Yet it was complete content that embraced his mind as he lay in his room that night, and the thought which came to him, whether then or through the hours of sleep, was that nothing mattered, that nothing became worth worrying about until one was starved. … He knew that he loved Ada Lethen more than he had ever loved her, but his old desperation was a thing of the past. He never had known that life was so simple, that thinking was unnecessary, and happiness sure. His slumber was deep, complete and satisfying rest, and when he rose the mirror told him he was smiling.
But the day brought uncertainties, and from the natural wish to go directly to the Lethen place he allowed himself to be diverted by the normal routine of the day. All the children were down for breakfast, unusually lively, so that their mother and even Bill had to chide them. Bright sunlight entered the dim kitchen and rested upon the breakfast table. The storm had missed them, and the ground would be in better condition. He knew that Bill expected him to continue helping with the oats. Of course a few words of explanation would straighten that out.
But again, would not Ada think that he was attempting to take advantage of her? And that might prove fatal. Or would she expect him … be hurt if he did not come? Shouldn’t he think, in any case, get the matter straightened out in his mind, devise a certain and summary means of settling everything, finally and felicitously?
In brief, his gingerly mind in the first hour of the morning allowed itself to be abetted by outer circumstances, and he went to the field to resume shocking.
In high spirits, yet with a certain anticipatory fervour, he trudged to the field. The boys chattered around him, ran ahead with the barking dog, or lagged behind. He was breathing the freshness of the morning air, the new warmth after the heavy rains. Already the mud of the lane, still soft, was drier under foot, no longer slippery. He lifted his head to the sky, blue with thronging white clouds.
But as the day passed, and he attacked row after row of sheaves, he learned that he had reckoned without the change which had taken place, without himself. Perhaps he had unknowingly counted upon seeing Ada Lethen again in the woods. But she did not appear. Feverishly he worked through the hours, and it seemed by a most intense concentration of will only that he was enabled to continue work and not, in or out of sight of Burnstile, to climb the fence and go in search of her to her home.
It seemed to be an endless day, and when the end of it came in sight he was the first to leave the field. After changing his clothes, he came down for supper before Burnstile and the boys had come into the house. Not going to the kitchen where the evening meal was waiting, simmering aromatically, he went to the front veranda and sat down. He would not wait long for supper, hungry as he was, but would go soon to the Lethen home.
There was a summer-evening yellow cast to the air, though the sun was still high. It would set rapidly, and more summarily with the days of approaching autumn. But now Richard Milne saw a fulfilment with the guise of significance in the passing of the summer, and even in his preoccupation he looked out with interest and tenderness at the fields and woods he was so soon to leave. At the roadside, half-way between the lawn gate and the farm gate before the barn, lay a patch of smelling white-pink phlox. The boys were coming past it to supper, with their father trudging behind them, instead of using the path on their own land, parallel with the road. An automobile passed the house, slowed as it met them, and stopped beside the man. Supper, Richard noted with impatience, would be postponed by the length of one of those indefinite rural conversations.
While he was considering going away, for to demand supper on such notice without waiting for the others would be an affront, Alice came around the house, preceded by the cat, after which she ran with stiff back and arms, wide-spread fingers, like some silhouetted figure against a stage curtain: evidently in high spirits. Rustling after came her mother. As they chased each other Mrs. Burnstile laughed.
“I’ll lay you right down on the ground and take off your shoes and stockings. I will! Mind you – You just wait till you want to wear my shoes and stockings again.”
Alice dodged about the lawn and behind the snowball bush. She was taller than her mother, but slender and quicker. Mrs. Burnstile rustled swiftly about, her arms sloping like wings.
There was the sound of the starting car, and they paused to watch its departure.
“Hurry on, Dad; and rescue me!” cried Alice, breathless, in her halting tones. The boys rushed onto the lawn screaming something about Hymerson. Gaunt Bill followed with a wry smile. The younger girls appeared. Richard Milne stepped down from the veranda, momentarily surprising the women.
“Well, what do you think’s happened now?” the farmer demanded of him. “Young Eldon going along now, he tells me Carson Hymerson’s gone and kicked over the traces.”
“How – what – what’d he do?” everyone wanted to know.
“Well, the story is likely to be different with everyone, and you’ll hear all sorts of things. But what he says is that Carson had a stroke or something, and they took him away. To the asylum he says, but he could easy have got mixed.”
“He’s crazy, he’s loony! Asylum!” shrilled the boys.
“Children, go in and get washed for supper,” commanded Burnstile. Offhand as he had seemed, it was evident that he had not heard the news without being impressed.
“I guess there’s some truth about it,” he answered Milne’s silent look of inquiry. “Well, I can’t say I’m altogether surprised at him breaking up. He’s not been right. But I can’t quite see the reason.”
“There is one, we may be sure,” Milne replied, turning away. “Was Arvin involved in this?”
“Didn’t say. Eldon said he flew into a rage about something, and finally they got the police, and it took a bunch of them. … It appears he got vi’lent. He kept hollering something about everybody being in a conspiracy against him.”
“That seemed to be his delusion when I was there,” remarked Milne.
“Yes, he hollers that old Lethen is a ‘stumbling block.’ ‘Stumbling block to his fellow man!’ he yells. And Arvin was an ungrateful cub. And you, you was something, what was it now, a meddler. But Arvin, he was the ungrateful cub you couldn’t do anything for.”
Throughout supper these statements were repeated and amended. Richard scarcely paid them heed, though he registered them in his mind, and put questions. But after a momentary excitement the boys forgot the whole matter, and they were outside before Richard had taken his hat and gone from the house. They were playing at the roadside, about the patch of odorous phlox. In the first tincture of dusk tobacco moths rose from it, and as they rose the boys swatted them with their caps.
“I’ll pull his head off and he’ll fly in the air,” Bill shrieked, looking after the man.