin studied her closely, reverently. It was his first conscious worship of beauty. Leaning down to the rosy lips he listened to the almost imperceptible breathing; he touched the long, sweeping lashes resting on the smooth cheeks and lifted one of the curls the wind had been ruffling lightly against his face. With his whole soul, he marvelled at her softness and relaxation. A profound, pitying rebellion gripped him at the idea that anything so sweet, so perfect must pass slowly through the defacing furnaces of time and pain. “Little Rose of Sharon!” he thought gently, conscious of an actual tearing at his heart, even a startling stinging in his eyes. With an abruptness that almost awakened her, he carried her in to his wife.
Mrs. Wade felt an inexplicable hurt at the decidedness of little Rose's preference for Martin. She could not understand it. She took exquisite care of her, cooked the things she liked best, let her mess to her heart's content in the kitchen, made her dolls pretty frocks, cuddled her, told her stories and stopped her work to play with her on rainy days—but she could not win the same affection the little girl bestowed so lavishly on Martin. If left to herself she was always to be found with the big, silent man.
As the month's visit lengthened into three, it was astonishing what good times they had together. If he was pitching hay, her slender little figure, short dress a-flutter, was to be seen standing on the fragrant wagonload. At threshing time, she darted lightly all over the separator, Martin's watchful eye constantly upon her, and his protective hand near her. She went with him to haul the grain to mill and was fascinated by the big scales. On the way there and back he let her hold the great lines in her little fists. In the dewy mornings, she hop-skipped and jumped by his side into the pasture to bring in the cows. She flitted in and out among them during milking time.
“I think she makes them too nervous, Martin,” Rose had once remarked. “Better run out, darling, until we finish and then come help auntie in the dairy.”
“They might as well get used to her,” he had answered tersely. “It'll hurt her feelings to be sent away.”
Rose could scarcely believe her ears. Memories, bitter, intolerable, crowded upon her. Had the little girl really changed Martin so completely? Oh, if only her boy could have lived! Perhaps she had made a great mistake in being so determined not to have another. Was it too late now? She looked at her husband. Well as she knew every detail of his fine, clean cut features, his broad shoulders and rippling muscles, they gave her a sudden thrill. It was as if she were seeing him again for the first time in years. If only he could let a shadow of this new thoughtfulness and kindliness fall on her, they might even yet bring some joy into each other's lives. They had stepped off on the wrong foot. Why, they really hadn't been even acquainted. They had been led into thinking so because of the length of time they had both been familiar figures in the same community. Beyond a doubt, if they were being married today, and she understood him as she did now, she could make a success of their marriage. But, as it was, Martin was so fixed in the groove of his attitude of utter indifference toward her that she felt there was little chance of ever jogging him out of it. To Rose, the very fact that the possibility of happiness seemed so nearly within reach was what put the cruel edge to their present status.
She did not comprehend that Martin definitely did not want it changed. Conscious, at last, that he was slowly starving for a woman's love, beginning to brood because there was no beauty in his life, he was looking at her with eyes as newly appraising as her own. He remembered her as she had been that day in the bank, when he had thought her like a rose. She had been all white and gold then; now, hair, eyes, skin, and clothes seemed to him to be of one earthy color. Her clean, dull calico dress belted in by her checked apron revealed the ungraceful lines of her figure. She looked middle-aged and unshapely, when he wanted youth and an exquisite loveliness. Well, he told himself, harshly, he was not likely to get it. There was no sense in harboring such notions. They must be crushed. He would work harder, much harder, hard enough to forget them. There was but one thing worth while—his farm. He would develop it to its limits.