When Bevy had reached the upper hall, Katy rose from her place on the
lowest step, and stretched out her arms as though to embrace the garden
and Millerstown and the world. Mist was rising from the little stream
below the orchard; it veiled the garden in a lovely garment; it seemed
to intensify the odor of the honeysuckle and the late roses. Again Katy
sank down on the step and hid her face in her arms.
"He kissed me!" said Katy shamelessly.
Now Katy's winter was guarded against unhappiness.
A little later in September David Hartman went to school also, not to
the normal school where tuition cost nothing, but to college as befitted
the heir of a rich man. His tutor had prepared him thoroughly for his
examinations; he had an ample allowance; there was no reason why the
gratification of any legitimate desire should be denied him. His mother
had spared no pains with his outfit; she had bought and sewed and
laundered and packed a wardrobe such as, it is safe to say, no other
student in the college possessed. During the long summer she and David
had had little to say to each other. David had been constantly busy with
his books; he had had little time even to think of his father, whom he
so passionately regretted. Death continued to work its not uncommon
miracle for John Hartman; it dimmed more and more for his son the
character of his later years, and exaggerated greatly the vaguely
remembered tendernesses of David's babyhood. John Hartman had to an
increasing degree in his death what he had not had in life, the
affection and admiration of his boy. How was it possible for him to be
anything else but silent with a wife so cold, so immovable, so strange?
David was certain that he had solved his father's problem. Sometimes
David could not bear to look at his mother.
But now that he was going away, David's eyes were somewhat sharpened.
His mother looked thin and bent and tired; she seemed to have grown old
while she sewed for him.
"You ought to get you a girl," he said with the colossal stupidity of
youth and of the masculine mind.
Mrs. Hartman looked at him, as though she were suddenly startled. He
seemed to have grown tall overnight; his new clothes had made a man of
him. Then a film covered her eyes, as though she withdrew from the
suggestions of lunacy into some inward sanctuary where burned the lamp
of wisdom.
"A girl!" cried Cassie, as though the suggestion were monstrous. "To
have her spoil my things! A girl!"
David's trunk was packed in the kitchen, thither his hat and satchel
were brought also. When his breakfast was over he went down the street
to the preacher's for a letter recommending his character. When he
returned, his trunk and satchel had been sent to the station; he had now
only to take his hat and say good-bye to his mother who was at this
moment in the deep cellar. For her David waited awkwardly. He remembered
how he had stood kicking his foot against the door sill on Christmas
Day--how many years and years ago it seemed!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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