Now

It was still different out on the place. August thought that Carl was doing a good deal of experimenting with new things. August had never believed in sweet clover for pasturage. He called sweet clover a weed. Carl had got a lot of new seed from the state agricultural college. August could n't get used to the feeling that he could n't tell Carl just what to do. Carl was the boss now. He was goodtempered, did n't say much. But August noticed that he kept on with exactly what he had planned to do. He was a Kaetterhenry. August worked on the farm, but then what did that mean when he was no longer doing it for anything? The life had gone out of his work. Sometimes he hated to go out there, although he could n't stay away.

Carl did n't like to have him come, either, as he told Frank. Pa was too used to thinking he could do whatever he pleased there. They had quarrels once or twice.

Emma, all of them, thought that August was working too hard. They said, "You don't need to go out to that farm and kill yourself." He kept on stubbornly. One day he was overcome with the heat out there. Carl had to bring him home in the sedan. But even after that he would not stop. Carl had to be careful, and scheme so that his father would get the easier part of the work.

"Mr. Kaetterhenry looks real bad," people said. He would not admit it. Emma wanted him to try this and that that other people recommended. The children said, "Pa 'll have a stroke some day if he is n't careful."

He was never so vigorous again after that heat prostration. He knew that he was sick, but he tried obsti

nately not to give in, to hang on. Then one day, coming home from town, he had a kind of dizzy spell. He got home all right, and no one knew it. But it frightened him. It broke his resistance. He told Emma that he believed there was something the matter with him. The next day Emma telephoned the children that she and pa were going to Rochester again.

& 2

It was in the dead of winter that August and Emma took their second trip to Rochester. They did not take Marguerite with them this time. She was going to stay with her uncle Henry Stille, so that she need n't miss school. Altogether the trip seemed less eventful than the first one that they had made, when everything was new.

August was not interested in the farms this time, or the country. It lay under a heavy crust of snow, the willow-trees penciled bleak and small upon a gray sky. Although they had both had such awe of the operation before, this time there was a different fear in their hearts, down under everything, gnawing in silence.

They went to their same old boarding-house. The landlady did not recognize them until they told her their names and reminded her of when they had been here before. Then she exclaimed:

"Oh, my! Well, I should say! Well, what are you folks back here for? Are you the sick one this time, Mr. Kaetterhenry? Missus looks fine, though."

They did not like the place so well as before. They were used to the shining immaculateness and comforts of their new house now. The bed

room, the dining-room, with the brown linoleum and the little step up from the ancient parlor, seemed darker and shabbier to them. They did not know any of these boarders. Somehow, it had seemed to them that they must meet some of those who had been here before, that they must belong to the boarding-house.

The landlady tried to cheer them. She said:

"Oh, they'll fix you up over there. They 're great folks. Not much them

doctors can't do."

Emma said:

"Ja, if he 'll do what they say." "Oh, he will. That's what he 's come here for." She rallied him: "I never thought I'd see you folks here on your account, Mr. Kaetterhenry. Ain't you ashamed of yourself! My, I remember that Mrs. Boohey that was here with her husband, had the operation on the jaw, used to say, if her husband looked half as strong as Mr. Kaetterhenry! Well, they'll have you looking that way again."

But she was doubtful. She told the other boarders about how vigorous August had been and how he had aged. She said:

"I'll bet he 's waited too long before he came, just like all those old farmers. He looks to me as if he might have had some kind of a stroke. Did you notice how kind of slow he moves? Well, sir, it 's that big strong kind of men that sometimes goes all of a sudden."

She frightened Emma, who had never actually noticed before how changed August was. It was hard to say when the change was, exactly. He was not thin. His face was still high-colored. But the skin looked different; there were wrinkles; his fig

ure was sunken, and his movements were no longer vigorous; his eye was vacant and seemed to turn slowly. The whole impression of the man was different.

Emma and the children had wondered if August would ever submit to all those tests and examinations. He had always scorned all such things. It had taken him a long while to give up, but now he had done so completely. He was suddenly not the same person. He was meek. He let Emma do things for him, turned to her. He seemed to depend upon her. When they went to the clinic, he let her make all the arrangements. And he called her in and let her answer many of the questions that the doctor asked. All the time, from the doctor's careful, non-committal manner, a new doctor, large and calm,-from something that they felt, but could not name, they were afraid.

August had fought all these months against having anything done for him, against "seeing any one." But now that it might be too late, he was suddenly ready to do anything. He went through all the tests without a murmur, and he even seemed to find a relief in having his ailments admitted to the doctor. August! He seemed to want Emma's help and sympathy. Before, he would n't even so much as admit that his stomach was out of order, was angry with any one who dared to suggest it.

They had both been hoping that the doctor would say that there must be an operation. Since Emma had been helped by an operation, it seemed to them that an operation would do anything. But the doctor merely said that this condition could hardly be helped by that. He would n't say

much about it all, only murmuring something about "blood pressure pretty high." He was going to give August a diet, and he was to do no physical work, not to drive the car, to be quiet and avoid excitement. August and Emma did not say to each other what was meant, but they knew. "High-blood pressure" was a term of terror to people in Richland, although old Dr. Bowen laughed at the whole business and said there was no such thing. Every one said that that was what had caused Mrs. Vesey's stroke. The doctor's coolness, his temperate statements, only soothed them for the time being. "Stroke" was what they were both fearing. It was the fear of all the elderly people in Richland. Time was counted from the day when Mrs. Vesey or Grandpa Granger or Fred Williams had had a stroke.

Emma was all the more fearful because the doctor kept her and questioned her closely about the time last summer when August had been overcome with the heat. She answered timidly, half consciously trying to make it sound less serious than it had been, for fear of that word. But she had to ask the doctor what he thought it had been. He would admit no more than that it might have been slightly on the order of a stroke. But he let her know that August's condition was serious.

August had a reaction from his meekness before the doctors. The night before they left Rochester he was discouraged. He let himself sink into bitter depths of hopelessness. He blamed the doctors. He said that if he'd known they were n't going to do any more for him than that, he would not have come up here and wasted all his money. Just tell him to be careful!

Any old fool, even old Doc Bowen, could have done that. He did n't need to come clear up to Minnesota to learn a thing like that. Emma tried to soothe him. She defended the doctors.

"Well, maybe there ain't anything else they could do. They said there was n't anything to operate for. I suppose there's times when they can't. They gave you a diet."

"Ja, diet!" he said bitterly. "Think if I can't do nothing else, then I might as well starve, too, a'ready."

They admitted to the landlady that they did n't think August had got much help. It seemed to both of them that the doctors should have done more. August declared that he believed that stuff he 'd taken last summer had given him more help. They both thought that if Emma's old doctor could have looked at him, he might have done something. "If he helped you, why could n't he have helped me?" Their notion of medicine was still of some universal panacea. August had looked to "operation" and "Rochester" as the last resort, the final magic independent of what he himself did. Now it seemed that there was no panacea.

They went home silent and discouraged, fearful, hating to admit to the children and the neighbors what had been said. They had not sent word that they were coming. There was no one to meet them at the little station, standing bleak in the midst of frozen winter pastures. They went up the lonely, icy street. They had had a discussion about the suitcase. Emma had been afraid to have August carry it all the way home. She had wanted him to leave it in the depot. One of the boys would be in town soon and

"Well, what did they do to you up there?" August said gloomily:

"Ach, not much of anything." "Not much of anything, hey? Well, I could have told you before you went how it would be. Them places makes a big noise, but there's some stuff right down here at the drug-store that me and the missus always takes when we got anything the matter with us, and it does the business."

They went into their house. The furnace was out. The place was icecold. Emma worried over everything that August did, but he was determined not to let her help him start the fire. It was a bleak homecoming.

The children came in when they found that "the folks" were at home. There was n't much to tell them. Emma said the doctors had n't had much to say.

But people in town gradually knew. They said that Mr. Kaetterhenry had "high-blood pressure," and that they 'd told him he was liable to have a stroke. One might take him off

any time, and they marveled again over what a big strong man he had always seemed to be. They said that was often the way. They had time in Richland to watch and study people, to go minutely over and over physical symptoms, to see what kind of people seemed to last and what did n't.

All that winter August sat around the house, went down occasionally for the mail. Emma was fearful. She watched him. If she did n't know where he was and what he was doing, she sent Marguerite to see. People said, "He's failed just since they come back from Rochester." They saw how slowly he walked. His feet dragged as he went past their houses to the post-office. He never went out to the farm any more. He said he did n't want to go there.

They were not content with merely diet and care. They tried other things. Another brand of medicine, and then a treatment for "high-blood pressure," regardless of cause, that a doctor in Wapsie gave. They thought at first that it might be helping. Then they could n't tell whether it did or not. Mrs. Cooley, who, people whispered, was "kind of a "kind of a Christian Scientist or some such thing," told Emma about a man over at Wellington who claimed to give people mental healing. She wanted Emma to take August over there and have him try that. Emma was quite worked up over all the wonders of which Mrs. Cooley had told her, but August refused to go. Although, in medical matters, he was quite ready to believe in magic, it must be connected with something that he could see, a bottle or a knife. He said that this was "nothing but some more Christian Science," and that he had always con

In the summer he seemed to be a little better. Perhaps it was because he could get out more. He mowed the lawn, although Emma did n't like to have him do it. He went downtown and stood about with the other men. The anxiety that had been hanging over them lightened a little. But there was always the fear of that day when he might do a little too much.

The day came. There was a sale of stock out in the country, and August secretly took the car and drove out there. All of a sudden he had got tired of hanging around, and had broken loose. It happened to be one of the very hottest days of the whole summer. Emma did not know that August had gone, but she knew what it meant when she saw Carl driving up the street in their sedan. He and Dr. Brady were bringing August home.

That evening every one in town knew of it.

"Have you heard about Mr. Kaetterhenry's stroke? Yah, he had a stroke this afternoon out at Gorensen's sale; ain't expected to live. Well, they been expecting it a long time."

The children were summoned. They drove in from the country. It had been a severe stroke. Their father might not live through the night. In all their hearts was the hope that he would not "live to be like grandma."

Several times they thought that he was dying. They went into the bedroom where he lay unconscious.

But

he had been a vigorous man, and it took the thing a long time to kill him. He lived for three days. The children had to go back to their farms, and

had another stroke and died.

"August Kaetterhenry 's dead! He died at three o'clock." That was what every one in Richland was saying now. He had never regained consciousness. They all said again how strange it seemed. What a strong man he had seemed to be when he first moved to town! Had looked as if he would live for years. They remembered how he had helped to build his new house. They said what a pity that he had lived so few years to enjoy it. Now every one was wondering where and when the funeral would be. The Kaetterhenrys were such Methodists, probably it would be in the church.

Funerals were still public events in Richland. This one was expected to be large. A great many people came in from the country. Townspeople turned out, although they had n't known August very well, to see what kind of service it would be and who was there. All the pews were filled as Ray Bender, who was studying with the local undertaker, led one family after another to their places in a creaking silence. They wanted to hear what the Methodist quartet, Dr. Brady, Herb Carter, Willie Stille, and Mr. Rush, would sing. Most of all they wanted to see "who had come from away." They whispered: "My, he must have had a lot of relations!"

"Well, some of these are hers."

The five front rows at the side were reserved for the mourners. There were all the children and the children-in-law and the grandchildren. Grandpa Stille, of course, could n't get in, although he had wanted to come, had sighed and mourned over "the young folks going." Herman