CHAPTER I
There is a peculiar quality in the somnolence of an old town in which little has occurred for many years. It is the unease of relaxation without repose, the unease of one who lies too late in bed, aware that he should be getting up. The men who lounge aimlessly about the street corners cannot be wholly idle. Their hands, at least, must be busy. The scarred posts and notched edges of the board sidewalks show it; the paint on the little stations is sanded shoulder-high to prevent their whittling there. Energy struggles feebly under the weight of the slow, uneventful days; but its pressure is always there, an urge that becomes an irritation in young blood.
Helen Davies, pausing in the doorway of Richardson's store on a warm spring afternoon, said to herself that she would be glad never to see Masonville again. The familiar sight of its one drowsy street, the rickety wooden awnings over the sidewalks, the boys pitching horseshoes in the shade of the blacksmith-shop, was almost insupportable.
She did not want to stand there looking at it. She did not want to follow the old stale road home to the old farm-house, which had not changed since she could remember. She felt that she should be doing something, she did not know what.
A long purple curl of smoke unrolling over the crest of Cherokee Hill was the plume of Number Five coming in. Two short, quick puffs of white above the bronze mist of bare apricot orchards mutely announced the whistle for the grade.
Men sauntered past, going toward the station. The postmaster appeared in his shirt-sleeves, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with mail sacks down the middle of the street. The afternoon hack from Cherokee rattled by, bringing a couple of tired, dust-grimed drummers. And the Masonville girls, bare-headed, laughing, talking in high, gay voices, came hurrying from the post-office, from the drug-store, from one of their Embroidery Club meetings, to see Number Five come in. Helen shifted the weight of the package on her arm, pulled her sunbonnet farther over her face, and started home.
Depression and revolt struggled in her mind. She passed the wide, empty doorway of Harner's livery-stable, the glowing forge of the blacksmith-shop, without seeing them, absorbed in the turmoil of her thoughts. But at the corner where the gravel walk began, and the street frankly became a country road slipping down a little slope between scattered white cottages, her self-absorption vanished.
A boy was walking slowly down the path. The elaborate unconcern of his attitude, the stiffness of his self-conscious back, told her that he had been waiting for her, and a rush of dizzying emotion swept away all but the immediate moment. The sunshine was warm on her shoulders, the grass of the lawns was green, every lace-curtained window behind the rose-bushes seemed to conceal watching eyes, and the sound of her feet on the gravel was loud in her ears. She overtook him at last, trying not to walk too fast. They smiled at each other.
"Hello, Paul," she said shyly.
He was a stocky, dark-haired boy, with blue eyes. His father was dead, killed in a mine over at Cherokee. He had come down to the Masonville school, and they were in the same class, the class that would graduate that spring. He was studying hard, trying to get as much education as possible before he would have to go to work. He lived with his mother in a little house near the edge of town, on the road to the farm.
"Hello," he replied. He cleared his throat. "I had to go to the post-office to mail a letter," he said.
"Did you?" she answered. She tried to think of something else to say. "Will you be glad when school's over?" she asked.
Paul and she stood at the head of the class. He was better in arithmetic, but she beat him in spelling. For a long time they had exchanged glances of mutual respect across the school-room. Some one had told her that Paul said she was all right. He had beat her in arithmetic that day. "She takes a licking as well as a boy," was what he had said. But she had gone home and looked in the mirror.
The flutter at her heart had stopped then. No, she was not pretty. Her features were too large, her forehead too high. She despised the face that looked back at her. She longed for tiny, pretty features, large brown eyes, a low forehead with curling hair. The eyes in the mirror were gray and the hair was straight and brown. Not even a pretty, light brown. It was almost black. For the first time she had desperately wanted to be pretty. But now she did not care. He had waited for her, anyway.
They walked slowly along the country road, under the arch of the trees, through the branches of which the sun sent long, slanting rays of light. There was a colored haze over the leafless orchards, and the hills were freshly green from the rains.
"Well, I've got a job promised as soon as school is over," said Paul.
"What kind of job?" she asked.
"Working at the depot. It pays fifteen a month to start," he replied. It was as if they were uttering poetry. The words did not matter. What they said did not matter.
"That's fine," she said. "I wish I had a job."
"Gee, I hate to see a girl go to work," said Paul.
His lips were full and very firm. When he set them tightly, as he did then, he looked determined. There was something obstinate about the line of his chin and the slight frown between his heavy black brows. Her whole nature seemed to melt and flow toward him.
"I don't see why!" she flashed. "A girl like me has to work if she's going to get anywhere. I bet I could do as well as a boy if I had a chance."
The words were like a defensive armor between her and her real desire. She did not want to work. She wanted to be soft and pretty, tempting and teasing and sweet. She wanted to win the things she desired by tears and smiles and coaxing. But she did not know how.
Paul looked at her admiringly. He said, "I guess you could, all right. You're pretty smart for a girl."
She glowed with pleasure.
They had often walked along this road as far as his house, when accident brought them home from school at the same time. But their talk had never had this indefinable quality, as vague and beautiful as the misty color over the orchards.
Sometimes she had stopped at his house for a few minutes. His mother was a little woman with brisk, bustling manner. She always stood at the door to see that they wiped their feet before they went in. The house was very neat. There was an ingrain carpet on the front-room floor, swept till every thread showed. The center-table had a crocheted tidy on it and a Bible and a polished sea-shell. This room rose like a picture in her mind as they neared the gate. She did not want to leave Paul, but she did not want to go into that room with him now.
"Look here—wait a minute—" he said, stopping in the gateway. "I wanted to tell you—" He turned red and looked down at one toe, boring into the soft ground. "About this being valedictorian—"
"Oh!" she said. There had been a fierce rivalry between them for the honor of being valedictorian at the graduating exercises. There was nothing to choose between them in scholarship, but Paul had won. She knew the teachers had decided she did not dress well enough to take such a prominent part.
"I hope you don't feel bad about it, Helen," he went on awkwardly. "I told them I'd give it up, because you're a girl, and anyway you ought to have it, I guess. I don't feel right about taking it, some way."
"That's all right," she answered. "I don't care."
"Well, it's awfully good of you." She could see that he was very much relieved. She was glad she had lied about it. "Come in and look at what I've got in the shed," he said, getting away from the subject as quickly as possible.
She followed him around the house, under the old palm-tree that stood there. He had cleared out the woodshed and put in a table and a chair. On the table stood a telegraphic-sounder and key and a round, red, dry battery.
"I'm going to learn to be an operator," he said. "I've got most of the alphabet already. Listen." He made the instrument click. "I'm going to practise receiving, listening to the wires in the depot. Morrison says I can after I get through work. Telegraph-operators make as much as seventy dollars a month, and some of them, on the fast wires, make a hundred. I guess the train-dispatcher makes more than that."
"Oh, Paul, really?" She was all enthusiasm. He let her try the key. "I could do it. I know I could," she said.
He was encouraging.
"Sure you could." But there was a faint condescension in his tone, and she felt that he was entering a life into which she could not follow him.
"That's the trouble with this rotten old world," she said resentfully. "You can get out and do things like that. A girl hasn't any chance at all."
"Oh, yes, she has," he answered. "There's lots of girl operators. There's one down the line. Her father's station agent. And up at Rollo there's a man and his wife that handle the station between them. He works nights, and she works daytimes. They live over the depot, and if anything goes wrong she can call him."
"That must be nice," she said.
"He's pretty lucky, all right," Paul agreed. "It isn't exactly like having her working, of course—right together like that. I guess maybe they couldn't—been married, unless she did. He didn't have much, I guess. He isn't so awful much older than—But anyway, I'd hate to see—anybody I cared about going to work," he finished desperately. He opened and shut the telegraph-key, and the metallic clacks of the sounder were loud in the stillness. Unsaid things hung between them. Dazzled, tremulous, shaken by the beating of her heart, Helen could not speak.
The palpitant moment was ended by the sound of his mother's voice. "Paul! Paul, I want some wood." They laughed shakily.
"I—I guess I better be going," she said. He made no protest. But when they stood in the woodshed doorway he said all in a rush:
"Look here, if I get a buggy next Sunday, what do you say we go driving somewhere?"
She carried those words home with her, singing as she went.