Read Online Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt - Free Book Online Page A

meant much to me until that afternoon when I found, to my surprise, that I was able to recall every word of it. I whispered the lines to myself:
    â€œWhen I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted
I shall not care.
    Â 
    I shall have peace, as lofty trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.”
    When we walked home after the funeral, Carlotta said, “You were saying poetry to yourself in the church, Julie. I think that’s very bad manners, with poor Aggie lying there dead—and all that.”
    At twilight that evening I wandered out to the carriage house, where Uncle Haskell sat on his porch enjoying the light breeze that stirred the leaves of our surrounding wooded acres. He laughed lightly as I seated myself on the steps at his feet.
    â€œYour face, my treasure, has a funereal aspect this evening. Are you responding to our popular stereotype—the proper mourner who must tense his muscles for the correct number of days before he can cheerfully thank Heaven that it was the other fellow and not he who had succumbed?”
    I didn’t answer immediately. Sometimes Uncle Haskell seemed like a bad-mannered child, someone who deserved to be ignored.
    â€œDo you know what it means to feel guilty, Uncle Haskell?” I asked after a minute.
    â€œNo. I thank whatever gods may be that no such emotion has ever disrupted my equanimity.” He toyed for a while with the pipe which he always carried but never smoked. “Now, why should you feel guilty, my little Julie? You know very well that if this Kilpin girl could approach you again, as moronic and distasteful as she was a month ago, that you’d feel the same revulsion for her. You couldn’t help it.”
    He was right, of course. I thought how awkward it would be to have to say, “Oh, Aggie, you were so nice when you were dead, and now here you are—the same old mess again.” That wouldn’t do, naturally; one couldn’t say that , even to Aggie.
    Uncle Haskell was speaking again. “Hadn’t you rather thank Heaven that she has escaped what life had to offer her? And isn’t it a blessing that society escaped a multiplication of her kind? Come, Julie, death may be the great equalizer; let’s not give in to the hypocrisy that it is the great glorifier.”
    We sat in silence after that, and I listened to the sounds of night around us. Uncle Haskell’s words beat in upon me as I sat there; I knew that he expressed something that was true, but I knew as well that he was missing something. In Aggie’s life and death there was something more than a distasteful little unfortunate’s few barren years and her fever-driven death. But what it was I could not put into words; it was strange that I should have sought out a cynic such as Uncle Haskell with the hope of finding an answer.
    Finally I rose, the need for action of some sort strong within me. “I think I’ll saddle Peter the Great and ride for a while,” I said.
    Then, for some reason, I suddenly felt very sorry for Uncle Haskell. Obeying an impulse which I did not understand, I mounted the five steps up to the porch, and standing beside his chair, I bent and kissed him on his forehead. It was the first time in my life that I had ever done anything of the kind.
    He didn’t move. He muttered, “Don’t ride too far,” and that was all. I ran out to the barn, saddled the big old horse who was much gentler than his namesake, and rode away through the woods, pondering for the first time over the mysteries of life and death.
    Uncle Haskell’s light was on when I returned, and I could see that he was working at his typewriter. That was unusual. His writings never seemed to reach his typewriter; one supposed, innocently at first and then in mocking derision, that his magnum