...
* * * * *
One night, despite a hard day's work, I could not sleep. So I went out
on the hillside to enjoy the moonlight.
On my way back to the attic I observed a light in the barn. I stopped in
to see who was there. It was Sowerby, cleaning out the stable, to the
plain disgust of the horses and cows.
I asked him if anything was the matter. I learned that he had risen in
the middle of the night and gone to work ... because that was his
happiness, his only happiness.
* * * * *
Driven by an impulse of distaste for him and his house and market
garden, I started to leave in secret. What money was coming to me for my
two weeks' work I did not care about--in the face of the curious
satisfaction it would give me just to quit, and to have the old man call
up to me and find me missing....
I heard him pottering back to his bedroom again.... I waited till he was
quiet and back to sleep--then I stole forth in the quiet moonlight near
dawn.
It gave me a pleasure to vanish like smoke. I thought of the time when I
had that job plowing in Southern California; that time I had driven the
horses to the further end of the field, and left them standing there
under the shade of a tree and then made off, wishing to shout and sing
for the sheer happiness of freedom from responsibility and regular work.
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