Books: Main Travelled Roads
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Hamlin Garland >> Main Travelled Roads
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She looked at him in a daze of wonder as he went on. "Now I've
got some money, I've got a third interest in a ranch, and I've got a
standing offer to go back on the Sante Fee road as conductor.
There is a team standing out there. I'd like to make another trip to
Cedarville-with you-"
"Oh, Will, don't!" she cried; "for pity's sake don't talk-"
"Wait!" he said imperiously. "Now look at it Here you are in hell!
Caged up with two old crows picking the life out of you. They'll
kill you-I can see it; you're being killed by inches. You can't go
anywhere, you can't have anything. Life is just torture for you-"
She gave a little moan of anguish and despair and turned her face
to her chairback. Her shoulders shook with weeping, but she
listened. He went to her and stood with his hand on the chairback.
His voice trembled and broke. "There's just one way to get out of
this, Agnes. Come with me. He don't care for you; his whole idea
of women is that they are created for his pleasure and to keep
house. Your whole life is agony. Come! Don't cry. There's a
chance for life yet."
She didn't speak, but her sobs were less violent; his voice growing
stronger reassured her.
"I'm going East, maybe to Europe; and the woman who goes with
me will have nothing to do but get strong and well again. I've made
you suffer so, I ought to spend the rest of my life making you
happy. Come! My wife will sit with me on the deck of the steamer
and see the moon rise, and walk with me by the sea, till she gets
strong and happy again-till the dimples get back into her cheeks. I
never will rest till I see her eyes laugh again.
She rose flushed, wide-eyed, breathing hard with the emotion his
vibrant voice called up, but she could not speak. He put his hand
gently upon her shoulder, and she sank down again. And he went
on with hi~s appeal. There was something hypnotic, dominating in
his voice and eyes.
On his part there was no passion of an ignoble sort, only a passion
of pity and remorse, and a sweet, tender, reminiscent love. He did
not love the woman before him so much as the girl whose ghost
she was-the woman whose promise she was. He held himself
responsible for it all, and he throbbed with desire to repair the
ravage he had indirectly caused. There was nothing equivocal in
his position-nothing to disown. How others might look at it he did
not consider and did not care. His impetuous soul was carried to a
point where nothing came in to mar or divert.
"And then after you're well, after our trip, we'll come back to
Houston, and I'll build my wife a house that'Il make her eyes shine.
My cattle and my salary will give us a good living, and she can
have a piano and books, and go to the theater and concerts.
Come, what do you think of that?"
Then she heard his words beneath his voice Somehow, and they
produced pictures that dazzled her. Luminous shadows moved
before her eyes, drifting across the gray background of her poor,
starved, work-weary life.
As his voice ceased the rosy clouds faded, and she realized again
the faded, musty little room, the calico~ covered furniture, and
looking down at her own cheap and ill-fitting dress, she saw her
ugly hands lying there. Then she cried out with a gush of tears:
"Oh, Will, I'm so old and homely now, I ain't fit to go with you
now! Oh, why couldn't we have married then?"
She was seeing herself as she was then, and so was he; but it
deepened his resolution. How beautiful she used to be! He seemed
to see her there as if she stood in perpetual sunlight, with a w~arm
sheen in her hair and dimples in her cheeks.
She saw her thin red wrists, her gaunt and knotted hands. There
was a pitiful droop in the thin pale lips, and the tears fell slowly
from her drooping lashes. He went on:
"Well, it's no use to cry over what was. We must think of what
we're going to do. Don't worry about your looks; you'll be the
prettiest woman in the country when we get back. Don't wait,
Aggie; make up your mind."
She hesitated, and was lost.
"What will people say?"
"I don't care what they say," he flamed out. "They'd say, stay here
and be killed by inches. I say you've had your share of suffering.
They'd say-the liberal ones-stay and get a divorce; but how do we
know we can get one after you've been dragged through the mud of
a trial? We can get one just as well in some other state. Why
should you be worn out at thirty? What right or justice is there in
making you bear all your life the consequences of our-my
schoolboy folly?"
As he went on, his argument rose to the level of Browning's
philosophy.
"We can make this experience count for us yet. But we mustn't let
a mistake ruin us-it should teach us. What right has anyone to keep
you in a hole? God don't expect a toad to stay in a stump and starve
if it can get out. He don't ask the snakes to suffer as you do."
She had lost the threads of right and wrong out of her hands. She
was lost in a maze. She was not moved by passion. Flesh had
ceased to stir her; but there was vast power in the new and thrilling
words her deliverer spoke. He seemed to open a door for her, and
through it turrets shone and great ships crossed on dim blue seas.
"You can't live here, Aggie. You'll die in less than five years. It
would kill me to see you die here. Come! It's suicide."
She did not move, save the convulsive motion of her breath and
the nervous action of her fingers. She stared down at a spot in the
carpet; she couldn't face him.
He grew insistent, a sterner note creeping into his voice.
"If I leave this time, of course you know I never come back."
Her hoarse breathing, growing quicker each moment, was her only
reply.
"I'm done," he said with a note of angry disappointment. He did
not give her up, however. "I've told you what I'd do for you. Now if
you think-"
"Oh, give me time to think, Will!" she cried out, lifting her face.
He shook his head. "No. You might as well decide now. It won't be
any easier tomorrow. Come, one minute more and I go out o' that
door-unless-" He crossed the room slowly, doubtful himself of his
desperate last measure. "My hand is on the knob. Shall I open it?"
She stopped breathing; her fingers closed convulsively on the
chair. As he opened the door she sprang up.
"Don't go, Will! Don't go, please don't! I need you here-I-"
"That ain't the question. Are you going with me, Agnes?"
"Yes, yes! I tried to speak before. I trust you, Will; you'r-"
He flung the door open wide. "See the sunlight out there shining
on that field o' wheat? That's where I'll take you-out into the
sunshine. You shall see it shining on the Bay of Naples. Come, get
on your hat; don't take anything more'n you actually need. Leave
the past behind you."
The woman turned wildly and darted into the little bedroom. The
man listened. He whistled in surprise almost comical. He had
forgotten the baby. He could hear the mother talking, cooing.
"Mommie's 'ittle pet. She wasn't goin' to leave her 'ittle man-no,
she wasn't! There, there, don't 'e cry. Mommie ain't goin' away and
leave him-wicked Mommie ain't-'ittle treasure!"
She was confused again; and when she reappeared at the door,
with the child in her arms, there was a wandering look on her face
pititul to see. She tried to speak, tried to say, ''Please go, Will,"
He designedly failed to understand her whisper. He stepped
forward. "The baby! Sure enough. Why, certainly! to the mother
belongs the child. Blue eyes, thank heaven!"
He put his arm about them both. She obeyed silently. There was
something irresistible in his frank, clear eyes, his sunny smile, his
strong brown hand. He slammed the door behind them.
"That closes the door on your sufferings," he said' smiling down at
her. "Goodbye to it all."
The baby laughed and stretched out its hands toward the light.
"Boo, boo!" he cried.
"What's he talking about?"
She smiled in perfect trust and fearlessness, seeing her child's face
beside his own. "He says it's beautiful."
"Oh, he does? I can't follow his French accent."
She smiled again, in spite of herself. Will shuddered with a thrill
of fear, she was so weak and worn. But the sun shone on the
dazzling, rustling wheat, the fathomless sky blue, as a sea, bent
above them-and the world lay before them.
UP THE COULEE
A STORY OF WISCONSIN
"Keep the main-travelled road up the coulee-it's the second house
after crossin' the crick."
THE ride from Milwaukee to the Mississippi is a fine ride at any
time, superb in summer. To lean back in a reclining chair and
whirl away in a breezy July day, past lakes, groves of oak, past
fields of barley being reaped, past hayfields, where the heavy grass
is toppling before the swift sickle, is a panorama of delight, a road
full of delicious surprises, where down a sudden vista lakes open,
or a distant wooded hill looms darkly blue, or swift streams,
foaming deep down the solid rock, send whiffs of cool breezes in
at the window.
It has majesty, breadth. The farming has nothing apparently petty
about it. All seems vigorous, youthful, and prosperous. Mr.
Howard McLane in his chair let his newspaper fall on his lap and
gazed out upon it with dreaming eyes. It had a certain mysterious
glamour to him; the lakes were cooler and brighter to his eye, the
greens fresher, and the grain more golden than to anyone else, for
he was coming back to it all after an absence of ten years. It was,
besides, his West. He still took pride in being a Western man.
His mind all day flew ahead of the train to the little town far on
toward the Mississippi, where he had spent his boyhood and youth.
As the train passed the Wisconsin River, with its curiously carved
cliffs, its cold, dark, swift-swirling water eating slowly under
cedar-clothed banks, Howard began to feel curious little
movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart.
The hills changed in character, growing more intimately
recognizable. They rose higher as the train left the ridge and
passed down into the Black River valley, and specifically into the
La Crosse valley. They ceased to have any hint of upheavals of
rock, and became simply parts of the ancient level left standing
after the water had practically given up its postglacial, scooping
action.
It was about six o'clock as he caught sight of the dear broken line
of hills on which his baby eyes had looked thirty-five years ago. A
few minutes later and the train drew up at the grimy little station
set in at the hillside, and, giving him just time to leap off, plunged
on again toward the West. Howard felt a ridiculous weakness in
his legs as he stepped out upon the broiling hot splintery planks of
the station and faced the few idlers lounging about. He simply
stood and gazed with the same intensity and absorption one of the
idlers might show standing before the Brooklyn Bridge.
The town caught and held his eyes first. How poor and dull and
sleepy and squalid it seemed! The one main street ended at the
hillside at his left and stretched away to the north, between two
rows of the usual village stores, unrelieved by a tree or a touch of
beauty. An unpaved street, drab-colored, miserable, rotting
wooden buildings, with the inevitable battlements-the same, only
worse, was the town.
The same, only more beautiful still, was the majestic amphitheater
of green wooded hills that circled the horizon, and toward which
he lifted his eyes. He thrilled at the sight.
"Glorious!" he cried involuntarily.
Accustomed to the White Mountains, to the Allghenies, he had
wondered if these hills would retain their old-time charm. They
did. He took off his hat to them as he stood there. Richly wooded,
with gently sloping green sides, rising to massive square or
rounded tops with dim vistas, they glowed down upon the squalid
town, gracious, lofty in their greeting, immortal in their vivid and
delicate beauty.
He was a goodly figure of a man as he stood there beside his
valise. Portly, erect, handsomely dressed, and with something
unusually winning in his brown mustache and blue eyes,
something scholarly suggested by the pinch-nose glasses,
something strong in the repose of the head. He smiled as he saw
how unchanged was the grouping of the old loafers on the salt
barrels and nail kegs. He recognized most of them-a little dirtier, a
little more bent, and a little grayer.
They sat in the same attitudes, spat tobacco with the same calm
delight, and joked each other, breaking into short and sudden fits
of laughter, and pounded each other on the back, just as when he
was a student at the La Crosse Seminary and going to and fro daily
on the train.
They ruminated on him as he passed, speculating in a perfectly
audible way upon his business.
"Looks like a drummer."
"No, he ain't no drummer. See them Boston glasses?"
"That's so. Guess he's a teacher."
"Looks like a moneyed cuss."
"Bos'n, I guess."
He knew the one who spoke last-Freeme Cole, a man who was the
fighting wonder of Howard's boyhood, now degenerated into a
stoop-shouldered, faded, garrulous, and quarrelsome old man. Yet
there was something epic in the old man's stories, something
enthralling in the dramatic power of recital.
Over by the blacksmith shop the usual game of quaits" was in
progress, and the drug clerk on the corner was chasing a crony
with the squirt pump, with which he was about to wash the
windows. A few teams stood ankle-deep in the mud, tied to the
fantastically gnawed pine pillars of the wooden awnings. A man
on a load of hay was "jawing" with the attendant of the platform
scales, who stood below, pad and pencil in hand.
"Hit 'im! hit 'im! Jump off and knock 'im!" suggested a bystander,
jovially.
Howard knew the voice.
"Talk's cheap. Takes money t' buy whiskey," he said when the man
on the load repeated his threat of getting off and whipping the
scalesman.
"You're William McTurg," Howard said, coming up to him.
"I am, sir," replied the soft-voiced giant turning and looking down
on the stranger with an amused twinkle in his deep brown eyes. He
stood as erect as an Indian, though his hair and beard were white.
"I'm Howard McLane."
"Ye begin t' look it," said McTurg, removing his right hand from
his pocket. "How are yeh?"
"I'm first-rate. How's Mother and Grant?"
"Saw 'im plowing corn as I came down. Guess he's all right. Want
a boost?"
"Well, yes. Are you down with a team?"
"Yep. 'Bout goin' home. Climb right in. That's my rig, right there,"
nodding at a sleek bay colt hitched in a covered buggy. "Heave y'r
grip under the seat."
They climbed into the seat after William had lowered the buggy
top and unhitched the horse from the post. The loafers were mildly
curious. Guessed Bill had got hooked onto by a lightnin'-rod
peddler, or somethin' o' that kind.
"Want to go by river, or 'round by the hills?"
"Hills, I guess."
The whole matter began to seem trivial, as if he had only been
away for a month or two.
William McTurg was a man little given to talk. Even the coming
back of a nephew did not cause any flow of questions or
reminiscences. They rode in silence. He sat a little bent forward,
the lines held carelessly in his hands, his great leonine head
swaying to and fro with the movement of the buggy.
As they passed familiar spots, the younger man broke the silence
with a question.
"That's old man McElvaine's place, ain't it?"
"Old man living?"
"I guess he is. Husk more corn 'n any man he c'n hire."
On the edge of the village they passed an open lot on the left,
marked with circus rings of different eras.
"There's the old ball ground. Do they have circuses on it just the
same as ever?"
"Just the same."
"What fun that field calls up! The games of ball we used to have!
Do you play yet?"
"Sometimes. Can't stoop so well as I used to." He smiled a little.
"Too much fat."
It all swept back upon Howard in a flood of names and faces and
sights and sounds; something sweet and stirring somehow, though
it had little of esthetic charm at the time. They were passing along
lanes now, between superb fields of corn, wherein plowmen were
at work. Kingbirds flew from post to post ahead of them; the
insects called from the grass. The valley slowly outspread below
them. The workmen in the fields were "turning out" for the night;
they all had a word of chaff with McTurg.
Over the western wall of the circling amphitheater the sun was
setting. A few scattering clouds were drifting on the west wind,
their shadows sliding down the green and purple slopes. The
dazzling sunlight flamed along the luscious velvety grass, and shot
amid the rounded, distant purple peaks, and streamed in bars of
gold and crimson across the blue mist of the narrower upper
coulee.
The heart of the young man swelled' with pleasure almost like
pain, and the eyes of the silent older man took on a far-off,
dreaming look, as he gazed at the scene which had repeated itself a
thousand times in his life, but of whose beauty he never spoke.
Far down to the left was the break in the wall through which the
river ran on its way to join the Mississippi. As they climbed slowly
among the hills, the valley they had left grew still more beautiful,
as the squalor of the little town was hid by the dusk of distance.
Both men were silent for a long time. Howard knew the
peculiarities of his companion too well to make any remarks or ask
any questions, and besides it was a genuine pleasure to ride with
one who could feel that silence was the only speech amid such
splendors.
Once they passed a little brook singing in a mourn-fully sweet way
its eternal song over its pebbles. It called back to Howard the days
when he and Grant, his younger brother, had fished in this little
brook for trout, with trousers rolled above the knee and wrecks of
hats upon their heads.
"Any trout left?" he asked.
"Not many. Little fellers." Finding the silence broken, William
asked the first question since he met Howard. "Le's see: you're a
show feller now? B'long to a troupe?"
"Yes, yes; I'm an actor."
"Pay much?"
"Pretty well."
That seemed to end William's curiosity about the matter.
"Ah, there's our old house, ain't it?" Howard broke out, pointing to
one of the houses farther up the coulee. "It'll be a surprise to them,
won't it?"
"Yep; only they don't live there."
"What! They don't!"
"Who does?"
"Dutchman."
Howard was silent for some moments. "Who lives on the Dunlap
place?"
"'Nother Dutchman."
"Where's Grant living, anyhow?"
"Farther up the conlee."
"Well, then I'd better get out here, hadn't I?"
"Oh, I'll drive yeh up."
"No, I'd rather walk."
The sun had set, and the coulee was getting dusk when Howard got
out of McTurg's carriage and set off up the winding lane toward
his brother's house. He walked slowly to absorb the coolness and
fragrance and color of the hour. The katydids sang a rhythmic song
of welcome to him. Fireflies were in the grass. A whippoorwill in
the deep of the wood was calling weirdly, and an occasional night
hawk, flying high, gave his grating shriek, or hollow boom,
suggestive and resounding.
He had been wonderfully successful, and yet had carried into his
success as a dramatic author as well as actor a certain puritanism
that made him a paradox to his fellows. He was one of those actors
who are always in luck, and the best of it was he kept and made
use of his luck. Jovial as he appeared, he was inflexible as granite
against drink and tobacco. He retained through it all a certain
freshness of enjoyment that made him one of the best companions
in the profession; and now as he walked on, the hour and the place
appealed to him with great power. It seemed to sweep away the
life that came between.
How close it all was to him, after all! In his restless life,
surrounded by the giare of electric lights, painted canvas, hot
colors, creak of machinery, mock trees, stones, and brooks, he had
not lost but gained appreciation for the coolness, quiet and low
tones, the shyness of the wood and field.
In the farmhouse ahead of him a light was shining as he peered
ahead, and his heart gave another painful movement. His brother
was awaiting him there, and his mother, whom he had not seen for
ten years and who had grown unable to write. And when Grant
wrote, which had been more and more seldom of late, his letters
had been cold and curt.
He began to feel that in the pleasure and excitement of his life he
had grown away from his mother and brother. Each summer he
had said, "Well, now I'll go home this year sure." But a new play to
be produced, or a yachting trip, or a tour of Europe, had put the
homecoming off; and now it was with a distinct consciousness of
neglect of duty that he walked up to the fence and looked into the
yard, where William had told him his brother lived.
It was humble enough-a small white house, story-and-a-half
structure, with a wing, set in the midst of a few locust trees; a
small drab-colored barn, with a sagging ridge pole; a barnyard full
of mud, in which a few cows were standing, fighting the flies and
waiting to be milked. An old man was pumping water at the well;
the pigs were squealing from a pen nearby; a child was crying.
Instantly the beautiful, peaceful valley was forgotten. A sickening
chill struck into Howard's soul as he looked at it all. In the dim
light he could see a figure milking a cow. Leaving his valise at the
gate, he entered and walked up to the old man, who had finished
pumping and was about to go to feed the hogs.
"Good evening," Howard began. "Does Mr. Grant McLane live
here?"
"Yes, sir, he does. He's right over there milkin'."
"I'll go over there an-"
"Don't b'lieve I would. It's darn muddy over there. It's been turrible
rainy. He'll be done in a minute, any-way."
"Very well; I'll wait."
As he waited, he could hear a woman's fretful voice, and the
impatient jerk and jar of kitchen things, indicative of ill temper or
worry. The longer he stood absorbing this farm scene, with all its
sordidness, dullness, triviality, and its endless drudgeries, the
lower his heart sank. All the joy of the homecoming was gone,
when the figure arose from the cow and approached the gate, and
put the pail of milk down on the platform by the pump.
"Good evening," said Howard out of the dusk.
Grant stared a moment. "Good. evening."
Howard knew the voice, though it was older and deeper and more
sullen. "Don't you know me, Grant? I am Howard.
The man approached him, gazing intently at his face. "You are?"
after a pause. "Well, I'm glad to see yeh, but I can't shake hands.
That damned cow had laid down in the mud."
They stood and looked at each other. Howard's cuffs, collar, and
shirt, alien in their elegance, showed through the dusk, and a glint
of light shot out from the jewel of his necktie, as the light from the
house caught it at the right angle. As they gazed in silence at each
other, Howard divined something of the hard, bitter feeling which
came into Grant's heart as he stood there, ragged, ankle-deep in
muck, his sleeves rolled up, a shapeless old straw hat on his head.
The gleam of Howard's white hands angered him. When he spoke,
it was in a hard, gruff tone, full of rebellion.
"Well, go in the house and set down. I'll be in soon's I strain the
milk and wash the dirt off my hands."
"But Mother-"
"She's 'round somewhere. Just knock on the door under the porch
'round there."
Howard went slowly around the corner of the house, past a vilely
smelling rain barrel, toward the west. A gray-haired woman was
sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, her hands in her lap, her
eyes fixed on the faintly yellow sky, against which the hills stood
dim purple silhouettes and the locust trees were etched as fine as
lace. There was sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in
her attitude.
Howard stood, his throat swelling till it seemed as if he would
suffocate. This was his mother-the woman who bore him, the
being who had taken her life in her hand for him; and he, in his
excited and pleasurable life, had neglected her!
He stepped into the faint light before her. She turned and looked at
him without fear. "Mother!" he said. She uttered one little,
breathing, gasping cry, called his name, rose, and stood still. He
bounded up the steps and took her in his arms.
"Mother! Dear old Mother!"
In the silence, almost painful, which followed, an angry woman's
voice could be heard inside: "I don't care. I am't goin' to wear
myself out fer him. He c'n eat out here with us, or else-"
Mrs. McLane began speaking. "Oh, I've longed to see yeh, Howard.
I was afraid you wouldn't come till-too late."
"What do you mean, Mother? Ain't you well?"
"I don't seem to be able to do much now 'cept sit around and knit a
little. I tried to pick some berries the other day, and I got so dizzy I
had to give it up."
"You mustn't work. You needn't work. Why didn't you write to me
how you were?" Howard asked in an agony of remorse.
"Well, we felt as if you probably had all you could do to take care
of yourself."
"Are you married, Howard?"
"No, Mother; and there ain't any excuse for me-not a bit," he said,
dropping back into her colloquialisms."I'm ashamed when I think
of how long it's been since I saw you. I could have come."
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