Chicagohas three winds that blow upon it. One comes from the east, and the mind goes out to the cold gray-blue lake. One from the north, and men think of illimitable spaces of pine-lands and maple-clad ridges which lead to the unknown deeps of the arctic woods.
But the third is the west or southwest wind, dry, magnetic, full of smell of unmeasured miles of growing grain in summer, or ripening corn and wheat in autumn. When it comes in winter the air glitters with incredible brilliancy. The snow of the country dazzles and flames in the eyes; deep-blue shadows everywhere stream like stains of ink. Sleigh-bells wrangle from early morning till late at night, and every step is quick and alert. In the city, smoke dims its clarity, but it is welcome.
But its greatest moment of domination is spring. The bitter gray wind of the east has held unchecked rule for days, giving place to its brother the north wind only at intervals, till some day in March the wind of the southwest begins to blow. Then the eaves begin to drip. Here and there a fowl (in a house that is really a prison) begins to sing the song it sang on the farm, and toward noon its song becomes a chant of articulate joy.
Then the poor crawl out of their reeking hovels on thesouth and west sides to stand in the sun—the blessed sun—and felicitate themselves on being alive. Windows of sick-rooms are opened, the merry small boy goes to school without his tippet, and men lay off their long ulsters for their beaver coats. Caps give place to hats, and men and women pause to chat when they meet each other on the street. The open door is the sign of the great change of wind.
There are imaginative souls who are stirred yet deeper by this wind—men like Robert Bloom, to whom come vague and very sweet reminiscences of farm life when the snow is melting and the dry ground begins to appear. To these people the wind comes from the wide unending spaces of the prairie west. They can smell the strange thrilling odor of newly uncovered sod and moist brown ploughed lands. To them it is like the opening door of a prison.
Robert had crawled down-town and up to his office high in theStarblock after a month's sickness. He had resolutely pulled a pad of paper under his hand to write, but the window was open and that wind coming in, and he could not write—he could only dream.
His brown hair fell over the thin white hand which propped his head. His face was like ivory with dull yellowish stains in it. His eyes did not see the mountainous roofs humped and piled into vast masses of brick and stone, crossed and riven by streets, and swept by masses of gray-white vapor; they saw a little valley circled by low-wooded bluffs—his native town in Wisconsin.
As his weakness grew his ambition fell away, and hisheart turned back to nature and to the things he had known in his youth, to the kindly people of the olden time. It did not occur to him that the spirit of the country might have changed.
Sitting thus, he had a mighty longing come upon him to give up the struggle, to go back to the simplest life with his wife and two boys. Why should he tread in the mill, when every day was taking the life-blood out of his heart?
Slowly his longing took resolution. At last he drew his desk down, and as the lock clicked it seemed like the shutting of a prison gate behind him.
At the elevator door he met a fellow-editor. "Hello, Bloom! Didn't know you were down to-day."
"I'm only trying it. I'm going to take a vacation for a while."
"That's right, man. You look like a ghost."
He hadn't the courage to tell him he never expected to work there again. His step on the way home was firmer than it had been for weeks. In his white face his wife saw some subtle change.
"What is it, Robert?"
"Mate, let's give it up."
"What do you mean?"
"The struggle is too hard. I can't stand it. I'm hungry for the country again. Let's get out of this."
"Where'll we go?"
"Back to my native town—up among the Wisconsin hills and coulies. Go anywhere, so that we escape this pressure—it's killing me. Let's go to Bluff Siding for a year. It will do me good—may bring me back to life.I can do enough special work to pay our grocery bill; and the Merrill place—so Jack tells me—is empty. We can get it for seventy-five dollars for a year. We can pull through some way."
"Very well, Robert."
"I must have rest. All the bounce has gone out of me, Mate," he said, with sad lines in his face. "Any extra work here is out of the question. I can only shamble around—an excuse for a man."
The wife had ceased to smile. Her strenuous cheerfulness could not hold before his tragically drawn and bloodless face.
"I'll go wherever you think best, Robert. It will be just as well for the boys. I suppose there is a school there?"
"Oh, yes. At any rate, they can get a year's schooling in nature."
"Well—no matter, Robert; you are the one to be considered." She had the self-sacrificing devotion of the average woman. She fancied herself hopelessly his inferior.
They had dwelt so long on the crumbling edge of poverty that they were hardened to its threat, and yet the failure of Robert's health had been of the sort which terrifies. It was a slow but steady sinking of vital force. It had its ups and downs, but it was a downward trail, always downward. The time for self-deception had passed.
His paper paid him a meagre salary, for his work was prized only by the more thoughtful readers of theStar. In addition to his regular work he occasionallyhazarded a story for the juvenile magazines of the East. In this way he turned the antics of his growing boys to account, as he often said to his wife.
He had also passed the preliminary stages of literary success by getting a couple of stories accepted by an Eastern magazine, and he still confidently looked forward to seeing them printed.
His wife, a sturdy, practical little body, did her part in the bitter struggle by keeping their little home one of the most attractive on the West Side, the North Side being altogether too high for them.
In addition, her sorely pressed brain sought out other ways of helping. She wrote out all her husband's stories on the typewriter, and secretly she had tried composing others herself, the results being queer dry little chronicles of the doings of men and women, strung together without a touch of literary grace.
She proposed taking a large house and re-renting rooms, but Robert would not hear to it. "As long as I can crawl about we'll leave that to others."
In the month of preparation which followed he talked a great deal about their venture.
"I want to get there," he said, "just when the leaves are coming out on the trees. I want to see the cherry-trees blossom on the hillsides. The popple-trees always get green first."
At other times he talked about the people. "It will be a rest just to get back among people who aren't ready to tread on your head in order to lift themselves up. I believe a year among those kind, unhurried people will give me all the material I'll need for years. I'llwrite a series of studies somewhat like Jefferies'—or Barrie's—only, of course, I'll be original. I'll just take his plan of telling about the people I meet and their queer ways, so quaint and good."
"I'm tired of the scramble," he kept breaking out of silence to say. "I don't blame the boys, but it's plain to me they see that my going will let them move up one. Mason cynically voiced the whole thing today: 'I can say, 'sorry to see you go, Bloom,' because your going doesn't concern me. I'm not in line of succession, but some of the other boys don't feel so. There's no divinity doth hedge an editor; nothing but law prevents the murder of those above by those below.'"
"I don't like Mr. Mason when he talks like that," said the wife.
"Well—I don't." He didn't tell her what Mason said when Robert talked about the good simple life of the people in Bluff Siding:
"Oh, bosh, Bloom! You'll find the struggle of the outside world reflected in your little town. You'll find men and women just as hard and selfish in their small way. It 'll be harder to bear, because it will all be so petty and pusillanimous."
It was a lovely day in late April when they took the train out of the great grimy terrible city. It was eight o'clock, but the streets were muddy and wet, a cold east wind blowing off the lake.
With clanging bell the train moved away piercing the ragged gray formless mob of houses and streets (through which railways always run in a city). Men were hurryingto work, and Robert pitied them, poor fellows, condemned to do that thing forever.
In an hour they reached the prairies, already clothed upon faintly with green grass and tender springing wheat. The purple-brown squares reserved for the corn looked deliciously soft and warm to the sick man, and he longed to set his bare feet into it.
His boys were wild with delight. They had the natural love of the earth still in them, and correspondingly cared little for the city. They raced through the cars like colts. They saw everything. Every blossoming plant, every budding tree, was precious to them all.
All day they rode. Toward noon they left the sunny prairie-land of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and entered upon the hill-land of Madison and beyond. As they went north, the season was less advanced, but spring was in the fresh wind and the warm sunshine.
As evening drew on, the hylas began to peep from the pools, and their chorus deepened as they came on toward Bluff Siding, which seemed very small, very squalid, and uninteresting, but Robert pointed at the circling wine-colored wall of hills and the warm sunset sky.
"We're in luck to find a hotel," said Robert. "They burn down every three months."
They were met by a middle-aged man, and conducted across the road to a hotel, which had been a roller-skating rink in other days, and was not prepossessing. However, they were ushered into the parlor, which resembled the sitting-room of a rather ambitious village home, and there they took seats, while the landlord consulted about rooms.
The wife's heart sank. From the window she could see several of the low houses, and far off just the hills which seemed to make the town so very small, very lonely. She was not given time to shed tears. The children clamored for food, tired and cross.
Robert went out into the office, where he signed his name under the close and silent scrutiny of a half-dozen roughly clad men, who sat leaning against the wall. They were merely working-men to him, but in Mrs. Bloom's eyes they were dangerous people.
The landlord looked at the name as Robert wrote. "Your boxes are all here," he said.
Robert looked up at him in surprise. "What boxes?"
"Your household goods. They came in on No. 9."
Robert recovered himself. He remembered this was a village where everything that goes on—everything—is known.
The stairway rose picturesquely out of the office to the low second story, and up these stairs they tramped to their tiny rooms which were like cells.
"Oh, mamma, ain't it queer?" cried the boys.
"Supper is all ready," the landlord's soft, deep voice announced a few moments later, and the boys responded with whoops of hunger.
They were met by the close scrutiny of every boarder as they entered, and they heard also the muttered comments and explanations.
"Family to take the Merrill house."
"He looks purty well flaxed out, don't he?"
They were agreeably surprised to find everythingneat and clean and wholesome. The bread was good and the butter delicious. Their spirits revived.
"That butter tastes like old times," said Robert. "It's fresh. It's really butter."
They made a hearty meal, and the boys, being filled up, grew sleepy. After they were put to bed Robert said, "Now, Mate, let's go see the house."
They walked out arm in arm like lovers. Her sturdy form steadied him, though he would not have acknowledged it. The red flush was not yet gone from the west, and the hills still kept a splendid tone of purple-black. It was very clear, the stars were out, the wind deliciously soft. "Isn't it still?" Robert almost whispered.
They walked on under the budding trees up the hill, till they came at last to the small frame house set under tall maples and locust-trees, just showing a feathery fringe of foliage.
"This is our home," said Robert.
Mate leaned on the gate in silence. Frogs were peeping. The smell of spring was in the air. There was a magnificent repose in the hour, restful, recreating, impressive.
"Oh, it's beautiful, Robert! I know we shall like it."
"Wemustlike it," he said.
Firstcontact with the people disappointed Robert. In the work of moving in he had to do with people who work at day's work, and the fault was his more thantheirs. He forgot that they did not consider their work degrading. They resented his bossing. The drayman grew rebellious.
"Look a-here, my Christian friend, if you'll go 'long in the house and let us alone it 'll be a good job. We know what we're about."
This was not pleasant, and he did not perceive the trouble. In the same way he got foul of the carpenter and the man who ploughed his garden. Some way his tone was not right. His voice was cold and distant. He generally found that the men knew better than he what was to be done and how to do it; and sometimes he felt like apologizing, but their attitude had changed till apology was impossible.
He had repelled their friendly advances because he considered them (without meaning to do so) as workmen, and not as neighbors. They reported, therefore, that he was cranky and rode a high horse.
"He thinks he's a little tin god on wheels," the drayman said.
"Oh, he'll get over that," said McLane. "I knew the boy's folks years ago—tiptop folks, too. He ain't well, and that makes him a little crusty."
"That's the trouble—he thinks he's an upper crust," said Jim Cullen, the drayman.
At the end of ten days they were settled, and nothing remained to do but plan a little garden and—get well. The boys, with their unspoiled natures, were able to melt into the ranks of the village-boy life at once, with no more friction than was indicated by a couple of rough-and-tumble fights. They were sturdy fellows,like their mother, and these fights gave them high rank.
Robert got along in a dull, smooth way with his neighbors. He was too formal with them. He met them only at the meat-shop and the post-office. They nodded genially, and said, "Got settled yet?" And he replied, "Quite comfortable, thank you." They felt his coldness. Conversation halted when he came near, and made him feel that he was the subject of their talk. As a matter of fact, he generally was. He was a source of great speculation with them. Some of them had gone so far as to bet he wouldn't live a year. They all seemed grotesque to him, so work-scarred and bent and hairy. Even the men whose names he had known from childhood were queer to him. They seemed shy and distant, too, not like his ideas of them.
To Mate they were almost caricatures. "What makes them look so—so 'way behind the times, Robert?"
"Well, I suppose they are," said Robert. "Life in these coulies goes on rather slower than in Chicago. Then there are a great many Welsh and Germans and Norwegians, living 'way up the coulies, and they're the ones you notice. They're not all so." He could be generous toward them in general; it was in special cases where he failed to know them.
They had been there nearly two weeks without meeting any of them socially, and Robert was beginning to change his opinion about them. "They let us severely alone," he was saying one night to his wife.
"It's very odd. I wonder what I'd better do, Robert.I don't know the etiquette of these small towns. I never lived in one before, you know. Whether I ought to call first—and, good gracious, who'll I call on? I'm in the dark."
"So am I, to tell the truth. I haven't lived in one of these small towns since I was a lad. I have a faint recollection that introductions were absolutely necessary. They have an etiquette which is as binding as that of McAllister's Four Hundred, but what it is I don't know."
"Well, we'll wait."
"Theboysare perfectly at home," said Robert, with a little emphasis on boys, which was the first indication of his disappointment. The people he had failed to reach.
There came a knock on the door that startled them both. "Come in," said Robert, in a nervous shout.
"Land sakes! did I scare ye? Seem so, way ye yelled," said a high-keyed nasal voice, and a tall woman came in, followed by an equally stalwart man.
"How d'e do, Mrs. Folsom? My wife, Mr. Folsom."
Folsom's voice was lost in the bustle of getting settled, but Mrs. Folsom's voice rose above the clamor. "I was tellin'himit was about time we got neighborly. I never let anybody come to town a week without callin' on 'em. It does a body a heap o' good to see a face outside the family once in a while, specially in a new place. How do you like up here on the hill?"
"Very much. The view is so fine."
"Yes, I s'pose it is. Still, it ain't my notion. I don't like to climb hills well enough. Still, I've heardof people buildin' justforthe view. It's all in taste, as the old woman said that kissed the cow."
There was an element of shrewdness and self-analysis in Mrs. Folsom which saved her from being grotesque. She knew she was queer to Mrs. Bloom, but she did not resent it. She was still young in form and face, but her teeth were gone, and, like so many of her neighbors, she was too poor to replace them from the dentist's. She wore a decent calico dress and a shawl and hat.
As she talked her eyes took in every article of furniture in the room, and every little piece of fancy-work and bric-à-brac. In fact, she reproduced the pattern of one of the tidies within two days.
Folsom sat dumbly in his chair. Robert, who met him now as a neighbor for the first time, tried to talk with him, but failed, and turned himself gladly to Mrs. Folsom, who delighted him with her vigorous phrases.
"Oh, we're a-movin', though you wouldn't think it. This town is filled with a lot of old skinflints. Close ain't no name for 'em. Jest ask Folsom thar about 'em. He's been buildin' their houses for 'em. Still, I suppose they say the same thing o' me," she added, with a touch of humor which always saved her. She used a man's phrases. "We're always ready to tax some other feller, but we kick like mules when the tax falls on us," she went on. "My land! the fight we've had to git sidewalks in this town!"
"You should be mayor."
"That's what I tell Folsom. Takes a woman to clean things up. Well, I must run along. ThoughtI'd jest call in and see how you all was. Come down when ye kin."
"Thank you, I will."
After they had gone Robert turned with a smile: "Our first formal call."
"Oh, dear, Robert, what can I do with such people?"
"Go see 'em. I like her. She's shrewd. You'll like her, too."
"But what can I say to such people? Did you hear her say 'we fellers' to me?"
Robert laughed. "That's nothing. She feels as much of a man, or 'feller,' as any one. Why shouldn't she?"
"But she's so vulgar."
"I admit she isn't elegant, but I think she's a good wife and mother."
"I wonder if they're all like that?"
"Now, Mate, we must try not to offend them. We must try to be one of them."
But this was easier said than done. As he went down to the post-office and stood waiting for his mail like the rest he tried to enter into conversation with them, but mainly they moved away from him. William McTurg nodded at him and said, "How de do?" and McLane asked how he liked his new place, and that was about all.
He couldn't reach them. They suspected him. They had only the estimate of the men who had worked for him; and, while they were civil, they plainly didn't need him in the slightest degree, except as a topic of conversation.
He did not improve as he had hoped to do. The spring was wet and cold, the most rainy and depressing the valley had seen in many years. Day after day the rain-clouds sailed in over the northern hills and deluged the flat little town with water, till the frogs sang in every street, till the main street mired down every team that drove into it.
The corn rotted in the earth, but the grass grew tall and yellow-green, the trees glistened through the gray air, and the hills were like green jewels of incalculable worth, when the sun shone, at sweet infrequent intervals.
The cold and damp struck through into the alien's heart. It seemed to prophesy his dark future. He sat at his desk and looked out into the gray rain with gloomy eyes—a prisoner when he had expected to be free.
He had failed in his last venture. He had not gained any power—he was really weaker than ever. The rain had kept him confined to the house. The joy he had anticipated of tracing out all his boyish pleasure haunts was cut off. He had relied, too, upon that as a source of literary power.
He could not do much more than walk down to the post-office and back on the pleasantest days. A few people called, but he could not talk to them, and they did not call again.
In the mean while his little bank-account was vanishing. The boys were strong and happy; that was his only comfort. And his wife seemed strong, too. She had little time to get lonesome.
He grew morbid. His weakness and insecurity made him jealous of the security and health of others.
He grew almost to hate the people as he saw them coming and going in the mud, or heard their loud hearty voices sounding from the street. He hated their gossip, their dull jokes. The flat little town grew vulgar and low and desolate to him.
Every little thing which had amused him now annoyed him. The cut of their beards worried him. Their voices jarred upon him. Every day or two he broke forth to his wife in long tirades of abuse.
"Oh, I can't stand these people! They don't know anything. They talk every rag of gossip into shreds. 'Taters, fish, hops; hops, fish, and 'taters. They've saved and pinched and toiled till their souls are pinched and ground away. You're right. They are caricatures. They don't read or think about anything in which I'm interested. This life is nerve-destroying. Talk about the health of the village life! it destroys body and soul. It debilitates me. It will warp us both down to the level of these people."
She tried to stop him, but he went on, a flush of fever on his cheek:
"They degrade the nature they have touched. Their squat little town is a caricature like themselves. Everything they touch they belittle. Here they sit while sidewalks rot and teams mire in the streets."
He raged on like one demented—bitter, accusing, rebellious. In such a mood he could not write. In place of inspiring him, the little town and its people seemed to undermine his power and turn his sweetnessof spirit into gall and acid. He only bowed to them now as he walked feebly among them, and they excused it by referring to his sickness. They eyed him each time with pitying eyes. "He's failin' fast," they said among themselves.
One day, as he was returning from the post-office, he felt blind for a moment and put his hand to his head. The world of vivid green grew gray, and life receded from him into illimitable distance. He had one dim fading glimpse of a shaggy-bearded face looking down at him, and felt the clutch of an iron-hard strong arm under him, and then he lost hold even on so much consciousness.
He came back slowly, rising out of immeasurable deeps toward a distant light which was like the mouth of a well filled with clouds of misty vapor. Occasionally he saw a brown big hairy face floating in over this lighted horizon, to smile kindly and go away again. Others came with shaggy beards. He heard a cheery tenor voice which he recognized, and then another face, a big brown smiling face; very lovely it looked now to him—almost as lovely as his wife's, which floated in from the other side.
"He's all right now," said the cheery tenor voice from the big bearded face.
"Oh, Mr. McTurg, do you think so?"
"Ye-e-s, sir. He's all right. The fever's left him. Brace up, old man. We need ye yit awhile." Then all was silent again.
The well-mouth cleared away its mist again, and hesaw more clearly. Part of the time he knew he was in bed staring at the ceiling. Part of the time the well-mouth remained closed in with clouds.
Gaunt old women put spoons of delicious broth to his lips, and their toothless mouths had kindly lines about them. He heard their high voices sounding faintly.
"Now, Mis' Bloom, jest let Mis' Folsom an' me attend to things out here. We'll get supper for the boys, an' you jest go an' lay down. We'll take care ofhim. Don't worry. Bell's a good hand with sick."
Then the light came again, and he heard a robin singing, and a cat-bird squalled softly, pitifully. He could see the ceiling again. He lay on his back, with his hands on his breast. He felt as if he had been dead. He seemed to feel his body as if it were an alien thing.
"How are you, sir?" called the laughing, thrillingly hearty voice of William McTurg.
He tried to turn his head, but it wouldn't move. He tried to speak, but his dry throat made no noise.
The big man bent over him. "Want 'o change place a little?"
He closed his eyes in answer.
A giant arm ran deftly under his shoulders and turned him as if he were an infant, and a new part of the good old world burst on his sight. The sunshine streamed in the windows through a waving screen of lilac leaves and fell upon the carpet in a priceless flood of radiance.
There sat William McTurg smiling at him. He had no coat on and no hat, and his bushy thick hair rose upfrom his forehead like thick marsh-grass. He looked to be the embodiment of sunshine and health. Sun and air were in his brown face, and the perfect health of a fine animal was in his huge limbs. He looked at Robert with a smile that brought a strange feeling into his throat. It made him try to speak; at last he whispered.
The great figure bent closer: "What is it?"
"Thank—you."
William laughed a low chuckle. "Don't bother about thanks. Would you like some water?"
A tall figure joined William, awkwardly.
"Hello, Evan!"
"How is he, Bill?"
"He's awake to-day."
"That's good. Anything I can do?"
"No, I guess not. All he needs is somethin' to eat."
"I jest brought a chicken up, an' some jell an' things the women sent. I'll stay with him till twelve, then Folsom will come in."
Thereafter he lay hearing the robins laugh and the orioles whistle, and then the frogs and katydids at night. These men with greasy vests and unkempt beards came in every day. They bathed him, and helped him to and from the bed. They helped to dress him and move him to the window, where he could look out on the blessed green of the grass.
O God, it was so beautiful! It was a lover's joy only to live, to look into these radiant vistas again. A cat-bird was singing in the currant-hedge. A robin was hopping across the lawn. The voices of the childrensounded soft and jocund across the road. And the sunshine—"Beloved Christ, Thy sunshine falling upon my feet!" His soul ached with the joy of it, and when his wife came in she found him sobbing like a child.
They seemed never to weary in his service. They lifted him about, and talked to him in loud and hearty voices which roused him like fresh winds from free spaces.
He heard the women busy with things in the kitchen. He often saw them loaded with things to eat passing his window, and often his wife came in and knelt down at his bed.
"Oh, Robert, they're so good! They feed us like God's ravens."
One day, as he sat at the window fully dressed for the fourth of fifth time, William McTurg came up the walk.
"Well, Robert, how are ye to-day?"
"First rate, William," he smiled. "I believe I can walk out a little if you'll help me."
"All right, sir."
And he went forth leaning on William's arm, a piteous wraith of a man.
On every side the golden June sunshine fell, filling the valley from purple brim to purple brim. Down over the hill to the west the light poured, tangled and glowing in the plum and cherry trees, leaving the glistening grass spraying through the elms, and flinging streamers of pink across the shaven green slopes where the cattle fed.
On every side he saw kindly faces and heard heartyvoices: "Good day, Robert. Glad to see you out again." It thrilled him to hear them call him by his first name.
His heart swelled till he could hardly breathe. The passion of living came back upon him, shaking, uplifting him. His pallid lips moved. His face was turned to the sky.
"O God, let me live! It is so beautiful! O God, give me strength again! Keep me in the light of the sun! Let me see the green grass come and go!"
He turned to William with trembling lips, trying to speak:
"Oh, I understand you now. I know you all now."
But William did not understand him.
"There! there!" he said, soothingly. "I guess you're gettin' tired." He led Robert back and put him to bed.
"I'd know but we was a little brash about goin' out," William said to him, as Robert lay there smiling up at him.
"Oh, I'm all right now," the sick man said.
"Matie," the alien cried, when William had gone, "we know our neighbors now, don't we? We never can hate or ridicule them again."
"Yes, Robert. They never will be caricatures again—to me."
Lifein the small towns of the older West moves slowly—almost as slowly as in the seaport villages or little towns of the East. Towns like Tyre and Bluff Siding have grown during the last twenty years, but very slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees. Lying too far away from the Mississippi to be affected by the lumber interest, they are merely trading-points for the farmers, with no perceivable germs of boom in their quiet life.
A stranger coming into Belfast, Minnesota, excites much the same languid but persistent inquiry as in Belfast, New Hampshire. Juries of men, seated on salt-barrels and nail-kegs, discuss the stranger's appearance and his probable action, just as in Kittery, Maine, but with a lazier speech-tune, and with a shade less of apparent interest.
On such a rainy day as comes in May after the corn is planted—a cold,wetrainy day—the usual crowd was gathered in Wilson's grocery-store at Bluff Siding, a small town in "The Coally Country." They were farmers, for the most part, retired from active service. Their coats were of cheap diagonal or cassimere, muchfaded and burned by the sun; their hats, flapped about by winds and soaked with countless rains, were also of the same yellow-brown tints. One or two wore paper collars on their hickory shirts.
McIlvaine, farmer and wheat-buyer, wore a paper collar and a butterfly necktie, as befitted a man of his station in life. He was a short, squarely made Scotchman, with sandy whiskers much grayed, and with a keen, intensely blue eye.
"Say," called McPhail, ex-sheriff of the county, in the silence that followed some remark about the rain, "any o' you fellers had any talk with this feller Sanford?"
"I hain't," said Vance. "You, Bill?"
"No; but somebody was sayin' he thought o' startin' in trade here."
"Don't Sam know? He generally knows what's goin' on."
"Knows he registered from Pittsfield, Mass., an' that's all. Say, that's a mighty smart-lookin' woman o' his."
"Vance always sees how the women look. Where'd you seeher?"
"Came in here the other day to look up prices."
"Wha'dshesay 'bout settlin'?"
"Hadn't decided yet."
"He's tooslickto have much business in him. That waxedmustache gives 'im away."
The discussion having reached that point where his word would have most effect, Steve Gilbert said, whileopening the hearth to rap out the ashes of his pipe, "Sam's wife heerd that he was kind o' thinkin' some of goin' into business here, if things suited 'im first-rate."
They all knew the old man was aching to tell something, but they didn't purpose to gratify him by any questions. The rain dripped from the awning in front, and fell upon the roof of the storeroom at the back with a soft and steady roar.
"Good f'r the corn," McPhail said, after a long pause.
"Purty cold, though."
Gilbert was tranquil—he had a shot in reserve.
"Sam's wife saidhiswife said he was thinkin' some of goin' into a bank here—"
"A bank!"
"What in thunder—"
Vance turned, with a comical look on his long, placid face, one hand stroking his beard.
"Well, now, gents, I'll tell you what's the matter with this town. It needs a bank. Yes, sir!Ineed a bank."
"You?"
"Yes, me. I didn't know just whatdidail me, but I do now. It's the need of a bank that keeps me down."
"Well, you fellers can talk an' laugh, but I tell yeh they's a boom goin' to strike this town. It's got to come. W'y, just look at Lumberville!"
"Theirboomis ourbu'st," was McPhail's comment.
"I don't think so," said Sanford, who had entered in time to hear these last two speeches. They all lookedat him with deep interest. He was a smallish man. He wore a derby hat and a neat suit. "I've looked things over pretty close—a man don't like to invest his capital" (here the rest looked at one another) "till he does; and I believe there's an opening for a bank."
As he dwelt upon the scheme from day to day, the citizens warmed to him, and he became "Jim" Sanford. He hired a little cottage, and went to housekeeping at once; but the entire summer went by before he made his decision to settle. In fact, it was in the last week of August that the little paper announced it in the usual style:
Mr. James G. Sanford, popularly known as "Jim," has decided to open an exchange bank for the convenience of our citizens, who have hitherto been forced to transact business in Lumberville. The thanks of the town are due Mr. Sanford, who comes well recommended from Massachusetts and from Milwaukee, and, better still, with a bag of ducats. Mr. S. will be well patronized. Success, Jim!
Mr. James G. Sanford, popularly known as "Jim," has decided to open an exchange bank for the convenience of our citizens, who have hitherto been forced to transact business in Lumberville. The thanks of the town are due Mr. Sanford, who comes well recommended from Massachusetts and from Milwaukee, and, better still, with a bag of ducats. Mr. S. will be well patronized. Success, Jim!
The bank was open by the time the corn-crop and the hogs were being marketed, and money was received on deposit while the carpenters were still at work on the building. Everybody knew now that he was as solid as oak.
He had taken into the bank, as bookkeeper, Lincoln Bingham, one of McPhail's multitudinous nephews; and this was a capital move. Everybody knew Link, and knew he was a McPhail, which meant that he "could be tied to in all kinds o' weather." Of coursethe McPhails, McIlvaines, and the rest of the Scotch contingency "banked on Link." As old Andrew McPhail put it:
"Link's there, an' he knows the bank an' books, an' just how things stand"; and so when he sold his hogs he put the whole sum—over fifteen hundred dollars—into the bank. The McIlvaines and the Binghams did the same, and the bank was at once firmly established among the farmers.
Only two people held out against Sanford, old Freeme Cole and Mrs. Bingham, Lincoln's mother; but they didn't count, for Freeme hadn't a cent, and Mrs. Bingham was too unreasoning in her opposition. She could only say: "I don't like him, that's all. I knowed a man back in New York that curled hismustaches just that way, an' he wa'n't no earthly good."
It might have been said by a cynic that Banker Sanford had all the virtues of a defaulting bank cashier. He had no bad habits beyond smoking. He was genial, companionable, and especially ready to help when sickness came. When old Freeme Cole got down with delirium tremens that winter, Sanford was one of the most heroic of nurses, and the service was so clearly disinterested and magnanimous that every one spoke of it.
His wife and he were included in every dance or picnic; for Mrs. Sanford was as great a favorite as the banker himself, she was so sincere, and her gray eyes were so charmingly frank, and then she said "such funny things."
"I wish I had something to do besides housework. It's a kind of a putterin' job, best ye can do," she'd say, merrily, just to see the others stare. "There's too much moppin' an' dustin'. Seems 's if a woman used up half her life on things that don't amount to anything, don't it?"
"I tell yeh that feller's a scallywag. I know it buh the way 'e walks 'long the sidewalk," Mrs. Bingham insisted to her son, who wished her to put her savings into the bank.
The youngest of a large family, Link had been accustomed all his life to Mrs. Bingham's many whimsicalities.
"I s'pose you cansmellhe's a thief, just as you can tell when it's goin' to rain, or the butter's comin', by the smell."
"Well, you needn't laugh, Lincoln. Ican," maintained the old lady, stoutly. "An' I ain't goin' to put a red cent o' my money into his pocket—f'r there's where it 'ud go to."
She yielded at last, and received a little bank-book in return for her money. "Jest about all I'll ever get," she said, privately; and thereafter out of her brass-bowed spectacles with an eagle's gaze she watched the banker go by. But the banker, seeing the dear old soul at the window looking out at him, always smiled and bowed, unaware of her suspicion.
At the end of the year he bought the lot next his rented house, and began building one of his own, a modest little affair, shaped like a pork-pie with a cupola,or a Tam-o'-Shanter cap—a style of architecture which became fashionable at once.
He worked heroically to get the location of the plow-factory at Bluff Siding, and all but succeeded; but Tyre, once their ally, turned against them, and refused to consider the fact of the Siding's position at the centre of the county. However, for some reason or other, the town woke up to something of a boom during the next two years. Several large farmers decided to retire and live off the sweat of some other fellow's brow, and so built some houses of the pork-pie order, and moved into town.
This inflow of moneyed men from the country resulted in the establishment of a "seminary of learning" on the hillside, where the Soldiers' Home was to be located. This called in more farmers from the country, and a new hotel was built, a sash-and-door factory followed, and Burt McPhail set up a feed-mill.
All this improvement unquestionably dated from the opening of the bank, and the most unreasoning partisans of the banker held him to be the chief cause of the resulting development of the town, though he himself modestly disclaimed any hand in the affair.
Had Bluff Siding been a city, the highest civic honors would have been open to Banker Sanford; indeed, his name was repeatedly mentioned in connection with the county offices.
"No, gentlemen," he explained, firmly, but courteously, in Wilson's store one night; "I'm a banker, not a politician. I can't ride two horses."
In the second year of the bank's history he went up to the north part of the state on business, visiting West Superior, Duluth, Ashland, and other booming towns, and came back full of the wonders of what he saw.
"There's big money up there, Nell," he said to his wife.
But she had the woman's tendency to hold fast to what she had, and would not listen to any plans about moving.
"Build up your business here, Jim, and don't worry about what good chances there are somewhere else."
He said no more about it, but he took great interest in all the news the "boys" brought back from their annual deer-hunts "up north." They were all enthusiastic over West Superior and Duluth, and their wonderful development was the never-ending theme of discussion in Wilson's store.
Thefirst two years of the bank's history were solidly successful, and "Jim" and "Nellie" were the head and front of all good works, and the provoking cause of most of the fun. No one seemed more care-free.
"We consider ourselves just as young as anybody," Mrs. Sanford would say, when joked about going out with the young people so much; but sometimes at home, after the children were asleep, she sighed a little.
"Jim, I wish you was in some kind of a businessso I could help. I don't have enough to do. I s'pose Icouldmop an' dust, an' dust an' mop; but it seems sinful to waste time that way. Can't I do anything, Jim?"
"Why, no. If you 'tend to the children and keep house, that's all anybody asks of you."
She was silent, but not convinced. She had a desire to do something outside the walls of her house—a desire transmitted to her from her father, for a woman inherits these things.
In the spring of the second year a number of the depositors drew out money to invest in Duluth and Superior lots, and the whole town was excited over the matter.
The summer passed, Link and Sanford spending their time in the bank—that is, when not out swimming or fishing with the boys. But July and August were terribly hot and dry, and oats and corn were only half-crop, and the farmers were grumbling. Some of them were forced to draw on the bank instead of depositing.
McPhail came in, one day in November, to draw a thousand dollars to pay for a house and lot he had recently bought.
Sanford was alone. He whistled. "Phew! You're comin' at me hard. Come in to-morrow. Link's gone down to the city to get some money."
"All right," said McPhail; "any time."
"Goin' t' snow?"
"Looks like it. I'll haf to load a lot o' ca'tridges ready f'r biz."
About an hour later old lady Bingham burst upon the banker, wild and breathless. "I want my money," she announced.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Bingham. Pleasant—"
"I want my money. Where's Lincoln?"
She had read that morning of two bank failures—one in Nova Scotia and one in Massachusetts—and they seemed providential warnings to her. Lincoln's absence confirmed them.
"He's gone to St. Paul—won't be back till the five-o'clock train. Do you need some money this morning? How much?"
"Allof it, sir. Every cent."
Sanford saw something was out of gear. He tried to explain. "I've sent your son to St. Paul after some money—"
"Where's my money? What have you done withthat?" In her excitement she thought of her money just as she hand handed it in—silver and little rolls and wads of bills.
"If you'll let me explain—"
"I don't want you to explain nawthin'. Jest hand me out my money."
Two or three loafers, seeing her gesticulate, stopped on the walk outside and looked in at the door. Sanford was annoyed, but he remained calm and persuasive. He saw that something had caused a panic in the good, simple old woman. He wished for Lincoln as one wishes for a policeman sometimes.
"Now, Mrs. Bingham, if you'll only wait till Lincoln—"
"I don't want 'o wait. I want my money, right now."
"Will fifty dollars do?"
"No, sir; I want it all—every cent of it—jest as it was."
"But I can't do that.Yourmoney is gone—"
"Gone?Whereis it gone? What have you done with it? You thief—"
"'Sh!" He tried to quiet her. "I mean I can't give you your money—"
"Why can't you?" she stormed, trotting nervously on her feet as she stood there.
"Because—if you'd let me explain—we don't keep the money just as it comes to us. We pay it out, and take in other—"
Mrs. Bingham was getting more and more bewildered. She now had only one clear idea—she couldn't get her money. Her voice grew tearful like an angry child's.
"I want my money—I knew you'd steal it—that I worked for. Give me my money."
Sanford hastily handed her some money. "Here's fifty dollars. You can have the rest when—"
The old lady clutched the money, and literally ran out of the door, and went off up the sidewalk, talking incoherently. To every one she met she told her story; but the men smiled and passed on. They had heard her predictions of calamity before.
But Mrs. McIlvaine was made a trifle uneasy by it. "Hewouldn'tgive you y'r money? Or did he say hecouldn't?" she inquired, in her moderate way.
"He couldn't, an' he wouldn't!" she said. "If you've got any money there, you'd better get it out quick. It ain't safe a minute. When Lincoln comes home I'm goin' to see if I can't—"
"Well, I was calc'latin' to go to Lumberville this week, anyway, to buy a carpet and a chamber set. I guess I might 's well get the money to-day."
When she came in and demanded the money, Sanford was scared. Were these two old women the beginning of the deluge? Would McPhail insist on being paid also? There was just one hundred dollars left in the bank, together with a little silver. With rare strategy he smiled.
"Certainly, Mrs. McIlvaine. How much will you need?"
She had intended to demand the whole of her deposit—one hundred and seventeen dollars—but his readiness mollified her a little. "I did 'low I'd take the hull, but I guess seventy-five dollars 'll do."
He paid the money briskly out over the little glass shelf. "How is your children, Mrs. McIlvaine?"
"Purty well, thanky," replied Mrs. McIlvaine, laboriously counting the bills.
"Is it all right?"
"I guess so," she replied, dubiously. "I'll count it after I get home."
She went up the street with the feeling that the bank was all right, and she stepped in and told Mrs. Bingham thatshehad no trouble in getting her money.
After she had gone Sanford sat down and wrote atelegram which he sent to St. Paul. This telegram, according to the duplicate at the station, read in this puzzling way:
E. O., Exchange Block, No. 96. All out of paper. Send five hundred note-heads and envelopes to match. Business brisk. Press of correspondence just now. Get them out quick. Wire.Sanford.
E. O., Exchange Block, No. 96. All out of paper. Send five hundred note-heads and envelopes to match. Business brisk. Press of correspondence just now. Get them out quick. Wire.
Sanford.
Two or three others came in after a little money, but he put them off easily. "Just been cashing some paper, and took all the ready cash I can spare. Can't you wait till to-morrow? Link's gone down to St. Paul to collect on some paper. Be back on the five-o'clock. Nine o'clock, sure."
An old Norwegian woman came in to deposit ten dollars, and he counted it in briskly, and put the amount down on her little book for her. Barney Mace came in to deposit a hundred dollars, the proceeds of a horse sale, and this helped him through the day. Those who wanted small sums he paid.
"Glad this ain't a big demand. Rather close on cash to-day," he said, smiling, as Lincoln's wife's sister came in.
She laughed, "I guess it won't bu'st yeh. If I thought it would, I'd leave it in."
"Bu'sted!" he said, when Vance wanted him to cash a draft. "Can't do it. Sorry, Van. Do it in the morning all right. Can you wait?"
"Oh, I guess so. Haf to, won't I?"
"Curious," said Sanford, in a confidential way."I don't know that I ever saw things get in just such shape. Paper enough—but exchange, ye know, and readjustment of accounts."
"I don't know much about banking, myself," said Vance, good-naturedly; "but I s'pose it's a good 'eal same as with a man. Git short o' cash, first they know—'ain't got a cent to spare."
"That's the idea exactly. Credit all right, plenty o' property, but—" and he smiled and went at his books. The smile died out of his eyes as Vance went out, and he pulled a little morocco book from his pocket and began studying the beautiful columns of figures with which it seemed to be filled. Those he compared with the books with great care, thrusting the book out of sight when any one entered.
He closed the bank as usual at five. Lincoln had not come—couldn't come now till the nine-o'clock accommodation. For an hour after the shades were drawn he sat there in the semi-darkness, silently pondering on his situation. This attitude and deep quiet were unusual to him. He heard the feet of friends and neighbors passing the door as he sat there by the smouldering coal-fire, in the growing darkness. There was something impressive in his attitude.
He started up at last, and tried to see what the hour was by turning the face of his watch to the dull glow from the cannon-stove's open door.
"Supper-time," he said, and threw the whole matter off, as if he had decided it or had put off the decision till another time.
As he went by the post-office Vance said to McIlvaine in a smiling way, as if it were a good joke on Sanford:
"Little short o' cash down at the bank."
"He's a good fellow," McIlvaine said.
"So's his wife," added Vance, with a chuckle.
Thatnight, after supper, Sanford sat in his snug little sitting-room with a baby on each knee, looking as cheerful and happy as any man in the village. The children crowed and shouted as he "trotted them to Boston," or rode them on the toe of his boot. They made a noisy, merry group.
Mrs. Sanford "did her own work," and her swift feet could be heard moving to and fro out in the kitchen. It was pleasant there; the woodwork, the furniture, the stove, the curtains—all had that look of newness just growing into coziness. The coal-stove was lighted and the curtains were drawn.
After the work in the kitchen was done, Mrs. Sanford came in and sat awhile by the fire with the children, looking very wifely in her dark dress and white apron, her round, smiling face glowing with love and pride—the gloating look of a mother seeing her children in the arms of her husband.
"How is Mrs. Peterson's baby, Jim?" she said, suddenly, her face sobering.
"Pretty bad, I guess. La, la, la—deedle-dee! Thedoctor seemed to think it was a tight squeak if it lived. Guess it's done for—oop 'e goes!"
She made a little leap at the youngest child, and clasped it convulsively to her bosom. Her swift maternal imagination had made another's loss very near and terrible.
"Oh, say, Nell," he broke out, on seeing her sober, "I had the confoundedest time to-day with old lady Bingham—"
"'Sh! Baby's gone to sleep."
After the children had been put to bed in the little alcove off the sitting-room, Mrs. Sanford came back, to find Jim absorbed over a little book of accounts.
"What are you studying, Jim?"
Some one knocked on the door before he had time to reply.
"Come in!" he said.
"Sh! Don'tyellso," his wife whispered.
"Telegram, Jim," said a voice in the obscurity.
"Oh! That you, Sam? Come in."
Sam, a lathy fellow with a quid in his cheek, stepped in. "How d' 'e do, Mis' Sanford?"
"Set down—se' down."
"Can't stop; 'most train-time."
Sanford tore the envelope open, read the telegram rapidly, the smile fading out of his face. He read it again, word for word, then sat looking at it.
"Any answer?" asked Sam.
"No."
"All right. Good-night."
"Good-night."
After the door slammed, Sanford took the sheet from the envelope and reread it. At length he dropped into his chair. "That settles it," he said, aloud.
"Settles what? What's the news?" His wife came up and looked over his shoulder.
"Settles I've got to go on that nine-thirty train."
"Be back on the morning train?"
"Yes; I guess so—I mean, of course—I'll have to be—to open the bank."
Mrs. Sanford looked at him for a few seconds in silence. There was something in his look, and especially in his tone, that troubled her.
"What do you mean? Jim, you don't intend to come back!" She took his arm. "What's the matter? Now tell me! Whatareyou going away for?"
He knew he could not deceive his wife's ears and eyes just then, so he remained silent. "We've got to leave, Nell," he admitted at last.
"Why? What for?"
"Because I'm bu'sted—broke—gone up the spout—and all the rest!" he said, desperately, with an attempt at fun. "Mrs. Bingham and Mrs. McIlvaine have bu'sted me—dead."
"Why—why—what has become of the money—all the money the people have put in there?"
"Gone up with the rest."
"What 've you done with it? I don't—"
"Well, I've invested it—and lost it."
"James Gordon Sanford!" she exclaimed, tryingto realize it. "Was that right? Ain't that a case of—of—"
"Shouldn't wonder. A case of embezzlement such as you read of in the newspapers." His tone was easy, but he avoided the look in his wife's beautiful gray eyes.
"But it's—stealing—ain't it?" She stared at him, bewildered by his reckless lightness of mood.
"It isnow, because I've lost. If I'd 'a' won it, it 'ud 'a' been financial shrewdness!"
She asked her next question after a pause, in a low voice, and through teeth almost set. "Did you go into this bank to—steal this money? Tell me that!"
"No; I didn't, Nell. I ain't quite up to that."
His answer softened her a little, and she sat looking at him steadily as he went on. The tears began to roll slowly down her cheeks. Her hands were clenched.
"The fact is, the idea came into my head last fall when I went up to Superior. My partner wanted me to go in with him on some land, and I did. We speculated on the growth of the town toward the south. We made a strike; then he wanted me to go in on a copper-mine. Of course I expected—"
As he went on with the usual excuses her mind made all the allowances possible for him. He had always been boyish, impulsive, and lacking in judgment and strength of character. She was humiliated and frightened, but she loved and sympathized with him.
Her silence alarmed him, and he made excuses for himself. He was speculating for her sake more than for his own, and so on.
"Choo—choo!" whistled the far-off train through the still air.
He sprang up and reached for his coat.
She seized his arm again. "Where are you going?" she sternly asked.
"To take that train."
"When are you coming back?"
"I don't know." But his tone said, "Never."
She felt it. Her face grew bitter. "Going to leave me and—the babies?"
"I'll send for you soon. Come, good-by!" He tried to put his arm about her. She stepped back.
"Jim, if you leave me to-night" ("Choo—choo!" whistled the engine), "you leave me forever." There was a terrible resolution in her tone.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I'm going to stay here. If you go—I'll never be your wife—again—never!" She glanced at the sleeping children, and her chin trembled.
"I can't face those fellows—they'll kill me," he said, in a sullen tone.
"No, they won't. They'll respect you, if you stay and tell 'em exactly how—it—all—is. You've disgraced me and my children, that's what you've done! If you don't stay—"
The clear jangle of the engine-bell sounded through the night as with the whiz of escaping steam and scrape and jar of gripping brakes and howl of wheels the train came to a stop at the station. Sanford dropped his coat and sat down again.
"I'llhaveto stay now." His tone was dry and lifeless. It had a reproach in it that cut the wife deep—deep as the fountain of tears; and she went across the room and knelt at the bedside, burying her face in the clothes on the feet of her children, and sobbed silently.
The man sat with bent head, looking into the glowing coal, whistling through his teeth, a look of sullen resignation and endurance on his face that had never been there before. His very attitude was alien and ominous.