Growth of a Man. Mazo de la Roche

mother said in her low, gruff voice:—

      “You hadn’t ought to have made that remark, Letitia. Never mind, Esther, don’t take on! Letitia, you go upstairs and wake Shaw. Tell him he’ll get no breakfast if he isn’t downstairs in ten minutes. That’ll stir him.”

      Letitia, with a self-conscious smile, rose and went slowly upstairs. The Gowers never moved quickly but always with definite purpose. She opened the door of Shaw’s room and looked down on him, his head in a round knob in the twisted sheet. His clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

      “Get up, you big lazybones!” she said, pulling down the sheet. “Don’t you think of anything but sleep? Ma says you’ll not get any breakfast if you’re not downstairs in five minutes.”

      He looked up at her resentfully. “I don’t care! I don’t want any breakfus’. You let me alone!”

      He heard her go down the stairs, the heels of her slippers flapping from step to step. He scowled and dived determinedly under the bedclothes. But his stomach began to clamor for food. It distended itself, then drew itself small. It remembered that on Sunday mornings there were buckwheat pancakes for breakfast.

      He leaped out of bed. In two minutes he had pulled on his trousers and shirt. Barefoot he ran down the stairs. He was in time for the last of the pancakes. . . .

      He hated going to church. He hated the long drive, sitting stiff in his Sunday clothes on the low seat of the buggy at his grandparents’ knees, the reins flapping against his head. The others had gone on before. Sometimes the mare’s long tail switched over the dashboard against his face.

      On these drives he had always felt disgruntled because his mother had remained at home to get the dinner and he had wanted to stay with her. It seemed to Shaw that he had never been allowed to do what he wanted to. But he would one day! Formless thoughts toward freedom and escape began to stir in his mind. He raised his heavy eyes to the old faces above him and wondered what would happen if these thoughts of his were found out. His grandfather stared solemnly between the mare’s ears. His grandmother’s lips moved as she calculated the profits from yesterday’s market.

      The little Presbyterian Church was prosperous. A new strip of carpet had lately been laid the length of the aisle. The pews had been newly varnished. The smell of the varnish filled the hot air. Shaw took a sulky pleasure in ripping himself free of the seat each time he stood up.

      From where he sat he could see the minister’s two children, Ian and Elspeth Blair, sitting sedately by their mother. Elspeth had a good little round face and two plaits beneath the broad brim of her hat. She wore a red and white plaid dress and Shaw’s eyes rested on it a moment in admiration. Then he saw that Ian was staring at him and they exchanged a look of humorous understanding. Ian began to swell himself, first his body, then his face, till his cheeks were distended like balloons. Shaw watched him imperturbably, but when Ian, in addition, began to wag his ears, Shaw was forced to look away.

      He was glad of the intervention of a hymn. A thin, wailing voice came from Jane Gower and, out of the depths of Roger Gower’s beard, a voice that had a note of his father’s that had rung out from the Tower of the Temple.

      During the interminable prayer Shaw looked between his fingers at the Blair children. Elspeth’s hands were folded before her face, her eyes were shut, but Ian was still staring at him. Now he turned his eyes inward toward his nose and again waggled his ears. Shaw gave a snort of helpless laughter.

      The minister opened his eyes, fixed them on the pew where the Gowers sat, then shook his forefinger solemnly three times at Shaw.

      The drive home was a miserable one for Shaw, sitting in the little seat, wondering what would happen when they returned to the farm. Nothing could be guessed from the faces of his grandparents; neither of them uttered a word during the long drive. At the gate of the farm Roger Gower stopped the mare, but he still kept his large blue eyes fixed on a point between her ears. He did not speak.

      Shaw scrambled over the wheel and ran to the gate. As it swung heavily shut he heard a chirrup issue from the beard and the mare moved in haste toward her hay. Shaw ran after the buggy.

      “Grandpa!” he called in dismay. “I’ll be late! I’ll not be in time for Sunday dinner!”

      His grandfather looked round the hood of the buggy. “You’re not going to have any Sunday dinner.”

      His grandmother looked round the other side of the hood, her bonnet far back on her sleek silvery head. “Boys that snigger in church don’t get any dinner in my house,” she muttered.

      Shaw stared after the buggy in consternation. Sunday dinner, with roast pork, with lemon pie, with everything of the best because Uncle Merton and Aunt Becky were to be there! Once a year they came to dinner. All possible show was made to offset their grandeur. And he would not be there! That pig Beaty, that pig Mark, would gobble up the last crumb of the lemon pie! He would have no dinner at all! He ground his teeth and kicked the stones out of his path. Tears filled his eyes. He began to talk to his mother as he went along the lane.

      “I will have dinner, won’t I, Mamma? You’ll make them give me some dinner! I bet you will! You’ll make them give me the bigges’ piece of pie, won’t you, Mamma?”

      He comforted himself in this way, so that he stopped crying and at last began to wonder what he could do to fill in the time. He remembered the pool in the woods of the neighboring farm and that he had not seen it that spring. He would go there and perhaps he would find some sort of diversion. Perhaps he would find some adventure that would be just as good as dinner.

      He turned from the lane across the fields, climbing the rail fences where convolvulus put out eager tendrils and swung the pale bells of its bloom. He saw an oriole flash its way across the scented sea of a clover field. He leaped to stamp on a small green snake, but it evaded him and disappeared under the moist clover leaves.

      Shaw saw no details of the beauty of the day. He only knew that it was fine and that he wanted to do something different, something free and forbidden. He took off his thick cloth cap and raised his face to the freshness of the breeze.

      It was a long way to the neighboring farm, which belonged to a farmer who was not on good terms with his grandfather. He did not want to meet the farmer and was satisfied that he and his family would be eating their dinner at this hour.

      There was a winding path into the wood and at its end the pool lay dark and cool, with ferns drooping about its brim and an old willow tree hanging above it. Shaw was running eagerly toward it when he saw that someone was there before him. It was a hired man that had lately come to the farm, and he was standing waist-high in the water, moving it gently with his hands and staring up into the treetops.

      Shaw had a deep feeling of disappointment and would have run away, but the man called out:—

      “Hey, kid! Don’t go! Come and have a swim!” As he spoke he dived into the water and struck out for the bank. He came out of the water dripping and white, one of those superbly made creatures which Nature sometimes wastefully tosses into a class where beauty is no asset. He turned a pair of slanting hazel eyes on Shaw and asked:—

      “What’s your name, kid?”

      “Shaw Manifold.”

      “Lord, what a name!”

      “It’s all right.”

      “You ought to do something big with a name like that.”

      “What’s your name?”

      “Jack Searle. That’s not a grand mouthful like your name, but it serves me.”

      Shaw didn’t like the man. He was queer. He turned away, but Searle caught him and said:—

      “Come along! Have a dip! You look as hot as hell.”

      Shaw was shocked by the last word, which he knew was swearing, outside of church, but now Searle began to fascinate him. He wanted to be with him. He began to undress.

      They plunged into the water