The Untempered Wind

by Joanna E. Wood

Weeks and months sped, and Homer had never been home since that day. His old people did not take that amiss, for travelling, as they knew, cost money.

But there came a day when his course was completed, the coveted diploma bestowed upon him, and a situation secured for him as bookkeeper in a lumber-yard, at thirty-five dollars a month. He made up his mind to go home for a day or two before starting work. He reached the village elate—fortune seemed within his grasp.

His father was surly and harassed-looking; his mother's face looked older and with genuine lines of trouble about the lips, far more significant than the peevish wrinkles of self-pity that creased her brow.

He soon learned the cause of these things. The mortgage, which had always seemed as much a matter of course to him as the taxes or the road-work, was about to be foreclosed. The man who had lent them the money would not renew it; he hinted that he feared for his interest, as it seemed there was no young man to take hold of the place, and in the event of the property deteriorating he feared for his principal.

The old people before this dilemma seemed numbed. They could think of no expedient, and were apparently incapable of deciding what course to pursue.

Homer listened to it all in sick wonder that he had not been told, rejoicing inwardly that he had cost them nothing at least for two years back, though he also realized with bitterness that he had helped them none. He went to his old room that night to fight a hard battle with himself, and to conquer—to give up his ambitions, which, humble as they seem, were yet great to him; to relinquish the joy of seeing Her daily; to return to the old, hopeless struggle of striving to make ends meet, to bend his energies to the circumscribed field of making the most of the few acres of the old farm; to come back and be called a failure by his friends; to have to wait a long, long time before he could call Her "wife." But while that last idea held the bitterest thought of all, in it also lay the kernel of the hope which was to keep his heart alive. He felt he had a sure and certain hope of a happy future, no matter how long deferred, and he remembered, with a pang of pity, that his father and mother had only a past.

His brothers and sisters were all married long since, and each had struggle enough to keep the wolf from the door. No help from any one but himself could relieve his old people.

The dawn found him resolved. He told his father and mother at the breakfast-table. They were both delighted, but did not know very well how to express it. To a stranger's mind there might have been some doubt as to whether they appreciated the sacrifice or not. They did not in full. No one save, perhaps, a woman who loved him could have known the magnitude of his renunciation.

His father and he went that day to see the old man who held the mortgage. He was a shrewd old miser, and was fain to secure himself in every way against anxiety and loss. He insisted that the new mortgage should be made out in Homer's name. He wanted this open-browed, strong, resolute young man for his debtor, and not the vacillating old man, who looked as if no responsibility would trouble him long. So the farm was transferred to Homer's name, and the mortgage also.

Homer resumed his old life unfalteringly. He wrote and told Her all about his change of plans, and she replied to his letters regularly. Her letters were not very satisfying; women of her fibre are not usually very fascinating on paper. So Homer felt trebly the sacrifice he was making, for he attributed none of his sense of loss to the lack of real feeling in her letters. On the contrary, he thought those letters, with their stilted beginning and spidery writing, the sweetest of all epistles; and thought to himself how altogether lovely she was, when even such letters as these left him unsatisfied and with heart-hunger unappeased.