CHAPTER XVECHOES FROM AFARSitting on a pierhead jutting from the Seattle water front one Sunday afternoon in April Robin surrendered himself to a mood that he had been choking down all winter.Materially he had done well enough. He had sought sanctuary in this seaport city and found what he sought. He had walked the streets with an assurance that he was lost in the swarming ant heap. So far as Montana, the Block S, those far wide ranges went, he had ceased to be. And since he had not come there seeking glory and fortune by the white-collar route he had soon found work that he could do and for which he was well paid.But he didn’t fit. He was an alien in an alien land. These people did not speak his tongue. His ways were not their ways. Even now the lessened rumble of Sunday traffic beat on his brain, a faint distasteful sound, which in midweek roar annoyed and irritated him with its clang of complicated machinery, its feverish scurrying of crowds—there seemed no more purpose in this medley of unrest than there was in the senseless milling of a herd—except that the human herd went surging this way and that under the constant pressure of the invisible riders of necessity.Here on this April afternoon the sun shone on rippling water at his feet. The surrounding hills and Sound islands all washed clean by drenching rain were bright with spring growth. For weeks, for months, Robin had lived and moved under the gloom of murky skies, great clouds that wept eternal tears. He had shivered on his wagon in damp fogs carrying a chill like the clammy hands of death. The sun was lost in that gloom. It was all gray, gray sky, gray streets, gray sea. Sometimes the very soul in him turned gray.He was too far from all that he had known and cared about. Voluntary exile he might have endured with better grace, knowing that he could return if he wished. But he could not go back. If he could not go back to places and things he knew he did not care where he went.So chafing, he could not fit himself in here. Sometimes he said to himself that it was all in his mind, that men and women, work and pleasure were the same anywhere. Only he couldn’t make that a reality for himself in Seattle. Such pleasures as he sought only made him sad. Life flowed about him in a surging stream and he was like a chip in the swirls. He had laid that feeling of loneliness, that depressing sense of isolation, to being a stranger, to living under a sodden, weeping sky that never cleared to let him see the blue. He had never known anything but brightness, air that was crystal-clear, a look that swept to a far horizon. Here the eyes were in a prison, shut in by streets like canyons, miles of houses monotonously alike, dark dripping forests that began where the last suburban cottages lifted among the raw stumps where logging outfits had taken their toll of the great trees.Robin had said to himself that when he knew people, when spring came, it would be different. Itwasdifferent. But the difference took the form of a more acute nostalgia. Robin had never wandered among the poets, but he knew spring fever and he was learning in bitterness of heart the meaning of homesickness.He turned now to face the city rising above him in terraced avenues. Smoke from ten thousand chimneys cast a haze against the soft blue sky. The rustle and noise and confusion had stilled a little, though not wholly, on this day of rest. There was a transient hush along the water front. An atmospheric beauty hovered upon the Sound. The Olympics stood out blue toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Yet the city faced Robin like a maelstrom from which he desired to be afar. He was sick with a subtle sorrow. The medicine to cure him was a good horse between his legs, a look from some high ridge out over a hundred miles of grassland all green now and sprinkled with blue windflowers. There would be mountains in the distance too; clean, upstanding peaks like Gothic cathedrals rising, as the Sweet Grass and the Bear Paws rose, abruptly from the level of the great plains. The sharp smell of bruised sage, the white tents of a round-up camp in a creek bottom, the howl of a wolf far off in the night—these Robin’s heart suddenly ached for—and for something else, that he felt deep within him but would never admit.“By God, I’ve a mind to go back and face the music!” he said aloud. “They can’t hang me. I’d as soon spend two or three years in Deer Lodge as here.”Of so little value did freedom seem to him in that moment. There was more than homesickness. A man’s liberty is dear but so is pride. Only cowards fled the field. He hadn’t fought a rear guard action. For four months that inner sense of shame had been slowly accumulating in Robin. All that he cared about, his little cosmos in its entirety, lay under the shadow of the Bear Paws. He had been stampeded into flight from a danger real enough, but which he should have faced.Robin rose from the weather-beaten pile.“Iwillgo back,” he said to himself. “I’ve had enough of this. I shouldn’t have run.”Within twenty-four hours he was aboard a Great Northern train rolling east through a gloomy pass in the Coast Range. He lay in a berth, his face pressed to a window pane, watching the dark forest slip by, a formless blur in the night, listening to the click-clack of rail joints under the iron wheels. He felt shut in, oppressed by those walls of dusky timber draped with mossy streamers, clouds above and a darksome aisle in the forest down which the train thundered. No place for a man hungry for bright sun and blue skies.At dawn the train dropped into the Yakima country. The land opened up in wide vistas. Cattle grazed on rolling hills, dark moving dots on pale green. Robin threw open a window. He leaned out sniffing. Sagebrush ran up to the right of way, receded into the distance, silver-gray in the first sunlight. He could smell it, sweet in his nostrils as camp fire smoke to an Arab.He lay back in his berth with a strange sense of relief. As the sailor sick of shore sights and sounds goes gladly down to the sea so Robin returned to his own country.
Sitting on a pierhead jutting from the Seattle water front one Sunday afternoon in April Robin surrendered himself to a mood that he had been choking down all winter.
Materially he had done well enough. He had sought sanctuary in this seaport city and found what he sought. He had walked the streets with an assurance that he was lost in the swarming ant heap. So far as Montana, the Block S, those far wide ranges went, he had ceased to be. And since he had not come there seeking glory and fortune by the white-collar route he had soon found work that he could do and for which he was well paid.
But he didn’t fit. He was an alien in an alien land. These people did not speak his tongue. His ways were not their ways. Even now the lessened rumble of Sunday traffic beat on his brain, a faint distasteful sound, which in midweek roar annoyed and irritated him with its clang of complicated machinery, its feverish scurrying of crowds—there seemed no more purpose in this medley of unrest than there was in the senseless milling of a herd—except that the human herd went surging this way and that under the constant pressure of the invisible riders of necessity.
Here on this April afternoon the sun shone on rippling water at his feet. The surrounding hills and Sound islands all washed clean by drenching rain were bright with spring growth. For weeks, for months, Robin had lived and moved under the gloom of murky skies, great clouds that wept eternal tears. He had shivered on his wagon in damp fogs carrying a chill like the clammy hands of death. The sun was lost in that gloom. It was all gray, gray sky, gray streets, gray sea. Sometimes the very soul in him turned gray.
He was too far from all that he had known and cared about. Voluntary exile he might have endured with better grace, knowing that he could return if he wished. But he could not go back. If he could not go back to places and things he knew he did not care where he went.
So chafing, he could not fit himself in here. Sometimes he said to himself that it was all in his mind, that men and women, work and pleasure were the same anywhere. Only he couldn’t make that a reality for himself in Seattle. Such pleasures as he sought only made him sad. Life flowed about him in a surging stream and he was like a chip in the swirls. He had laid that feeling of loneliness, that depressing sense of isolation, to being a stranger, to living under a sodden, weeping sky that never cleared to let him see the blue. He had never known anything but brightness, air that was crystal-clear, a look that swept to a far horizon. Here the eyes were in a prison, shut in by streets like canyons, miles of houses monotonously alike, dark dripping forests that began where the last suburban cottages lifted among the raw stumps where logging outfits had taken their toll of the great trees.
Robin had said to himself that when he knew people, when spring came, it would be different. Itwasdifferent. But the difference took the form of a more acute nostalgia. Robin had never wandered among the poets, but he knew spring fever and he was learning in bitterness of heart the meaning of homesickness.
He turned now to face the city rising above him in terraced avenues. Smoke from ten thousand chimneys cast a haze against the soft blue sky. The rustle and noise and confusion had stilled a little, though not wholly, on this day of rest. There was a transient hush along the water front. An atmospheric beauty hovered upon the Sound. The Olympics stood out blue toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Yet the city faced Robin like a maelstrom from which he desired to be afar. He was sick with a subtle sorrow. The medicine to cure him was a good horse between his legs, a look from some high ridge out over a hundred miles of grassland all green now and sprinkled with blue windflowers. There would be mountains in the distance too; clean, upstanding peaks like Gothic cathedrals rising, as the Sweet Grass and the Bear Paws rose, abruptly from the level of the great plains. The sharp smell of bruised sage, the white tents of a round-up camp in a creek bottom, the howl of a wolf far off in the night—these Robin’s heart suddenly ached for—and for something else, that he felt deep within him but would never admit.
“By God, I’ve a mind to go back and face the music!” he said aloud. “They can’t hang me. I’d as soon spend two or three years in Deer Lodge as here.”
Of so little value did freedom seem to him in that moment. There was more than homesickness. A man’s liberty is dear but so is pride. Only cowards fled the field. He hadn’t fought a rear guard action. For four months that inner sense of shame had been slowly accumulating in Robin. All that he cared about, his little cosmos in its entirety, lay under the shadow of the Bear Paws. He had been stampeded into flight from a danger real enough, but which he should have faced.
Robin rose from the weather-beaten pile.
“Iwillgo back,” he said to himself. “I’ve had enough of this. I shouldn’t have run.”
Within twenty-four hours he was aboard a Great Northern train rolling east through a gloomy pass in the Coast Range. He lay in a berth, his face pressed to a window pane, watching the dark forest slip by, a formless blur in the night, listening to the click-clack of rail joints under the iron wheels. He felt shut in, oppressed by those walls of dusky timber draped with mossy streamers, clouds above and a darksome aisle in the forest down which the train thundered. No place for a man hungry for bright sun and blue skies.
At dawn the train dropped into the Yakima country. The land opened up in wide vistas. Cattle grazed on rolling hills, dark moving dots on pale green. Robin threw open a window. He leaned out sniffing. Sagebrush ran up to the right of way, receded into the distance, silver-gray in the first sunlight. He could smell it, sweet in his nostrils as camp fire smoke to an Arab.
He lay back in his berth with a strange sense of relief. As the sailor sick of shore sights and sounds goes gladly down to the sea so Robin returned to his own country.