I reminded him that ’twas time to be about his courtship, for the light was fading now, and ’twould soon be dark.
“Ay,” said he; “mother ’lowed ’twasn’t good for man t’ be alone. An’ I ’low she knowed.”
I watched him down the hill....
I was but a motherless lad––not yet grown wise, but old enough, indeed, to want a mother––in some dim way (which even yet is not clear to my heart’s ignorance, nor ever will be, since I am born as I am) sensitive to feel the fathomless, boundless lack, poignantly conscious that my poor vision, at its clearest, was but a flash of insight. I used to try, I know, as a child, lying alone in the dark, when my uncle was gone to bed, to conjure from the shadows some yearning face, to feel a soft hand come gratefully from the hidden places of my room to smooth the couch and touch me with a healing touch, in cure of my uneasy tossing, to hear a voice crooning to my woe and restlessness; but never, ache and wish as I would, did there come from the dark a face, a hand, a voice which was my mother’s; nay, I must lie alone, a child forsaken in the night, wanting that brooding presence, in pain for which there was no ease at all in all the world. I watched the fool of Twist Tickle go gravely in at the kitchen door, upon his business, led by the memory of a wisdom greater than his own, beneficent, continuing, but not known to me, who was no fool; and I envied him––spite of his burden of folly––his legacy of love. ’Twas fallen into dusk: the hills were turning shapeless in the night, the glow all fled from the sky, the sea gone black. But still I waited––apart from the rock and shadows and great waters of the world God made––a child yearning for the face and hand and tender guidance of the woman who was his own, but yet had wandered away into the shades from which no need 100 could summon her. It seemed to me, then, that the mothers who died, leaving sons, were unhappy in their death, nor ever could be content in their new state. I wanted mine––I wanted her!––wanted her as only a child can crave, but could not have her––not though I sorely wanted her....
He came at last––and came in habitual dignity––punctiliously closing the door behind him and continuing on with grave steps.
“You here, Dannie?” he asked.
“Ay, Moses; still waitin’.”
“’Tis kind, lad.”