Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/117



Neale turned out his Welsbach burner and rolled into bed, he encountered a strange, new sensation, an immense relief just to lay himself down, and to have darkness about him. For the first time in his life he was consciously very tired, for the first time he knew the adult sensation of having lived to the point of weariness, for the first time he felt the passive sweetness of the resigned adult welcome of repose which is perhaps a premonition of our ultimate weariness and our ultimate welcome to death.

For a moment Neale lay there, drowned in astonishment at this new, unguessed-at pleasure. Then, without warning, the thick cloud of a boy's sleep dropped over him like black velvet.

The next morning, his father, passing on the way to his cold bath, looked in and saw the boy, sunk fathoms deep in sleep, the bright new sunlight of the early morning shining full on his face. Heavens! How can children sleep so soundly! His father stepped into the room, walking silently on bare feet, and drew down the shades. The shadowing of the room did not waken the sleeper. He still lay profoundly at rest and yet profoundly alive, one long, big-boned arm thrown over his head on the pillow, as he always had slept when he was a child.

"As he had when he was a child!" His father was struck by the phrase and looked again at the tall, rather gaunt young body flung on the bed. That was no child who lay there, nor was that a child's face, for all the pure, childlike curves of the young lips, firmly held together even in this utter abandon to sleep. The older man stood by the bed for a moment, looking down on his son, his own face grave and observant. He would be a fine-looking fellow, Neale, with 109