Free Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck Page B

go.”
    “He’s only a little boy,” Mother Morgan snapped. “He can’t be going to the Indies.”
    “When Dafydd set out, a little time ago, there was a longing in the child’s eyes that will never be satisfied at all, not even if he does go to the Indies. Haven’t you noticed, Mother, how his eyes look away beyond the mountains at something he wants?”
    “But he may not go! He may not!”
    “Ah, there is no use in it, Mother. A great gulf lies between my son and me, but none at all between me and my son. If I did not know the lean hunger of him so well I might forbid his venturing, and he would run away with anger in his heart; for he cannot understand the hunger that’s in me for his staying. It would come to the same thing, anyway.” Robert gathered conviction.
    “There’s a cruel difference between my son and me. I’ve seen it in the years of his growing. For whereas he runs about sticking his finger into pot after pot of cold porridge, grandly confident that each one will prove the pottage of his dreaming, I may not open any kettle, for I believe all porridge to be cold. And so—I imagine great dishes of purple porridge, drenched with dragon’s milk, sugared with a sweetness only to be envisioned. He tests his dreams, Mother, and I—God help me!—am afraid to.”
    She was becoming impatient with his talking.
    “Robert,” she cried almost angrily, “in any time when there’s boding on us, or need, or sorrow, you hide in words. Here is a duty to you! This boy is too young. There are horrible places across the sea, and the winter comes in at us. He would be sure to find his death in a cough that came to him from the winter. You know how the dampness on his feet sets him sick. He must not leave this farm, not even to London, I say—if these eyes you talk about starve in his head.
    “How could you possibly know what kind of people he would be taking up with, and they telling him nonsense and wickedness. I know the evil that’s in the world. Doesn’t the Curate mention it nearly every Sabbath—‘pitfalls and snares’ he calls them, do you see? And so they are, too. And here you stand, content to talk foolishness about purple porridge when you should be doing something or other. You must forbid it.”
    But Robert answered her impatiently.
    “To you he is only a little boy who must be made to say his prayers of nights and to wear a coat into the fields. You have not felt the polished steel of him as I have. Yes, to you that quick, hard set of his chin is only the passing stubbornness of a headstrong child. But I do know; and I say to you, without pleasure, that this son of ours will be a great man, because— well—because he is not very intelligent. He can see only one desire at a time. I said he tested his dreams; he will murder every dream with the implacable arrows of his will. This boy will win to every goal of his aiming; for he can realize no thought, no reason, but his own. And I am sorry for his coming greatness because of a thing Merlin once spoke of. You must look at the granite jaws of him, Mother, and the trick he has of making his cheek muscles stand out with clenching them.”
    “He must not go,” she said firmly, and pinched her lips tightly together.
    “You see, Mother,” Robert went on, “you are something like Henry yourself, for you never admit the existence of any idea save your own. But I will not forbid his going, because I must not have him stealing out into the lonely dark with bread and cheese under his coat and a hurt feeling of injustice in his heart. I permit him to go. More, I help him to go if he wishes it. And then, if I have misjudged my son, he will come sneaking back with the fearful hope that no one may mention his cowardice.”
    Mother Morgan said, “Nonsense!” and went back to her work. She would dissolve this thing by disbelieving it. Oh, the thousand things she chained to Limbo with her incredulity! For many years she had beaten Robert’s wild