________________________________________________
_ A LETTER from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said that he
had been sent to the front, been slightly wounded, been made
a captain. From Vida's pride Carol sought to draw a stimulant
to rouse her from depression.
Miles had sold his dairy. He had several thousand dollars.
To Carol he said good-by with a mumbled word, a harsh
hand-shake, "Going to buy a farm in northern Alberta--far
off from folks as I can get." He turned sharply away, but
he did not walk with his former spring. His shoulders seemed
old.
It was said that before he went he cursed the town.
There was talk of arresting him, of riding him on a rail. It
was rumored that at the station old Champ Perry rebuked
him, "You better not come back here. We've got respect for
your dead, but we haven't got any for a blasphemer and a
traitor that won't do anything for his country and only bought
one Liberty Bond."
Some of the people who had been at the station declared that
Miles made some dreadful seditious retort: something about
loving German workmen more than American bankers; but
others asserted that he couldn't find one word with which to
answer the veteran; that he merely sneaked up on the platform
of the train. He must have felt guilty, everybody agreed,
for as the train left town, a farmer saw him standing in the
vestibule and looking out.
His house--with the addition which he had built four
months ago--was very near the track on which his train passed.
When Carol went there, for the last time, she found Olaf's
chariot with its red spool wheels standing in the sunny corner
beside the stable. She wondered if a quick eye could have
noticed it from a train.
That day and that week she went reluctantly to Red Cross
work; she stitched and packed silently, while Vida read the war
bulletins. And she said nothing at all when Kennicott com-
mented, "From what Champ says, I guess Bjornstam was a
bad egg, after all. In spite of Bea, don't know but what the
citizens' committee ought to have forced him to be patriotic--
let on like they could send him to jail if he didn't volunteer and
come through for bonds and the Y. M. C. A. They've worked
that stunt fine with all these German farmers."
II
She found no inspiration but she did find a dependable
kindness in Mrs. Westlake, and at last she yielded to the old
woman's receptivity and had relief in sobbing the story of
Bea.
Guy Pollock she often met on the street, but he was merely
a pleasant voice which said things about Charles Lamb and
sunsets.
Her most positive experience was the revelation of Mrs.
Flickerbaugh, the tall, thin, twitchy wife of the attorney.
Carol encountered her at the drug store.
"Walking?" snapped Mrs. Flickerbaugh.
"Why, yes."
"Humph. Guess you're the only female in this town that
retains the use of her legs. Come home and have a cup o'
tea with me."
Because she had nothing else to do, Carol went. But she
was uncomfortable in the presence of the amused stares which
Mrs. Flickerbaugh's raiment drew. Today, in reeking early
August, she wore a man's cap, a skinny fur like a dead cat,
a necklace of imitation pearls, a scabrous satin blouse, and a
thick cloth skirt hiked up in front.
"Come in. Sit down. Stick the baby in that rocker. Hope
you don't mind the house looking like a rat's nest. You don't
like this town. Neither do I," said Mrs. Flickerbaugh.
"Why----"
"Course you don't!"
"Well then, I don't! But I'm sure that some day I'll find
some solution. Probably I'm a hexagonal peg. Solution: find
the hexagonal hole." Carol was very brisk.
"How do you know you ever will find it?"
"There's Mrs. Westlake. She's naturally a big-city woman--
she ought to have a lovely old house in Philadelphia or Boston
--but she escapes by being absorbed in reading."
"You be satisfied to never do anything but read?"
"No, but Heavens, one can't go on hating a town
always!"
"Why not? I can! I've hated it for thirty-two years. I'll
die here--and I'll hate it till I die. I ought to have been a
business woman. I had a good deal of talent for tending to
figures. All gone now. Some folks think I'm crazy. Guess
I am. Sit and grouch. Go to church and sing hymns. Folks
think I'm religious. Tut! Trying to forget washing and
ironing and mending socks. Want an office of my own, and
sell things. Julius never hear of it. Too late."
Carol sat on the gritty couch, and sank into fear. Could
this drabness of life keep up forever, then? Would she some
day so despise herself and her neighbors that she too would
walk Main Street an old skinny eccentric woman in a mangy
cat's-fur? As she crept home she felt that the trap had
finally closed. She went into the house, a frail small woman,
still winsome but hopeless of eye as she staggered with the
weight of the drowsy boy in her arms.
She sat alone on the porch, that evening. It seemed that
Kennicott had to make a professional call on Mrs. Dave
Dyer.
Under the stilly boughs and the black gauze of dusk the
street was meshed in silence. There was but the hum of
motor tires crunching the road, the creak of a rocker on the
Howlands' porch, the slap of a hand attacking a mosquito, a
heat-weary conversation starting and dying, the precise rhythm
of crickets, the thud of moths against the screen--sounds that
were a distilled silence. It was a street beyond the end of the
world, beyond the boundaries of hope. Though she should sit
here forever, no brave procession, no one who was interesting,
would be coming by. It was tediousness made tangible, a
street builded of lassitude and of futility.
Myrtle Cass appeared, with Cy Bogart. She giggled and
bounced when Cy tickled her ear in village love. They strolled
with the half-dancing gait of lovers, kicking their feet out
sideways or shuffling a dragging jig, and the concrete walk sounded
to the broken two-four rhythm. Their voices had a dusky
turbulence. Suddenly, to the woman rocking on the porch of
the doctor's house, the night came alive, and she felt that
everywhere in the darkness panted an ardent quest which she
was missing as she sank back to wait for---- There must be
something. _
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