Windy McPherson's Son by Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941

With the pulling of the shades darkness dropped down over the figure of the man standing just within the grove of trees and darkness dropped down over the inner man also. The struggle within him became more intense.

Could he surrender to others, live for others? There was the house darkly seen before him. It was a symbol. Within the house was the woman, Sue, ready and willing to begin the task of rebuilding their lives together. Upstairs in the house now were the three children, three children who must begin life as he had once done, who must listen to his voice, the voice of Sue and all the other voices they would hear speaking words in the world. They would grow up and thrust out into a world of people as he had done.

To what end?

There was an end. Sam believed that stoutly. "To shift the load to the shoulders of children is cowardice," he whispered to himself.

An almost overpowering desire to turn and run away from the house, from Sue who had so generously received him and from the three new lives into which he had thrust himself and in which in the future he would have to be concerned, took hold of him. His body shook with the strength of it, but he stood still under the trees. "I cannot run away from life. I must face it. I must begin to try to understand these other lives, to love," he told himself. The buried inner thing in him thrust itself up.

How still the night had become. In the tree beneath which he stood a bird moved on some slender branch and there was a faint rustling of leaves. The darkness before and behind was a wall through which he must in some way manage to thrust himself into the light. With his hand before him, as though trying to push aside some dark blinding mass, he moved out of the grove and thus moving stumbled up the steps and into the house.

THE END