And slowly, resistlessly, the soil pulled at him with its
black strength and its green tendrils, down, down, until he ceased to
struggle and lay there clasped gently to her breast, the mistress he had
thought to desert and who had him again at last, and forever.
"I don't know what ailed him," his widow had said, weeping. "He just
seemed to kind of pine away."
It was one morning in April--one soft, golden April morning--when this
memory had struck Hosey Brewster. He had been down at Fulton Market.
Something about the place--the dewy fresh vegetables, the crates of
eggs, the butter, the cheese--had brought such a surge of homesickness
to him as to amount to an actual nausea. Riding uptown in the subway he
had caught a glimpse of himself in a slot-machine mirror. His face was
pale and somehow shrunken. He looked at his hands. The skin hung loose
where the little pads of fat had plumped them out.
"Gosh!" he said. "Gosh, I--"
He thought, then, of the red-faced farmer who used to come clumping into
the cold-storage warehouse in his big boots and his buffalo coat. A
great fear swept over him and left him weak and sick.
The chill grandeur of the studio-building foyer stabbed him. The
glittering lift made him dizzy, somehow, this morning. He shouldn't have
gone out without some breakfast perhaps. He walked down the flagged
corridor softly; turned the key ever so cautiously. She might still be
sleeping. He turned the knob, gently; tiptoed in and, turning, fell over
a heavy wooden object that lay directly in his path in the dim little
hall.
Pages:
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392