Other Main Travelled Roads

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Emma grew morose, irritable, and melancholy; she was suffering for her
sister's wholesome presence, and yet, being under the dominion of the
mischief-maker, dared not send word or even mention the name of her
sister in the presence of the Harkeys.

Mrs. Jim came up to the house to stay as Emma got too ill to work, and
took charge of the house. The children hated her fiercely, and there
were noisy battles in the kitchen constantly wearing upon the nerves of
the sick woman who lay in the restricted gloom of the sitting room
bed-chamber, within hearing of every squall.

There were moments of peace only when Ike was in the house. Smooth as he
was, Jim's wife was afraid of him. There was something compelling in his
low-toned voice; his presence subdued but did not remove strife.

His silencing of the tumult hardly arose out of any consideration for
his wife, but rather from his inability to enjoy his paper while the
clamor of war was going on about him.

He was not a tender man, and yet he prided himself on being a very calm
and even-tempered man. He kept out of Bill's way, and considered himself
entirely justified in his position regarding the cow-bell. It is
doubtful if he would have accepted an apology.

Emma suffered acutely from Mrs. Harkey's visits. Something mean and
wearying went out from her presence, and her sharp, bold face was a
constant irritation. Sometimes when she thought herself alone, Emma
crawled to the window which looked up the Coolly, toward Sarah's home,
and sat there silently longing to send out a cry for help. But at the
sound of Jane Harkey's step she fled back into bed like a frightened
child.

She became more and more childish and more flighty in her thoughts as
her time of trial drew near, and she became more subject to her jailer.
She grew morbidly silent, and her large eyes were restless and full of
pleading.

One day she heard Mrs. Smith talking out in the kitchen.

"How is Emmy to-day, Mrs. Jim?"

"Well, not extry. She ain't likely to come out as well as usual this
time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty
well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some trouble."

"I suppose Sarah will be down to help you," said Mrs. Smith.

"Well, I guess not--not after what she's told."

"What has she told?" asked Mrs. Smith, in her sweet and friendly voice.

"Why, she said she wouldn't set foot in this house if we all _died_."

"I never heard her say that, and I don't believe she ever _did_ say it,"
said Mrs. Smith, firmly.

Emma's heart glowed with a swift rush of affection toward her sister and
Mrs. Smith; she wanted to cry out her faith in Sarah, but she dared not.

Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it
or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."

"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."

When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was
her visitor's face.

She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near
them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies,
Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah.
She's just as kind as can be--I know she is. She's looking down this
way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for
her. I'm going up that way, and--"

She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma
began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She
planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its
importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance
of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about
it.

Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and
that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or
three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window,
through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the
mid-summer insects came sonorously.

Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest
better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but
it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his
side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.

The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife,
after about ten o'clock, said:--

"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want
you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some
water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back.
I'll run right down and right back."

After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening,
waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then
she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down
the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.

The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes
came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up
the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window
which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung
the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.

She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared
child was in her voice.

"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I _need_ you, Serry! I didn't mean to be
mean; I want to see you _so_! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come
quick!"

Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time
again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.

"Emmy, where _are_ you, Emmy?"

"Here I be, Serry."

With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old
face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of
love.

Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so
pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.

"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"

"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"

When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the
bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat
face could express.

"You ain't needed _here_," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything,
find a man and send him for the Doctor--quick. If she dies you'll be her
murderer."

Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face
as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a
boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by
her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.

When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's
arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love
looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.

"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not
entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty
children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she
needs better care than the babe!"

"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move
over here--and live."

A FAIR EXILE

The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and
warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle
odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads
the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which
the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews,
the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine
flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.

The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and
heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward,
frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with
passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.

A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of
the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing
him several times, said, in a friendly way:

"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."

"Yes--if we ever get there."

"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got
an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."

"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case
coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."

"Your name is Allen, I believe."

"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."

"I thought so. I've heard you speak."

The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in
appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's
voice.

"When do you reach the junction?"

"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends
there?"

"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."

At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or
three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in
heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded
cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several
drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen
heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught
the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just
before him.

The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young
lawyer--Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be
utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen
amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great
care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but
in the latest city fashion, and her gloves were spotless. She gave off
an odor of cleanliness and beauty.

She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not
intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and
motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a
peculiar way--trustfully, almost reverently--and yet with a touch of
coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or
glance of her eyes.

Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and
broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He
wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather
square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch
chain, and his tie was disarranged.

His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and
quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown
mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical
way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which
was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose
and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless
nose and retreating forehead of the girl.

The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which
they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such
women use--a coquette's defence.

"You did! you did! you _did_! _Now_! You know you did! You told me
that! You told me you despised girls like me!"

"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he
replied, rather soberly.

"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You
despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting
self-depreciation.

The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which
was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of
the car.

"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I
don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did,"
she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're
straight."

The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered
by those red lips in childish pout.

"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if
she had gone back to an old attack.

"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and
looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here
in six weeks. I know I should."

The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.

"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me,
but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square
man."

"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden fury in her eyes.
"Do you call it square for a man--married, and gray-haired, too--to take
up with a woman like Mrs. Shellberg? Say, do you, now?"

"Well, I don't quite believe--"

"Oh, I _lie_, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach.
"You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visits to his office."

"But he was her lawyer."

"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there
every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private
office for? Come, now, tell me that!"

"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.

A sort of convulsion passed over her face, her little hands clinched,
and the tears started into her eyes. Her voice was very quiet.

"You think I lie, then?"

"I think you are mistaken, just as other jealous women have--"

"You think I'm jealous, do you?"

"You act like a jeal--"

"Jealous of that gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I--I--" She struggled
to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in
men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed--Oh, I've seen him
pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at the
recollection.

Her companion's face grew grave. The smile went out of his eyes, leaving
them dark and sorrowful.

"I understand you now," he said, at last. She turned to look at him.
"My practice in the divorce business out here has almost destroyed my
faith in women. If it weren't for my wife and sister--"

She broke in eagerly: "Now I _know_ you know what I mean. Sometimes I
think men are--devils!" She thrust this word forth, and her little face
grew dark and strained. "But the judge kept me from thinking--I never
loved my father; he didn't care for me; all he wanted to do was to make
ten thousand barrels of beer a year and sell it; and the judge seemed
like a father to me till _she_ came and destroyed my faith in him."

"But--well, let Mrs. S. go. There are lots of good men and pure women in
the world. It's dangerous to think there aren't--especially for a
handsome young woman like you. You can't afford to keep in that kind of
a mood long."

She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said,
soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense--as if I were a human
being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never
would believe in any man again."

He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his
pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked
child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and
intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her
eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.

"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."

"You can be if you try."

"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats
you whenever the mood takes him."

"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel
isn't any great help to you."

"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of
slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as
hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar,
you know'"--she imitated her rival's voice--"'but no matter which end of
the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"

The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.

And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me,"
she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."

To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile
inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where
harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy
recesses of the human heart.

Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy,
looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed quite unconscious of their
public situation.

The young lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by
her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had
been injected into her young life.

"I don't see what men find about her to like--unless it is her eyes.
She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar--ugh! The stories she
tells--right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her,
that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry, and
say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me!' Ugh! It makes me
sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig,
too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."

The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set
expression, and she felt it, and was spurred on to do still deeper
injustice to herself--an insane perversity.

"Not that I care a cent--I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for
company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go
and break down my faith in the judge."

She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window
again, seeking control.

The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner
corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could
see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering
eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest
addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those
already well known.

The girl turned suddenly to her companion.

"How do those people live out here on their farms?"

She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the
train go by.

"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."

"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or
hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"

He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for
the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"

"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to
boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."

"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours,
speaking from experience."

"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"

"They work like the men, only more so."

"Do they have any new things?"

"Not very often, I'm afraid."

She sighed. After a pause, she said:

"You were raised on a farm?"

"Yes. In Minnesota."

"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the
field.

"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm
for my health."

"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.

"In a slab-sided kind of a way--yes."

Her eyes grew abstracted.

"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am,
but when he was drunk he was what men call a--a holy terror. He struck
me with the water-pitcher once--that was just before baby was born. I
wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless
bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this
terrible country."

"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly,
tenderly.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you.
They've made your future uncertain."

"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his
hesitation.

"You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but
it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness.
"You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the
companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."

Her voice shook painfully as she replied:

"You don't think I'm _all_ bad?"

"You're not bad at all--you're simply reckless. _You_ are not to blame.
It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or
go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."

The conductor eyed them, as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his
eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip
had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by
the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed
the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their
opportunity.

Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the tragedy of the
girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse,
rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken,
dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a
divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where
this slender young girl--naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse--was
like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.

The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward
her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger
sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her
widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead--and baby, too!"

"Live for the baby--let him help you out."

"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other
mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too
young."

He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child.
She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent;
the case baffled him.

"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time!
I do! I don't care what you think--_I do! I do!_"

"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows
about you, and--"

"Who told her--did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.

"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.

She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window
again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.

"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane.
Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"

"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"

"Certainly, without question."

"Can I wait and go back with you?"

"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait
in this little town; it's not much like the city."

"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at
me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so?
Please don't laugh."

The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of
defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against
ridicule and misprision.

He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's
an awful responsibility to be a man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant sex, for every tragic,
incomplete woman's life."

"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete
example with savage swiftness.

"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own
living some way."

"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."

"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy
to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would
be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your
divorce?"

"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."

"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have
to cook your own food--and tend the baby."

"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her
bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this
terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this
was, I wouldn't have started."

"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his
words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcees.

She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You
despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live
with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."

"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every
marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.
"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a
question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a
question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's
what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

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