The Untempered Wind

by Joanna E. Wood

He began to prosper by fits and starts; later more steadily. He had a balance at the end of the summers now, and invested it in better stock, new implements and fine varieties of fruit. He hid his aching heart under an offensively blustering manner, and was so morbidly afraid of any one knowing his secret that he was too carelessly gay—too full of pointless jests. Often, after a gathering of the village young people, he strolled home under the stars, dazed and wondering, his throat harsh with much speech, his head aching with tuneless laughter. Was he really the man who had chattered on so a few minutes since? he asked himself. And the other young people said, among themselves, "Homer Wilson does like to show off so!"

It was an anguish to him when he saw, now and then, a young man leave the village, win what he considered success, and come back smiling, content, and well dressed, for a brief holiday; then back to the world outside again.

His temper became irascible. When his horses were refractory he was unmerciful; but after any outbreak against a dumb animal his stifled manhood rose against this last, worst outrage against it. But the horses did not recall the extra feeding and light work as they did the blow, and they shrank and shivered and started nervously when he approached. He noted this, and it cut him to the heart, or stung him into dull wrath against them, as his mood was.

The farm did better and better, and well it might; all the honest and generous part of a man's nature was being sunk in it. He began to pay the principal of the loan in instalments; at last he had the farm clear.

His brothers and sisters murmured against him. Homer had stolen their birthright, they whispered; he had got hold of the farm just when the hard times were past; he had wheedled the old people into giving it all to him, they said, and they each and every one had worked as hard as he had, and besides he had all his own way, while they had had to work under the old man's orders.

So the boys came home with their families, and paid long visits and impressed upon the old man how Homer had "bested him." And the girls returned with their children, and condoled with their mother. They departed, leaving the old man morose, irritable and repining, the old woman in tearful self-pity; and Homer saw it all and smiled grimly, but said no word.

So the old people saw grudgingly his hard-won success, although they shared it fully, and spoke of their other children always with the prefix "poor," as if contrasting Homer's prosperous and happy lot with theirs.

He had, after all, a grim sense of humor, and this Jacob-like light in which his family viewed him filled him with sneering mirth. Verily they were a miserable tribe of Esaus. But the mirth died out at last, leaving a residuum of rage against his kin, who so persistently misjudged him, and one bitter night he lay and cursed the resolution which had brought him back to rescue his old people from the slough of despond.

With the acknowledgment of this regret, the disintegration of his soul would seem to be complete.