Other Main Travelled Roads

H >> Hamlin Garland >> Other Main Travelled Roads

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
himself was horrible and seemed impossible.

The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
wide, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
not suicide.

There was a sort of majesty in the figure half buried in the snow. His
hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as
if he had fancied Death coming, and had gone defiantly forth to meet
him.

A STOP-OVER AT TYRE

I

Albert Lohr was studying the motion of the ropes and lamps, and
listening to the rumble of the wheels and the roar of the ferocious wind
against the pane of glass that his head touched. It was the midnight
train from Marion rushing toward Warsaw like some savage thing
unchained, creaking, shrieking, and clattering through the wild storm
which possessed the whole Mississippi Valley.

Albert lost sight of the lamps at last, and began to wonder what his
future would be. "First I must go through the university at Madison;
then I'll study law, go into politics, and perhaps some time I may go to
Washington."

In imagination he saw that wonderful city. As a Western boy, Boston to
him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was
the great American city, and political greatness the only fame.

The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western
drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as
deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at
intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges and across
pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little
towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly.

One of the drummers now and then rose up from his cramped bed on the
seats, and swore cordially at the railway company for not heating the
cars. The woman with the children inquired for the tenth time, "Is the
next station Lodi?"

"Yes, ma'am, it is," snarled the drummer, as he jerked viciously at the
strap on his valise; "and darned glad I am, too, I can tell yeh! I'll be
stiff as a car-pin if I stay in this infernal ice-chest another hour. I
wonder what the company think--"

At Lodi several people got on, among them a fat man with a pretty
daughter, who appeared to be abnormally wide awake--considering the time
of night. She saw Albert for the same reason that he saw her--they were
both young and good-looking.

The student began his musings again, modified by this girl's face. He
had left out the feminine element; obviously he must recapitulate. He'd
study law, yes; but that would not prevent going to sociables and church
fairs. And at these fairs the chances were good for a meeting with a
girl. Her father must be influential--county judge or district attorney.
Marriage would open new avenues--

He was roused by the sound of his own name.

"Is Albert Lohr in this car?" shouted the brakeman, coming in, enveloped
in a cloud of fine snow.

"Yes, here!" called Albert.

"Here's a telegram for you."

Albert snatched the envelope with a sudden fear of disaster at home; but
it was dated "Tyre":

"Get off at Tyre. I'll be there.
"HARTLEY."

"Well, now, that's fun!" said Albert, looking at the brakeman. "When do
we reach there?"

"About 2.20."

"Well, by thunder! A pretty time o' night!"

The brakeman grinned sympathetically. "Any answer?" he asked, at length.

"No; that is, none that will do the matter justice."

"Hartley friend o' yours?"

"Yes; know him?"

"Yes; he boarded where I did in Warsaw."

When he came back again, the brakeman said to Albert, in a hesitating
way:

"Ain't going t' stop off long, I s'pose?"

"May an' may not; depends on Hartley. Why?"

"Well, I've got an aunt there that keeps boarders, and I kind o' like t'
send her one when I can. If you should happen to stay a few days, go an'
see her. She sets up first-class grub, an' it wouldn't kill anybody,
anyhow, if you went up an' called."

"Course not. If I stay long enough to make it pay I'll look her up sure.
I'm no Vanderbilt. I can't afford to stop at two-dollar-a-day hotels."

The brakeman sat down opposite, encouraged by Albert's smile.

"Y' see, my division ends at Warsaw, and I run back and forth here every
other day, but I don't get much chance to see them, and I ain't worth a
cuss f'r letter-writin'. Y' see, she's only aunt by marriage, but I like
her; an' I guess she's got about all she can stand up under, an' so I
like t' help her a little when I can. The old man died owning nothing
but the house, an' that left the old lady t' rustle f'r her livin'.
Dummed if she ain't sandy as old Sand. They're gitt'n' along purty--"

The whistle blew for brakes, and, seizing his lantern, the brakeman
slammed out on the platform.

"Tough night for twisting brakes," suggested Albert, when he came in
again.

"Yes--on the freight."

"Good heavens! I should say so. They don't run freight such nights as
this?"

"Don't they? Well, I guess they don't stop for a storm like this if
they's any money to be made by sending her through. Many's the night
I've broke all night on top of the old wooden cars, when the wind was
sharp enough to shear the hair off a cast-iron mule--_woo-o-o!_ There's
where you need grit, old man," he ended, dropping into familiar speech.

"Yes; or need a job awful bad."

The brakeman was struck with this idea. "There's where you're right. A
fellow don't take that kind of a job for the fun of it. Not much! He
takes it because he's got to. That's as sure's you're a foot high. I
tell you, a feller's got t' rustle these days if he gits any kind of a
job--"

"_Toot, too-o-o-o-t, toot!_"

The station passed, the brakeman did not return, perhaps because he
found some other listener, perhaps because he was afraid of boring this
pleasant young fellow.

Albert shuddered with a sympathetic pain as he thought of the heroic
fellows on the tops of icy cars, with hands straining at frosty brakes,
the wind cutting their faces like a sand-blast. Oh, those tireless hands
at the wheel and throttle!--

He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock; the next station was Tyre.
As he began to get his things together, the brakeman again addressed
him:

"Oh, I forgot to say that the old lady's name is Welsh--Mrs. Robert
Welsh. Say I sent yeh, and it'll be all right."

"Sure! I'll try her in the morning--that is, if I find out I'm going to
stay."

Albert clutched his valise, and pulled his cap firmly down on his head.

"Here goes!" he muttered.

"Hold y'r breath!" shouted the brakeman. Albert swung himself to the
platform before the station--a platform of planks along which the snow
was streaming like water.

"Good-night!" shouted the brakeman.

"_Good_-night!"

"All-l abo-o-o-ard!" called the conductor somewhere in the storm. The
brakeman swung his lantern, the train drew off into the blinding whirl,
and its lights were soon lost in the clouds of snow.

No more desolate place could well be imagined. A level plain, apparently
bare of houses, swept by a ferocious wind; a dingy little den called a
station--no other shelter in sight; no sign of life save the dull glare
of two windows to the left, alternately lost and found in the storm.

Albert's heart contracted with a sudden fear; the outlook was appalling.

"Where's the town?" he asked of a dimly seen figure with a lantern--a
man evidently locking the station door, his only refuge.

"Over there," was the surly reply.

"How far?"

"'Bout a mile."

"A mile!"

"That's what I said--a mile."

"Well, I'll be blanked!"

"Well, y' better be doing something besides standing here, 'r y' 'll
freeze t' death. I'd go over to the Arteeshun House an' go t' bed if I
was in your fix."

"Well, where _is_ the Artesian House?"

"See them lights?"

"I see them lights."

"Well, they're it."

"Oh, wouldn't your grammar make Old Grammaticuss curl up, though!"

"What say?" queried the man bending his head toward Albert, his form
being almost lost in the snow that streamed against them both.

"I said I guessed I'd try it," grinned the youth, invisibly.

"Well, I would if I was in your fix. Keep right close after me; they's
some ditches here, and the foot-bridges are none too wide."

"The Artesian is owned by the railway, eh?"

"Yup."

"And you're the clerk?"

"Yup; nice little scheme, ain't it?"

"Well, it'll do," replied Albert.

The man laughed without looking around.

In the little bar-room, lighted by a vilely smelling kerosene lamp, the
clerk, hitherto a shadow and a voice, came to light as a middle-aged man
with a sullen face slightly belied by a sly twinkle in his eyes.

"This beats all the winters I ever _did_ see. It don't do nawthin' but
blow, _blow_. Want to go to bed, I s'pose. Well, come along."

He took up one of the absurd little lamps and tried to get more light
out of it.

"Dummed if a white bean wouldn't be better."

"Spit on it!" suggested Albert.

"I'd throw the whole business out o' the window for a cent!" growled the
man.

"Here's y'r cent," said the boy.

"You're mighty frisky f'r a feller gitt'n' off'n a midnight train,"
replied the man, as he tramped along a narrow hallway. He spoke in a
voice loud enough to awaken every sleeper in the house.

"Have t' be, or there'd be a pair of us."

"You'll laugh out o' the other side o' y'r mouth when you saw away on
one o' the bell-collar steaks this house puts up," ended the clerk, as
he put the lamp down.

"Sufficient unto the morn is the evil thereof,'" called Albert after
him.

He was awakened the next morning by the cooks pounding steak down in the
kitchen and wrangling over some division of duty. It was a vile place at
any time, but on a morning like this it was appalling. The water was
frozen, the floor like ice, the seven-by-nine glass frosted so that he
couldn't see to comb his hair.

"All that got me out of bed," he remarked to the clerk, "was the thought
of leaving."

The breakfast was incredibly bad--so much worse than he expected that
Albert was forced to admit he had never seen its like. He fled from the
place without a glance behind, and took passage in an omnibus for the
town, a mile away. It was terribly cold, the thermometer registering
twenty below zero; but the sun was very brilliant, and the air still.

The driver pulled up before a very ambitious wooden hotel entitled "The
Eldorado," and Albert dashed in at the door and up to the stove, with
both hands covering his ears.

As he stood there, frantic with pain, kicking his toes and rubbing his
hands, he heard a chuckle--a slow, sly, insulting chuckle--turned, and
saw Hartley standing in the doorway, visibly exulting over his misery.

"Hello, Bert! that you?"

"What's left of me. Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you
telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night I've had of it!"

"Do ye good," laughed Hartley, a tall, alert, handsome fellow nearly
thirty years of age.

After a short and vigorous "blowing up," Albert asked: "Well, now,
what's the meaning of all this, anyhow? Why this change from Racine?"

"Well, you see, I got wind of another fellow going to work this county
for a _Life of Logan_, and thinks I, 'By jinks! I'd better drop in ahead
of him with Blaine's _Twenty Tears_.' I telegraphed f'r territory, got
it, and telegraphed to stop you."

"You did it. When did you come down?"

"Last night, six o'clock."

Albert was getting warmer and better-natured.

"Well, I'm here; what are you going t' do with me?"

"I'll use you some way. First thing is to find a boarding-place where we
can work in a couple o' books on the bill."

"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to look up a place a
brakeman gave me a pointer on."

"All right; here goes!"

Scarcely any one was stirring on the streets. The wind was pitilessly
cold, though not strong. The snow under their feet cried out with a note
like glass and steel. The windows of the stores were thick with frost,
and Albert shivered with a sense of homelessness. He had never
experienced anything like this before. "I don't want much of this," he
muttered, through his scarf.

Mrs. Welsh lived in a large frame house standing on the edge of a bank,
and as the young men waited at the door they could look down on the
meadow-land, where the river lay blue and hard as steel.

A pale little girl, ten or twelve years of age, opened the door.

"Is this where Mrs. Welsh lives?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you ask her to come here a moment?"

"Yes, sir," piped the little one. "Won't you come in and sit down by the
fire?" she added, with a quaint air of hospitality.

The room was the usual village sitting-room. A cylinder heater full of
wood stood at one side of it. A rag carpet, much faded, covered the
floor. The paper on the wall was like striped candy, and the chairs were
nondescript; but everything was clean--worn more with brushing than with
use.

A slim woman of fifty, with hollow eyes and a patient smile, came in,
wiping her hands on her apron.

"How d'ye do? Did you want to see me?"

"Yes," said Hartley, smiling. "The fact is, we're book agents, and
looking for a place to board."

"Well--a--I--yes, I keep boarders."

"I was sent here by a brakeman on the midnight express," put in Bert,

"Oh, Tom," said the woman, her face clearing. "Tom's always sending us
people. Why, yes; I've got room for you, I guess--this room here." She
pushed open a folding door leading into what had been her parlor.

"You can have this."

"And the price?"

"Four dollars."

"Eight dollars f'r the two of us. All right; we'll be with you a week or
two if we have luck."

Mrs. Welsh smiled. "Excuse me, won't you? I've got to be at my baking;
make y'rselves at home."

Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She
had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress,
characterless with much washing.

"Certainly. I feel at home already," replied Bert. "Now, Jim," he said,
after she left the room, "I'm going t' stay right here while you go and
order our trunks around--just t' pay you off f'r last night."

"All right," said Hartley cheerily, going out.

After getting warm, Bert returned to the sitting-room, and sat down at
the parlor organ and played a gospel hymn or two from the Moody and
Sankey hymnal. He was in the midst of the chorus of _Let Your Lower
Lights_, etc., when a young woman entered the room. She had a
whisk-broom in her hand, and stood a picture of gentle surprise. Bert
wheeled about on his stool.

"I thought it was Stella," she began.

"I'm a book agent," Bert explained. "I might as well out with it. There
are two of us. Come here to board."

"Oh!" said the girl, with some relief. She was very fair and very
slight, almost frail. Her eyes were of the sunniest blue, her face pale
and somewhat thin, but her lips showed scarlet, and her teeth were fine.
Bert liked her and smiled.

"A book agent is the next thing to a burglar, I know; but still--"

"Oh, I didn't mean that, but I _was_ surprised. When did you come?"

"Just a few moments ago. Am I in your way?" he inquired, with elaborate
solicitude.

"Oh no! Please go on. You play very well. It is seldom young men play at
all."

"I had to at college; the other fellows all wanted to sing. You play, of
course."

"When I have time." She sighed. There was a weary droop in her voice;
she seemed aware of it, and said more brightly:

"You mean Madison, I suppose?"

"Yes; I'm in my second year."

"I went there two years. Then I had to quit and come home to help
mother."

"Did you? That's why I'm out here on this infernal book business--to get
money to go on with."

She looked at him with interest now, noticing his fine eyes and waving
brown hair.

"It's dreadful, isn't it? But you've got a hope to go back. I haven't."
She ended with a sigh, a far-off expression in her eyes. "It almost
killed me to give it up. I don't s'pose I'd know any of the scholars
you know. Even the teachers are not the same. Oh, yes--Sarah Shaw; I
think she's back for the normal course."

"Oh yes!" exclaimed Bert, "I know Sarah. We boarded on the same street;
used t' go home together after class. An awful nice girl, too."

"She's a worker. She teaches school. I can't do that, for mother needs
me at home." There was another pause, broken by the little girl, who
called:

"Maud, mamma wants you."

Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized
her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn't forget that smile, and he
was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when
Hartley came in.

"By jinks! It's _snifty_, as dad used to say. You can't draw a long
breath through your nostrils without freezing y'r nose solid as a
bottle," he announced, throwing off his coat. "By-the-way, I've just
found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o'
girl, hey?"

Bert blushed; he couldn't help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this
case. "I didn't know it myself till about ten minutes ago," he
protested.

Hartley winked prodigiously.

"Don't tell me! Is she pretty?"

The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.

"Let _me_ put it in," cried Hartley, springing up. "Excuse me. My name
is Hartley, book agent: Blaine's _Twenty Years_, plain cloth, sprinkled
edges, three dollars; half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr.
Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university."

The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the
parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away
at the stove.

"Won't you sit down and play for us?" asked Hartley, after they returned
to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his
fine voice.

"Oh no! It's nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table."

"Now make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door
leading to the kitchen; "if you want anything, just let me know."

"All right. We will," replied Hartley.

By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new
quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the
Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the
livery-stable--and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman
who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks
in the stores near by.

Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the
table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work
could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than
twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.

"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to
Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you
_ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here
claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin'
citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the
leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had
a book an' your pitcher in it."

"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.

"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I
don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An'
when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you
ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got
the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge
Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!"

"I should say so."

"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't
tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom
is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the
hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a
blind bull."

"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd
'a' nabbed the fellows."

"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books
theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick
wa'n't t' blame."

"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end
of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came.
I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."

Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He
had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if
possible, and was deep in "Caesar" when a timid knock came upon the door.

"Come!" he called, student fashion,

Maud entered, her face aglow.

"How natural that sounds!" she said.

Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. "I wish you'd let me do
that," he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.

"I wasn't sure you were in. Were you reading?"

"Caesar," he replied, holding up the book. "I am conditioned on Latin.
I'm going over the 'Commentaries' again."

"I thought I knew the book," she laughed.

"You read Latin?"

"Yes, a little--Vergil."

"Maybe you can help me out on these _oratia obliqua_. They bother me
yet. I hate these 'Caesar saids.' I like Vergil better."

She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She
read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted
they felt after this.

The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its
pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place.
The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of
Madison--a great city to them--of the Capitol building, of the splendid
campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and
ice-boating in winter.

"Oh, it makes me homesick!" cried the girl, with a deep sigh. "It was
the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks!
Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, _how_ I would like
to go back over that hollow door-stone again!"

She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two
or three times before he could break the silence.

"I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm
it seemed as if I couldn't stand it. I thought I'd go crazy. The days
seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on
rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that's what kept me up.
I don't think I could have stood it if I hadn't had hope."

"I've given it up now," she said, plaintively; "it's no use hoping."

"Why don't you teach?" he asked, deeply affected by her voice and
manner.

"I did teach here for a year, but I couldn't endure the strain; I'm not
very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a
seminary--teach Latin and English--I should be happy, I think. But I
can't leave mother now."

She was a wholly different girl in Albert's eyes as she said this. Her
cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame
of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale
face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost
before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.

"I don't see how I endured it as long as I did," he went on. "It was
nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life,
especially on a dairy farm, is slavery."

"Yes," she agreed, "that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I've
always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it
is with them."

"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up
in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores,
to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on
dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin'
round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to
me of the poetry of a farmer's life."

"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going
around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an'
over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives.
Dishwashing almost drives me crazy."

"I know it," said Albert; "but somebody has t' do it. And if a fellow's
folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study.
They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."

"I don't suppose anybody is, but it makes me sad to see mother going
around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I
would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very
strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet,
patient way; she's so good."

"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father,
too."

There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl
continued in a low, hesitating voice:

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18