________________________________________________
_ THEY journeyed for three and a half months. They saw the
Grand Canyon, the adobe walls of Sante Fe and, in a drive
from El Paso into Mexico, their first foreign land. They jogged
from San Diego and La Jolla to Los Angeles, Pasadena, Riverside,
through towns with bell-towered missions and orange-
groves; they viewed Monterey and San Francisco and a
forest of sequoias. They bathed in the surf and climbed
foothills and danced, they saw a polo game and the making of
motion-pictures, they sent one hundred and seventeen souvenir
post-cards to Gopher Prairie, and once, on a dune by a foggy
sea when she was walking alone, Carol found an artist, and he
looked up at her and said, "Too damned wet to paint; sit
down and talk," and so for ten minutes she lived in a romantic
novel.
Her only struggle was in coaxing Kennicott not to spend
all his time with the tourists from the ten thousand other
Gopher Prairies. In winter, California is full of people from
Iowa and Nebraska, Ohio and Oklahoma, who, having traveled
thousands of miles from their familiar villages, hasten to secure
an illusion of not having left them. They hunt for people from
their own states to stand between them and the shame of naked
mountains; they talk steadily, in Pullmans, on hotel porches,
at cafeterias and motion-picture shows, about the motors and
crops and county politics back home. Kennicott discussed
land-prices with them, he went into the merits of the several
sorts of motor cars with them, he was intimate with train
porters, and he insisted on seeing the Luke Dawsons at their
flimsy bungalow in Pasadena, where Luke sat and yearned to
go back and make some more money. But Kennicott gave
promise of learning to play. He shouted in the pool at the
Coronado, and he spoke of (though he did nothing more radical
than speak of) buying evening-clothes. Carol was touched
by his efforts to enjoy picture galleries, and the dogged way in
which he accumulated dates and dimensions when they followed
monkish guides through missions.
She felt strong. Whenever she was restless she dodged her
thoughts by the familiar vagabond fallacy of running away
from them, of moving on to a new place, and thus she persuaded
herself that she was tranquil. In March she willingly
agreed with Kennicott that it was time to go home. She was
longing for Hugh.
They left Monterey on April first, on a day of high blue
skies and poppies and a summer sea.
As the train struck in among the hills she resolved, "I'm
going to love the fine Will Kennicott quality that there is in
Gopher Prairie. The nobility of good sense. It will be sweet
to see Vida and Guy and the Clarks. And I'm going to see
my baby! All the words he'll be able to say now! It's a
new start. Everything will be different!"
Thus on April first, among dappled hills and the bronze of
scrub oaks, while Kennicott seesawed on his toes and chuckled,
"Wonder what Hugh'll say when he sees us?"
Three days later they reached Gopher Prairie in a sleet
storm.
II
No one knew that they were coming; no one met them;
and because of the icy roads, the only conveyance at the station
was the hotel 'bus, which they missed while Kennicott
was giving his trunk-check to the station agent--the only
person to welcome them. Carol waited for him in the station,
among huddled German women with shawls and umbrellas, and
ragged-bearded farmers in corduroy coats; peasants mute as
oxen, in a room thick with the steam of wet coats, the reek
of the red-hot stove, the stench of sawdust boxes which served
as cuspidors. The afternoon light was as reluctant as a winter
dawn.
"This is a useful market-center, an interesting pioneer post,
but it is not a home for me," meditated the stranger Carol.
Kennicott suggested, "I'd 'phone for a flivver but it'd take
quite a while for it to get here. Let's walk."
They stepped uncomfortably from the safety of the plank
platform and, balancing on their toes, taking cautious strides,
ventured along the road. The sleety rain was turning to snow.
The air was stealthily cold. Beneath an inch of water was a
layer of ice, so that as they wavered with their suit-cases they
slid and almost fell. The wet snow drenched their gloves; the
water underfoot splashed their itching ankles. They scuffled
inch by inch for three blocks. In front of Harry Haydock's
Kennicott sighed:
"We better stop in here and 'phone for a machine."
She followed him like a wet kitten.
The Haydocks saw them laboring up the slippery concrete
walk, up the perilous front steps, and came to the door
chanting:
"Well, well, well, back again, eh? Say, this is fine! Have
a fine trip? My, you look like a rose, Carol. How did you
like the coast, doc? Well, well, well! Where-all did you
go?"
But as Kennicott began to proclaim the list of places
achieved, Harry interrupted with an account of how much
he himself had seen, two years ago. When Kennicott boasted,
"We went through the mission at Santa Barbara," Harry
broke in, "Yeh, that's an interesting old mission. Say, I'll
never forget that hotel there, doc. It was swell. Why, the
rooms were made just like these old monasteries. Juanita
and I went from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. You folks
go to San Luis Obispo?"
"No, but----"
"Well you ought to gone to San Luis Obispo. And then
we went from there to a ranch, least they called it a ranch----"
Kennicott got in only one considerable narrative, which
began:
"Say, I never knew--did you, Harry?--that in the Chicago
district the Kutz Kar sells as well as the Overland? I never
thought much of the Kutz. But I met a gentleman on the
train--it was when we were pulling out of Albuquerque, and
I was sitting on the back platform of the observation car,
and this man was next to me and he asked me for a light,
and we got to talking, and come to find out, he came from
Aurora, and when he found out I came from Minnesota he
asked me if I knew Dr. Clemworth of Red Wing, and of course,
while I've never met him, I've heard of Clemworth lots of
times, and seems he's this man's brother! Quite a coincidence!
Well, we got to talking, and we called the porter--that was a
pretty good porter on that car--and we had a couple bottles
of ginger ale, and I happened to mention the Kutz Kar, and
this man--seems he's driven a lot of different kinds of cars--
he's got a Franklin now--and he said that he'd tried the Kutz
and liked it first-rate. Well, when we got into a station--
I don't remember the name of it--Carrie, what the deuce
was the name of that first stop we made the other side of
Albuquerque?--well, anyway, I guess we must have stopped
there to take on water, and this man and I got out to stretch
our legs, and darned if there wasn't a Kutz drawn right up
at the depot platform, and he pointed out something I'd never
noticed, and I was glad to learn about it: seems that the gear
lever in the Kutz is an inch longer----"
Even this chronicle of voyages Harry interrupted, with
remarks on the advantages of the ball-gear-shift.
Kennicott gave up hope of adequate credit for being a
traveled man, and telephoned to a garage for a Ford taxicab,
while Juanita kissed Carol and made sure of being the first
to tell the latest, which included seven distinct and proven
scandals about Mrs. Swiftwaite, and one considerable doubt as
to the chastity of Cy Bogart.
They saw the Ford sedan making its way over the water-
lined ice, through the snow-storm, like a tug-boat in a fog.
The driver stopped at a corner. The car skidded, it turned
about with comic reluctance, crashed into a tree, and stood
tilted on a broken wheel.
The Kennicotts refused Harry Haydock's not too urgent
offer to take them home in his car "if I can manage to get
it out of the garage--terrible day--stayed home from the
store--but if you say so, I'll take a shot at it." Carol gurgled,
"No, I think we'd better walk; probably make better time, and
I'm just crazy to see my baby." With their suit-cases they
waddled on. Their coats were soaked through.
Carol had forgotten her facile hopes. She looked about
with impersonal eyes. But Kennicott, through rain-blurred
lashes, caught the glory that was Back Home.
She noted bare tree-trunks, black branches, the spongy
brown earth between patches of decayed snow on the lawns.
The vacant lots were full of tall dead weeds. Stripped of
summer leaves the houses were hopeless--temporary shelters.
Kennicott chuckled, "By golly, look down there! Jack Elder
must have painted his garage. And look! Martin Mahoney
has put up a new fence around his chicken yard. Say, that's
a good fence, eh? Chicken-tight and dog-tight. That's
certainly a dandy fence. Wonder how much it cost a yard?
Yes, sir, they been building right along, even in winter. Got
more enterprise than these Californians. Pretty good to be
home, eh?"
She noted that all winter long the citizens had been throwing
garbage into their back yards, to be cleaned up in spring. The
recent thaw had disclosed heaps of ashes, dog-bones, torn
bedding, clotted paint-cans, all half covered by the icy pools
which filled the hollows of the yards. The refuse had stained
the water to vile colors of waste: thin red, sour yellow, streaky
brown.
Kennicott chuckled, "Look over there on Main Street!
They got the feed store all fixed up, and a new sign on it,
black and gold. That'll improve the appearance of the block
a lot."
She noted that the few people whom they passed wore their
raggedest coats for the evil day. They were scarecrows in a
shanty town. . . . "To think," she marveled, "of coming
two thousand miles, past mountains and cities, to get off here,
and to plan to stay here! What conceivable reason for
choosing this particular place?"
She noted a figure in a rusty coat and a cloth cap.
Kennicott chuckled, "Look who's coming! It's Sam Clark!
Gosh, all rigged out for the weather."
The two men shook hands a dozen times and, in the
Western fashion, bumbled, "Well, well, well, well, you old
hell-hound, you old devil, how are you, anyway? You old
horse-thief, maybe it ain't good to see you again!" While Sam
nodded at her over Kennicott's shoulder, she was embarrassed.
"Perhaps I should never have gone away. I'm out of
practise in lying. I wish they would get it over! Just a
block more and--my baby!"
They were home. She brushed past the welcoming Aunt
Bessie and knelt by Hugh. As he stammered, "O mummy,
mummy, don't go away! Stay with me, mummy!" she cried,
"No, I'll never leave you again!"
He volunteered, "That's daddy."
"By golly, he knows us just as if we'd never been away!"
said Kennicott. "You don't find any of these California kids
as bright as he is, at his age!"
When the trunk came they piled about Hugh the bewhiskered
little wooden men fitting one inside another, the miniature junk,
and the Oriental drum, from San Francisco Chinatown; the
blocks carved by the old Frenchman in San Diego; the lariat
from San Antonio.
"Will you forgive mummy for going away? Will you?"
she whispered.
Absorbed in Hugh, asking a hundred questions about him--
had he had any colds? did he still dawdle over his oatmeal?
what about unfortunate morning incidents? she viewed Aunt
Bessie only as a source of information, and was able to ignore
her hint, pointed by a coyly shaken finger, "Now that you've
had such a fine long trip and spent so much money and all,
I hope you're going to settle down and be satisfied and
not----"
"Does he like carrots yet?" replied Carol.
She was cheerful as the snow began to conceal the slatternly
yards. She assured herself that the streets of New York and
Chicago were as ugly as Gopher Prairie in such weather; she
dismissed the thought, "But they do have charming interiors
for refuge." She sang as she energetically looked over Hugh's clothes.
The afternoon grew old and dark. Aunt Bessie went home.
Carol took the baby into her own room. The maid came in
complaining, "I can't get no extra milk to make chipped beef
for supper." Hugh was sleepy, and he had been spoiled by
Aunt Bessie. Even to a returned mother, his whining and
his trick of seven times snatching her silver brush were
fatiguing. As a background, behind the noises of Hugh
and the kitchen, the house reeked with a colorless stillness.
From the window she heard Kennicott greeting the Widow
Bogart as he had always done, always, every snowy evening:
"Guess this 'll keep up all night." She waited. There they
were, the furnace sounds, unalterable, eternal: removing ashes,
shoveling coal.
Yes. She was back home! Nothing had changed. She
had never been away. California? Had she seen it? Had she
for one minute left this scraping sound of the small shovel in
the ash-pit of the furnace? But Kennicott preposterously
supposed that she had. Never had she been quite so far from
going away as now when he believed she had just come back.
She felt oozing through the walls the spirit of small houses and
righteous people. At that instant she knew that in running
away she had merely hidden her doubts behind the officious
stir of travel.
"Dear God, don't let me begin agonizing again!" she sobbed.
Hugh wept with her.
"Wait for mummy a second!" She hastened down to the
cellar, to Kennicott.
He was standing before the furnace. However inadequate
the rest of the house, he had seen to it that the fundamental
cellar should be large and clean, the square pillars whitewashed,
and the bins for coal and potatoes and trunks convenient. A
glow from the drafts fell on the smooth gray cement floor at
his feet. He was whistling tenderly, staring at the furnace
with eyes which saw the black-domed monster as a symbol
of home and of the beloved routine to which he had returned--
his gipsying decently accomplished, his duty of viewing
"sights" and "curios" performed with thoroughness.
Unconscious of her, he stooped and peered in at the blue flames
among the coals. He closed the door briskly, and made a
whirling gesture with his right hand, out of pure bliss.
He saw her. "Why, hello, old lady! Pretty darn good to
be back, eh?"
"Yes," she lied, while she quaked, "Not now. I can't face
the job of explaining now. He's been so good. He trusts
me. And I'm going to break his heart!"
She smiled at him. She tidied his sacred cellar by throwing
an empty bluing bottle into the trash bin. She mourned, "It's
only the baby that holds me. If Hugh died----" She fled
upstairs in panic and made sure that nothing had happened to
Hugh in these four minutes.
She saw a pencil-mark on a window-sill. She had made it
on a September day when she had been planning a picnic for
Fern Mullins and Erik. Fern and she had been hysterical with
nonsense, had invented mad parties for all the coming winter.
She glanced across the alley at the room which Fern had
occupied. A rag of a gray curtain masked the still window.
She tried to think of some one to whom she wanted to
telephone. There was no one.
The Sam Clarks called that evening and encouraged her to
describe the missions. A dozen times they told her how glad
they were to have her back.
"It is good to be wanted," she thought. "It will drug me.
But---- Oh, is all life, always, an unresolved But?" _
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