As she spoke my name, my eyes flew to his. He was looking at me with a kind of soft brilliance in his face, and the surprise of some certainty. Then I knew that something had happened to make him know, and that now he remembered.
I ran out and down the walk before Mrs. Carney.
CHAPTER XVII
In the late afternoon light, Katytown looked to me beautiful: the weather-beaten station, the empty platform, the long, dusty main street, which informally became the country road without much change of habit. Lena and I took what Katytown called "the rig," and drove out to Luke's father's farm.
We went into the kitchen, and Luke's mother, helpless now in her chair, broke out at us shrilly: "Well, and about time, you good-for-nothing high-fly!" she welcomed her daughter-in-law.
Luke, eating his supper, shuffled up from the table and came toward her. Lena amazed me. She went to him and kissed him, not with a manner of apology, but of abstraction. Then she opened her suit-case. "Look, Luke," she said. "Look, Mother," and hardly heard the mother's talk, flowing on. Luke's mother watched her, lowering. Luke commented awkwardly, and went off to the barn. Lena turned to the sink, filled with unwashed dishes. The clatter of these, of faultfinding, the murk of steam received her. But she moved among these with a new dignity. It seemed as if life would have let Lena be so much, if only somebody had understood in time.
I left her, and walked toward my own home. But for that morning in Twiney's pasture, six years ago, I should be back there now, in Lena's place. For me, somebody had understood in time. Before I knew it, I had broken into swift running along the country road. I must somehow make everybody understand in time.
The house lay quiet in the dreaming sunshine. I stepped to the open kitchen door. They were at supper. My mother pushed back her chair and came running to the door.