Wayside Courtships

H >> Hamlin Garland >> Wayside Courtships

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Life to her must remain a cruel fragment. Light and color she may not
miss; but wifehood, maternity, the touch of baby lips to her
breast--these her soul will grope for in dumb maternal desire. She must
inhabit her dark and soundless cavern alone.

Again she touched the chieftain's hair and earrings, and let her hand
drop down along his sleeve to his hard, brown hand. Then her hand fell
to her side with a resigned action.

As she walked away, a sweet smile of pleasure and gratitude flashed for
an instant across the exquisite curving line of her lips, and then the
sad and wistful repose of her face came back again as if her loneliness
had only been lightened, not warmed.

The young man drew a long breath of pain keen as a physical hurt. The
elderly gentleman said again, "Poor child!"

The Indian looked up again into the mighty dome soaring hundreds of feet
above him, and wondered how those forms came to be set flying in
mid-air, and his heart grew sad and wistful too, as if a realization of
the power and majesty of the white man fell like a poisonous, fateful
shadow over his people and himself.

II. A SHELTERED ONE.

The young man came in out of the cold dash of rain. The negro man
received his outside garments and ushered him into the drawing-room,
where a bright fire welcomed him like a smiling hostess.

He sat down with a sudden relaxation of his muscles. As he waited at his
ease, his senses absorbed the light and warmth and beauty of the house.
It was familiar and yet it had a new meaning to him. A bird was singing
somewhere in the upper chambers, caroling with a joyous note that seemed
to harmonize with the warmth and color of the room in which the caller
sat.

The young man stared at the fire, his head leaning on his hand. There
were lines of gloomy thought in his face. There were marks of bitter
struggle on his hands. His dress was strong and good, but not in the
mode. He looked like a young lawyer, with his lean, dark face, smoothly
shaven save for a little tuft on either cheek. His long hands were
heavy-jointed with toil.

He listened to the bird singing and to the answering, chirping call of a
girl's voice. His head drooped forward in deep reverie.

How beautiful her life is! his thought was. How absolutely without care
or struggle! She knows no uncertainty such as I feel daily, hourly. She
has never a doubt of daily food; the question of clothes has been a
diversion for her, a worry of choice merely. Dirt, grime, she knows
nothing of. Here she lives, sheltered in a glow of comfort and color,
while I hang by my finger-ends over a bottomless pit. She sleeps and
dreams while I fight. She is never weary, while I sink into my bed each
night as if it were my grave. Every hand held out to her is a willing
hand--if it is paid for, it is willing, for she has no enemies even
among her servants. O God! If I could only reach such a place to rest
for just a year--for just a month! But such security, such rest is out
of my reach. I must toil and toil, and when at last I reach a place to
pause and rest, I shall be old and brutalized and deadened, and my rest
will be merely--sleep.

He looked once more about the lovely room. The ocean wind tore at the
windows with wolfish claws, savage to enter.

"The world howling out there is as impotent to do her harm as is that
wind at the window," the young man added.

The bird's song again joined itself to the gay voice of the girl, and
then he heard quick footsteps on the stairs, and as he rose to greet her
the room seemed to glow like the heart of a ruby.

They clasped hands and looked into each other's eyes a moment. He saw
love and admiration in her face. She saw only friendliness and some
dark, unsmiling mood in his.

They sat down and talked upon the fringe of personalities which he
avoided. She fancied that she saw a personal sorrow in his face and she
longed to comfort him. She longed to touch his vexed forehead with her
fingers.

They talked on, of late books and coming music. He noticed how clear and
sweet and intelligent were her eyes. Refinement was in the folds of her
dress and in the faint perfume which exhaled from her drapery. The firm
flesh of her arms appealed to him like the limbs of a child so beautiful
and tender!

He saw in her face something wistful, restless. He tried to ignore it,
to seem unconscious of the adoration he saw there, for it pained him. It
affected him as a part of the general misdirection of affection and
effort in the world.

She asked him about his plans. He told her of them. He grew stern and
savage as he outlined the work which he had set himself to do. His hands
spread and clutched, and his teeth set together involuntarily. "It is to
be a fight," he said; "but I shall win. Bribery, blackmail, the press,
and all other forces are against me, but I shall win."

He rose at length to a finer mood as he sketched the plan which he hoped
to set in action.

She looked at him with expanding eyes and quickened breath. A globed
light each soft eye seemed to him.

He spoke more freely of the struggle outside in order to make her feel
her own sweet security--here where the grime of trade and the reek of
politics never came.

At last he rose to go, smiling a little as if in apology for his dark
mood. He looked down at her slender body robed so daintily in gray and
white; she made him feel coarse and rough.

Her eyes appealed to him, her glance was like a detaining hand. He felt
it, and yet he said abruptly:

"Good night."

"You'll come to see me again!"

"Yes," he answered very simply and gravely.

And she, looking after him as he went down the street with head bent in
thought, grew weak with a terrible weakness, a sort of hunger, and deep
in her heart she cried out:

"Oh, the brave, splendid life _he_ leads out there in the world! Oh, the
big, brave world!"

She clinched her pink hand.

"Oh, this terrible, humdrum woman's life! It kills me, it smothers me. I
must do something. I must be something. I can't live here in this
way--useless. I must get into the world."

And looking around the cushioned, glowing, beautiful room, she thought
bitterly:

"This is being a woman. O God, I want to be free of four walls! I want
to struggle like that."

And then she sat down before the fire and whispered very softly, "I want
to fight in the world--with him."

III. 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 somber 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.

The young lawyer 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 a little 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 handsome. The 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 defense.

"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 could not be heard.

"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 said, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're
square."

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 said, with another swift change to reproach.
"You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visit 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 was 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.

"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 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 plowed 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, saw the terror and tragedy of the girl's life. 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--and this slender young girl, naturally
pure, alert, quick of impulse--she 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 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 the 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, birdlike ways formed her shield against
ridicule and misprision.

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

"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless
attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and
it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole
business."

She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back
to the personal.

"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window
pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!" she
said, in a low tone.

Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to hear her, so
piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might
hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but the woman's God
should hear this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.

She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I
respect, and you despise me."

"No, I don't; I pity you."

"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if
I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of
her desire.

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