For all answer Rube reached for his father’s hand and held it tight, while the working of his face showed how hard the simple words had hit him.
The father broke the silence again by saying, ‘Let us pray.’ With a sudden return to his childhood Rube knelt at his mother’s knee, while the old man, as had been his nightly wont ever since he first brought home his young bride, but with an added solemnity born of the shadow of his first bereavement, spoke to his Friend:
‘Father, eour hearts air troubled. Yew’ve brung us along a pleasant road right inter the green valley of comfortable old age. We’ve hed a happy time together, ’n’ this our son hez alwus ben a delight to us. We looked that he sh’d still be so, that he sh’d close eour eyes when we laid us down at last t’ sleep. P’raps we hev been selfish, ’n’ need a lesson to teach us wut it means to spare an only son. He’s goin’ away from us f’r a long time—where, he doesn’t know himself; but however fur he goes, don’t let him get away from you. We don’t ask you t’ spare him t’ us ef it’s necessary we sh’d never see him alive any more; but ef it might be, Father, you know how ’tis yourself, ’n’ therefore you know what it’ll mean t’ us t’ have him back again. Make him through all he’ll have t’ bear such a man as yew’d love to have him, ’n supply his place at home, if it ken be supplied, by a truer sense of yew’re presence with us. Bless my son, O Father, and bless us, f’r yewr Son’s sake. Amen.’
Little more was said, although they sat hand in hand far into the night. Rube wanted nothing that his father could give him, having sufficient money for all his prospective needs; but he accepted his mother’s Bible gratefully, feeling that it would be a palpable link with her. At last they went to bed, where Rube, not from callousness, but from sheer overstrain of mind, slept soundly. His mother lay all through the hours silently praying, while the unhindered tears trickled slowly and continuously down. And his father watched with her.
CHAPTER IV
DEPARTURE
Morning broke over the Eddy homestead grey and cheerless, a fitting reflection of the frame of mind holding sway over its inmates. Rube came down with his grip-sack in his hand, his best clothes donned, and an air of stern resolve on his strong features. He found his father and mother awaiting him in the humble room where he had met them ever since his mind first awakened to the knowledge of worldly matters. For a few moments after the ‘good mornings’ were said, no word further passed the lips of the three. Suddenly the mother spoke, saying:
‘Rube, my son, you never told us whar’ you were goin’.’
To some of us perhaps it may seem strange that neither father nor mother had asked this question before, but the fact is that in their secluded lives the mere idea of one of them leaving home for so long was sufficiently terrible, without any definition of the precise locality to which the wanderer might be directing his steps being thought of. But the mother’s heart was already in prospect reaching out after the absent one, and therefore it was but fitting and natural that she should be the first to desire to know whither he was going. Rube flushed a deep red as the necessary vagueness of his reply dawned upon him, but he said:
‘I’m goin’ ter sea, mother; thet’s all I know at present. When I git t’ Noo Bedford an’ find out whar’ I kin git letters or write frum, be sure I’ll let you know to onct. I’m drefful sorry I kain’t tell you anythin’ more ’n thet.’