“When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.”
There was no discrimination in his reading. He liked everything. What he wanted from an author was that the author should take him by the hand and lead him away from the life he was bound to, into worlds unknown. Let that world be the slums of London, the steaming jungle of Africa, the region of Lilliput or of ancient Greece, it scarcely mattered to Shaw. He was away! He was free!
He had no interest in the success or failure of the crops. Where many a boy would have found solace in the playful calves, the lambs, or even the bouncing little pigs, Shaw found none. There was no friendship between him and the collie dog who did his duty fiercely and cared for no man. Shaw slaved in a kind of stupor during the week, straining toward Sunday. He savored Sunday to its last moment, shut behind the walls of his imaginative egotism.
Through this weekday haze he saw his grandfather, his broad beard like a banner, lead the army of his sons from crop to crop. He saw his grandmother and her daughters plucking poultry, straining honey, making cheese, ironing huge white petticoats and stiff starched blouses. He heard them whispering and chuckling about their partners at country dances, the compliments they had had on their looks and their clothes. Jane Gower, who showed no affection for Shaw, could deny her own children nothing. After a hard day’s work she would sit up half the night stitching tucks or making rickrack lace for petticoats.
A married daughter, the one with the new baby, came home for a visit in August. The squalling infant became the hub around which all the women revolved. Shaw overheard whispered references to the “bad time” the mother had had in childbed. He looked at her with curiosity and distaste.
Almost every Sunday Leslie came to tea, and he and Beaty had the parlor to themselves. They sat side by side at table, Leslie very joky and sunburned till he was almost as swarthy as his mother; Beaty as shining as soap and water could make her, laughing at everything he said, showing off before her older sisters, quirking her little finger as she ate.
After tea Leslie would take her for a drive behind his spanking grey gelding. He would drive down the lane and turn through the gate at a speed that left the family gasping, half proud, half alarmed for Beaty’s safety. Compared to Leslie, Letitia’s slow-going, middle-aged betrothed, editor of a small-town newspaper, seemed tame. He and she would set off arm in arm for their evening walk, she a little disgruntled, he deprecating, talking long-windedly of his newspaper to impress her.
They were all of them unreal figures to Shaw, their doings without interest. But when they began to talk of the annual Presbyterian picnic he became suddenly alive to what the day might mean to him. It might mean hours of solitude, freedom to do as he pleased. He made up his mind that he would not go to the picnic.
He appeared at breakfast with a lugubrious expression, but no one noticed it. No one cared, he thought, how sad he looked, and tears of self-pity suddenly filled his eyes. They rolled down his cheeks.
This his grandmother saw.
“Whatever is the matter?” she asked.
“It’s my bad ear,” he said. “It’s aching so I can’t go to the picnic.”
She looked concerned. “Well, I declare,” she said, “that’s too bad! But don’t you worry! It will be all right. Just put it out of your mind.”
“I can’t,” he whined. “It’s been aching all night.”
“I’ll put some laudanum in it. Come along to my room after you’ve had your breakfast.”
“I don’t want any breakfast.” He cupped his ear in his hand and rocked on his chair.
“Let him stay at home if he wants to,” said Luke. “It’s a good thing to have someone on the place, in case of tramps.”
“Yes,” chimed in Esther, “let him stay, Ma! It will give us a little more room and he won’t have any fun if his ear is aching.”
So he was allowed to stay. He watched the feverish preparations of the girls, the packing of picnic baskets with ham and salmon sandwiches, layer cakes and cookies, from the corner where he sat nursing his ear. Not for a moment did he relax his expression of misery, for fear he might be set some work to do during the day.
At last the sound of the wheels died away. He was quite alone. He ran to the window to look after them. It seemed too good to be true. They were gone—every one of them—he was alone!
At first he scarcely knew what to do with himself. He felt dazed. The house which was always so overflowing with activity was empty, except for his small body. The rooms seemed suddenly larger. The quiet was almost startling. The collie came to the open door and looked in at him, then stalked away. It was still early, only seven o’clock in the morning. The picnickers were driving to a distant lake, then taking a steamboat to a pleasure park.
Shaw walked about the house as though he had never seen it before. He felt as though the family had been suddenly swept away by some catastrophe and he left in complete possession. He went into his grandparents’ room, saw the hastily made bed, the bottle of pinkish liquid his grandmother used as a hair restorer, his grandfather’s nightshirt thrown on a chair. He went through the girls’ rooms, helped himself to Beaty’s scent, took a “conversation” lozenge from the bag brought to Letitia by her lover. But he was afraid to venture into his uncles’ rooms. They would surely be aware of any trespass on his part.
He wondered what he would eat for breakfast. He decided on milk and honey because he had heard Mr. Blair speak of it with great unction in his sermons. He would have milk and honey and he would eat outdoors from the best dishes. He would have a picnic of his own!
He laid a supply of cookies on the best cake plate. He went to the dairy and, from the crock of fresh thick cream, filled one of the best glass tumblers. He filled a blue china bowl with honey. As he arranged these before him on the grass the morning sun streamed through the broad branches of the maple trees and a light breeze from the south lifted the thick hair on his forehead. He felt like an Eastern potentate.
He ate a little of the cream, to make room in the goblet for some honey. Then he added honey to the very brim. The first mouthful of this was beyond belief delicious. He sat absorbing it, gazing straight in front of him, seeing a procession of camels laden with embroideries and spices entering the shade of an oasis after a long journey across the desert. He himself was the Arab chief, silent, inscrutable, with the power of life and death over his followers. His enormous beard swept his chest and through it his voice came muffled and commanding, like a deep-toned drum.
So dreaming he finished the cream and honey. He ate a few of the cookies. Then he lay on his back, hands beneath head, legs crossed, staring into the sunny treetops. Two red squirrels were chasing each other up and down the trunks, leaping from bough to bough, their red tails flirting like insolent question marks. A chipmunk sat on the corner