“That’s right,” he replied, “she won’t let us.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t have you do anything to displease mother—not for worlds—but I’m sorry just the same,” observing her in the distance. She was bending over several full milk pails. Even as I looked she picked them up and came trudging toward us.
“Well, anyhow, you can take a card, can’t you?” I continued, and I gave each several pictures of Warsaw scenes. “They won’t hurt, will they?”
“Huhuh,” answered the little one, taking them.
As the mother neared us I suffered a keen recrudescence of the mood that used to grip me when my mother would go out of an evening like this to milk or walk about the garden or look after the roses at Sullivan, and Ed and Tillie and I would follow her. She was so dear and gentle. Under the trees or about our lawn we would follow her, and here under these odorous trees, in the light of this clear moon, the smell of cattle and wild flowers about, my mother came back and took me by the hand. I held onto her skirt and rubbed against her legs self protectingly. She was all in all to us in those years—the whole world—my one refuge and strength.
How benign is the power that makes mothers—and mothers' love!
Soon we were off again, speeding under the shade of overhanging trees or out in the open between level fields, and after racing about fourteen miles or thereabouts, we discovered that we were not near Silver Lake any more at all—had passed it by seven miles or so. We were really within six miles of North Manchester, Indiana, a place where a half uncle of mine had once lived, a stingy, greedy, well meaning Baptist, and his wife. He had a very large farm here, one of the best, and was noted for the amount of hay and corn he raised and the fine cattle he kept. My brother Albert, shortly after the family’s fortune had come to its worst smash—far back in 1878—had been sent up here by mother to work and board. She was very distraught at the time—at her wits' ends—and her brood was large. So here he had come, had been reasonably well received by this stern pair and had finally become so much of a favorite that they wanted to adopt him. Incidentally he became very vigorous physically, a perfect little giant, with swelling calves and biceps and a desire to exhibit his strength by lifting everybody and everything—a trait which my sister Tillie soon shamed out of him. When we had finally settled in Sullivan, in 1880, for a year or two he rejoined us and would not return to his foster parents. They begged him but the family atmosphere at Sullivan, restricted and poverty stricken as it was, proved too much for him. He preferred after a time to follow us to Evansville and eventually to Warsaw. Like all the rest of us, he was inoculated with the charm of my mother. No one of us could resist her. She was too wonderful.
And now as we neared this city I was thinking of all this and speculating where Al might be now—I had not heard from him in years—and how my half-uncle had really lived (I had never seen him) and what my mother would think if she could follow this ramble with her eyes. But also my head was feeling as though it might break open and my eyes ached and burned dreadfully. I wanted to go back to Warsaw and stay there for a while—not the new Warsaw as I had just seen it, but the old Warsaw. I wanted to see my mother and Ed and Tillie as we were then, not now, and I couldn’t. We rolled into this other town, which I had never seen before, and having found the one hotel, carried in our bags and engaged our rooms. Outside, katy-dids and other insects were sawing lustily. There was a fine, clean bathroom with hot and cold water at hand, but I was too flat for that. I wished so much that I was younger and not so sick just now. I could think of nothing but to undress and sleep. I wanted to forget as quickly as possible, and while Franklin and Speed sallied forth to find something to eat I slipped between the sheets and tried to rest. In about an hour or less I slept—a deep, dreamless sleep;—and the next morning on opening my eyes I heard a wood dove outside my window and some sparrows and two neighbor women gossiping in good old Indiana style over a back fence, and then I felt more at ease, a little wistful but happy.
CHAPTER XLII
IN THE CHAUTAUQUA BELT
The centre of Indiana is a region of calm and simplicity, untroubled to a large extent, as I have often felt, by the stormy emotions and distresses which so often affect other parts of America and the world. It is a region of smooth and fertile soil, small, but comfortable homes, large grey or red barns, the American type of windmill, the American silo, the American motor car—a happy land of churches, Sunday schools, public schools and a general faith in God and humanity as laid down by the Presbyterian or the Baptist or the Methodist Church and by the ten commandments, which is at once reassuring and yet disturbing.