He stood at the gate, the wind
singing in the trees along the street and driving an occasional drop of
rain against his cheek, and thought of it and of his life with his mother.
During the last two or three years he had been trying to make things up to
her. After the sale of the newspaper business and the beginning of his
success with Freedom he had driven her from the washtub and since the
beginning of her ill health he had spent evening after evening with her
instead of going to Wildman's to sit with the four friends and hear the
talk that went on among them. No more did he walk with Telfer or Mary
Underwood on country roads but sat, instead, by the bedside of the sick
woman or, the night falling fair, helped her to an arm chair upon the
grass plot at the front of the house.
The years, Sam felt, had been good years. They had brought him an
understanding of his mother and had given a seriousness and purpose to the
ambitious plans he continued to make for himself. Alone together, the
mother and he had talked little, the habit of a lifetime making much
speech impossible to her and the growing understanding of her making it
unnecessary to him. Now in the darkness, before the house, he thought of
the evenings he had spent with her and of the pitiful waste that had been
made of her fine life.
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