This was all past now and he had arrived, it seemed inevitably, at the threshold of the city where his father lived.
The beauty of the declining day stirred longings and aspirations, definite and clear, in his mind and heart. His debt to his mother was enormous. He remembered now her happiness at the first manifestation of his interest in form, color and harmony; her hand guiding his when he first began to draw; her delight in his first experiment with a box of colors, given him on one of his birthdays. Yes; he should be a painter; that came first; then his aptitude in modeling made it plain that sculpture was to be his true vocation. To be a creator of beautiful things!—here, she had urged, lay the surest hope of happiness.
Very precious were all these memories; they brought a wistful smile to his face. She had always seemed to him curiously innocent, with the innocence of light-hearted childhood. To think of her as carrying a stain through her life was abhorrent. Hers was the blithest, cheeriest spirit he had known. The things she had taught him to reverence were a testimony to her innate fineness; she had denied herself for him, jealously guarding her patrimony that it might pass to him intact. The manly part for him was to live in the light of the ideals she had set for him. Pity and love for one who had been so sensitive to beauty in all its forms touched him now; brought a sob to his throat. He found a comfort in the thought that her confession might be attributable to a hope that in his life her sin might be expiated....
He took up the letters and turned them over for the last time, his eyes caught and held now and then by some phrase. He held the sheets against his face for a moment, then slowly tore them into strips, added the worn envelopes and burned them. Not content with this, he trampled the charred fragments into the sandy turf.
II
The sun, a huge brazen ball, was low in the west when he set off along the river with confident, springy step. He stopped at a farmhouse and asked for supper. The evening meal was over, the farmer’s wife explained; but when he assured her that his needs were few and that he expected to pay for his entertainment, she produced a pitcher of milk and a plate of corn bread. She brought a bowl of yellow glaze crockery and he made himself comfortable on a bench by the kitchen door. He crumbled the bread into the creamy milk and ate with satisfaction.
Her husband appeared, and instantly prejudiced by Bruce’s knickerbockers, doggedly quizzed him as to the nature and direction of his journey. Bruce was a new species, not to be confused with the ordinary tramp who demands food at farmhouses, and suddenly contrite that the repast she was providing was so meager, the woman rose and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a huge piece of spice cake and a dish of sliced peaches. She was taken aback when he rose deferentially to accept the offering, but her tired face relaxed in a smile at his cordial expressions of gratitude. She joined her husband on the stoop, finding the handsome pilgrim’s visit a welcome break in the monotonous day. As he ate he answered their questions unhurriedly.
“I guess the war left a lot o’ you boys restless,” she suggested.
“Oh, it wasn’t the war that made a rover of me!” he replied with a smile. “It was this way with me. When I got home I found I had something to think out—something I had to get used to”—he frowned and became silent for a moment—“so I decided I could do it better by tramping. But I’ve settled things in my own mind pretty well now,” he ended, half to himself, and smiled, hardly aware of their presence.
“Yes?” The woman’s tone was almost eager. She was curious as to the real reason for his wanderings and what it was that he had settled. In the luminous afterglow her dull imagination quickened to a sense of something romantic in this stranger, and she was disappointed when he told of an experience as a laborer in a great steel mill, just to see what it was like, he said—of loitering along the Susquehanna, and of a more recent tramp through the Valley of Virginia.