Glenway Wescott

“ But the best of life is over when satisfactions begin to age one as disappointments have done. Joy proved its reality by leaving scars on his face, smaller but deeper than those of sorrow. He began to look haggard and sad even when he smiled.
Rose and Henry were anxious. "Leander is by nature a bachelor," they said, "and ought not to have a son on his hands—it is too much for him." ”

“ And no one had realized until midnight that Hilary was not in the camp.
Over Wisconsin the moon rose, and it looked like a silver pitcher, and a little stream from its mouth splashed on Leander's temples. He thought of sleep: "If you sleep with the moon in your face, you'll go mad," his old mother had said. ”

“ He killed a Rebel. After that everything was quiet. The man who relieved him toward dawn said that Hilary could not be found.
Leander as a man of forty, sleepless in his empty house, repeated that night in his imagination. The dawn when it appeared was greenish and sluggish—so had that other dawn been. They had not been able to find Hilary among the bodies which lay in the bushes. Leander felt sick at dawn, but he was a strong man; so he would get up, harness the mare, go on his mail route, and work in the garden; he could do what had to be done. ”

“ A solitary woodcock made its home in the underbrush of a butternut grove above the house. Several times at dusk Leander saw it in one of a row of scrub oaks which grew along a stone fence down to his garden. He was amazed, for the woodcock is more shy than any other game bird, and asked his nephew to keep its presence there a secret. Every night he watched among the bushes, dividing the week into days of its retirement and days of its appearance ”

“ He envied the domestic affections of that house, and contrasted it with the quiet, empty cottage among the snow-in-summer and the lilies (now beginning to dry up) where he slept with recollections and was childless.
His sister Nancy was nearest his heart. They two had disgraced the family; level-headed people had thought them nearly mad; and they experienced an intimacy of regret. But it was a one-sided intimacy: she told the history of her heart; he dared not tell his history, so he held his peace. His excesses in California had been brought to an end by satiety, not by remorse ”

“ On the Fourth of July expensive fireworks were set off in the garden, and he did not complain when his lilies were trampled underfoot. Hilary would always be young, since he was dead; so Leander was unwilling to be old. He watched their rude, flushed faces, and listened to their laughter; he also flushed, with eagerness and anxiety, and tried to understand the remarks which they shouted to one another in his presence.
Sometimes he imagined that Rose's boys resembled Hilary ”

“ Leander did not want to know. But the boy continued: "I'm a man now. You take things too hard. You love me too much. I'm too young." He spoke very gently. "I feel like a brute. I don't feel easy here. Things like this'll keep happening. I want to do what I feel like and like other fellows do. I can't stand it.”
"All right," Leander said. Each time there was a silence of the same size as the words which had been spoken. "I'm going to bed now. Get some supper for yourself. I'm not hungry."
He came back to the door. Timothy had not moved. "What do you want to do? Where do you want to go?" ”

“ So it became a mark of prudery and effeminacy to be his friend, and at last the good postman began to seem ridiculous as well as sad.
His relations with his family were warm, without spontaneity. Rose offered him the same love, pretending to nothing and understanding nothing, which she gave Henry; it embarrassed him, seeming to be less than a husband would want and more than a brother-in- law had a right to. He himself could do no more than remember that he had loved her. Love had been his way of being happy when he was young ”

“ He gave Timothy as much spending money as he dared, in view of the family disapproval. Every six months thereafter a payment came, and they had everything they wanted.
For three years Leander's felicity did not seem to diminish, but prepared its own end as a summer does. He had certain principles, rooted in emotion, which could not be set aside, even to please Timothy. There was his horror of hunting. "If men weren't so used to killing animals," he said, "they'd not kill each other." ”

“ He added, as if he were ashamed; "Don't tell your uncle Henry or the others that I'm giving you the land. They know how I've always been a failure at everything. Please don't say that you don't want to live here any more. We'll tell them that I'm sending you out there to look after things. I guess California's not so bad as it used to be, when I went west. Be a good boy out there."
The night before he left Timothy was in the far bedroom, hunting in a chest for a picture of his father. Leander sat by the kitchen stove, not moving, scarcely breathing, not yet able to think. ”

“ Furthermore, the fine young men in the country, including Timothy's cousins, worked all day and were usually exhausted at night. Those with as much time on their hands as he had—younger sons of retired farmers, village merchants and barkeepers' boys, and livery-stable drivers—were on the whole passively vicious and drunken. Leander thought that drunkenness was appropriate only to sorrow, and wanted his boy to have as little to do with one as with the other. ”

“ When in 1885 she was pregnant once more, Leander learned that she had forgiven the boy his share in their tragedy, if she had ever known that he had a share; for she announced that she meant to name the child Hilary. The day after its birth Leander stood by her bedroom door. Rose was amazed to have given birth to a female child. Her other little girls had died; she had three rough, strong boys; the world seemed to be a man's world. . . . "I was going to name it Hilary, as you know, Leander," she said. "What shall we call the little thing? ”

“ Little Flora sat on his lap; he showed her his watch and placed Hilary's silver ring (like a wedding ring) over two of her fingers. He scarcely spoke to Rose. She said: "You have a sickly color, Leander. You must take care of yourself."
That night he took from the cupboard where he kept his papers a letter which had come two or three weeks before and which he had not known how to answer: a letter from a land agency in California offering him a large sum of money for his property, so large a sum, in fact, that he supposed it was worth more. He showed it to Timothy. ”

“ He was drawn toward boys of his little brother's age and tried to gain their affection, making kites as large as barrels, setting the broken legs of dogs in splints, and distributing puzzles whittled out of basswood with which they might mystify one another. ”

“ The following winter Timothy discovered a sweetheart—a girl named Iris Lodge, nicknamed Irish. Henry was displeased: "You let that boy of yours take up with a wild no-'count girl, and a Catholic, besides. Poor Nancy was a God-fearing woman. Your ideas are too loose, Leander." ”

“ I don't—count. The war won't last. You'll go back—to her. What'll I do? I want, I can't—"
He stooped, and was outside the tent, and stared back over the dying camp fire.
Leander resented the understanding which followed; he was too tired to think, and too lonesome; that night was too dangerous to think in. But he could not help whispering to himself, "Love . . ." He wondered where Hilary was, and thought of hunting for him among the soldiers. There was a noise of running and two or three reports near the swamp. He cleaned his gun. At midnight he crawled on his stomach to the Bad Road ”

“ A tired lieutenant limped into the firelight to give. an order: the pickets were to keep as close to the Bad Road as they could; the rest were to stay where they were, inside the camp, but nobody was to go to bed. He stumbled over a sleepy little negro who was the soldiers' pet. The child vanished, whimpering; the officer sighed.
Leander lit a candle in the tent. Hilary looked as if the singing had made him drunk. ”

“ Timothy could not speak for joy. He put his arms around his uncle and kissed him. Leander shrank from his strength, as very old men shrink from their sons.
"We've got enough money in the house for your fare. ”

“ For Leander the war and his own life were divided in two parts by the hour of Hilary's disappearance. Nine o'clock of an evening in 1864: singing interrupted, the jokes of great fear, half-starved horses. whinnying, the enemy close in the dark. Just after the boy left him, staring back over the camp fire with one of those cold expressions which cover inexpressible feeling, Leander understood what it all meant, and whispered one word to himself: "Love . ”