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THE Overland Passenger was clanking its way across the prairies of the
middle West. Barbara, sitting on one of the stuffy red-plush seats,
pressed her face against the window-pane, and looked out into the
night. There was little to see,—the long, monotonous stretches of land,
cloaked in shadows, with dim lights showing from a few farmhouses, and
a wide expanse of sky, freckled with stars, above. But Barbara was
nearing home, and the dull pain which had been with her since the last
good-bys at college was forgotten, as her eyes drank in every familiar
detail of the shadowy landscape. Above the purr and hiss of the engine
sounded the jerky refrain of the rails, and the girl’s heart echoed the
words.
“Near-home, near-home,” it throbbed.
The noise of the train deepened as the piers of a bridge flashed by. A
porter with a lighted lantern passed through the car, and a traveling
agent in the seat ahead began to gather up his hand-baggage. But
Barbara still gazed out of the window, over the great piles of pine
that marked the boundary of the Auburn lumber-yard, towards a dim light
that shone down from the hill.
“Auburn, Auburn! This way out,” called the brakeman.
A thin, gray man stood at the steps of the car almost before the wheels
ceased to move. His voice and his hands went up simultaneously.
“Hel-lo, little girl,” he said to Barbara.
“Dear old Dad!” said Barbara to him.
“We’ll have to trust to the livery,” said Dr. Grafton. “Maud S. has had
a hard day, and I didn’t have the heart to have her harnessed again
to-night.”
“There’s a rummage-sale hat,” laughed Barbara, as a driver in a shabby
suit of livery and an ill-fitting top hat approached for her baggage
checks.
Auburn knew naught of cabs. A “hack line,” including perhaps three
dozen carriages which had passed beyond the wedding and funeral stage,
attended passengers to and from the railway station. In a spirit
of metropolitanism which seized the town at rare intervals, the
proprietors of the “line” had decided to livery their drivers. So they
had attended a rummage sale, given by the women members of an indigent
church, and had purchased therefrom every top hat in sight, regardless
of size, shape, or vintage. These they had distributed among their
drivers in an equally reckless and care-free way. Auburn, as a whole,
had not yet ceased to thrill with pride at her liveried service; but
those of her inhabitants who happened to be blessed with a sense of
humor experienced a sensation other than that of pride, upon beholding
the pompous splendor of Banker Willowby’s last season’s hat held in
place by the eyebrows of Peanuts Barker, or Piety Sanborn’s decorous
beaver perched upon the manly brow of Spike Hannegan.
The mutual enjoyment of this other sensation renewed the old feeling of
fellowship between Barbara and her father.
“It’s good to have you back, Girl,” he said.
Barbara crept a bit closer. “It’s good to be here,” she answered.
The Grafton house stood at the top of the longest hill in Auburn, and
it was ten minutes more before the carriage stopped at the maple tree
in front of the doctor’s home. The electric lights of Auburn, for
economical reasons, were put out upon the arrival of the moon, and
it was still and dark when the two started up the walk together. The
stars hung low near the horizon, a sleepy bird was talking to himself
in the willow tree, and the air was full of the bitter-sweet of cherry
blossoms. A little gray, shaggy dog came bounding over the terrace to
meet them, and the doorway was full of children’s heads.
Barbara’s mother stood on the front porch. Her eyes were soft and full,
and her face was the glad-sorry kind. She did not say a word, only
opened her arms, and the girl went in.
The children’s greetings were characteristic. Eighteen-year-old Jack
added a hearty smack to his “Hello, Barb”; David laid a pale little
cheek against his sister’s glowing one; and the Kid thrust his school
report into Barbara’s hand, and inquired in eager tones what gifts were
forthcoming. Only one member of the family circle was absent.
“Gassy’s gone to bed,” exclaimed Jack. “She’s got a grouch.”
“I have not,” retorted an aggressive voice. “Hello, Barbara.” A thin
little girl of eleven, in a nightgown, her head covered with bumps of
red hair wrapped about kid-curlers, seized Barbara from behind. There
was a vigorous hug, which sent a thrill of surprise to the big sister’s
heart, and Gassy became her own undemonstrative self again.
“Gee, you ought to see how you look!” said Jack.
“_You_ ought not, ’cause ’twould make you unhappy,” retorted Gassy.
“I should think you’d _feel_ unhappy, sleeping on that tiara of
bumps. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. You look just like a
tomato-worm.”
“Careful, Jack,” cautioned his father.
But the warning came too late. The small girl rushed at her tormentor,
leapt upon him, and thrust a cold little hand inside of his gray
sweater.
“There, there, children, don’t squabble before Barbara; she’s forgotten
that you are not always friends,” said Mrs. Grafton. “Run back to bed,
Cecilia; you’ll take cold. The rest of us are going, too. It’s long
past bedtime.”
Barbara had expected to find the first nights away from her college
room lonely ones; but the big four-poster, ugly as it had always seemed
to her, was an improvement upon the cot that was a divan by day and
a bed by night. Blessed, too, was the silence that was almost noisy,
out-of-doors, and the good-night pat of the mother, as she tucked her
firstling in. It was good, after all, to be at home, and good, too,
that she could be of use there. Her last thought was of the new green
carpet in the sitting-room below.
“It’s an outrage on æsthetics, that shade,” she said to herself. “I
wish mother hadn’t bought it until I got home. They do need me here.”
* * * * *
“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next
afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that
I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added
to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her
mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the
spice of life, here.”
“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,”
said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.”
“It’s pitifully, painfully solid,” said Barbara. “If it only realized
its own deficiencies, there would be hope for it. But it is always so
complacent and contented with itself. The road that leads up the hill
to Dyer’s Corner is characteristic of the whole town. Some man with
plenty of time on his hands—or for his feet—ambled along up the hill in
the beginning of things, and for fifty years the people have followed
his long, devious path, rather than branch out and originate another
easier. I believe that any sign of progress, civic or intellectual,
would cut Auburn to the quick,—if there is any quick to cut, in the
town.”
“Haven’t you noted the fine schedule on our electric-car line?” laughed
her mother.
“That’s just what I was thinking of. I commented on the improved time
that the cars make to Miss Bates, this morning. To my surprise she
stiffened at once. ‘You ain’t the first to make complaint,’ she said.
‘There ain’t no need of running a street-car like a fire-engine; and
they say that since this new schedule has been fixed, the conductors
won’t deliver dinner-pails to the factory men, or hold the car for you
while you go on a short errand. Auburn ain’t going to tolerate that.’
Doesn’t that sound just like Miss Bates, and like Auburn?”
“That’s right; run down Auburn,” said Jack, tossing his strap of
school-books on a chair, and hanging his cap on the rubber-plant.
“You’ll make yourself good and popular if you go about expressing
opinions like that in public. Auburn was good enough for Airy Fairy
Lilian in high-school days, but having received four years of
‘culchaw,’ and a starter on the alphabet to add to her name, the
plebeian ways of the old home-place jar her nerves. I like your
loyalty, Mistress Barbara!”
“That is totally uncalled for, Jack,” said Barbara. “I like Auburn
as much as you do. But it’s not an intellectual affection. I can’t
help seeing, in spite of my love for it, that the town is raw and
Western,—and painfully crude.”
“An intellectual affection! That’s as bad as a hygienic plum-pudding,”
groaned Jack. “If I didn’t have to go out to coach the football team
in five minutes, I would sit down and express my sympathy at the
stultifying life which you must lead for the next sixty years. Unless,
of course, we marry you off. There is always that alternative.”
“I hope you _are_ going to be contented, dear,” said Mrs. Grafton, as
her tall son relieved the rubber-plant of its burden, and clattered
noisily out of the room. “I realize that after four years of the jolly
intercourse you have had with the girls, and the growing college life,
we must seem slow and prosaic to you here; nothing much happens when
you are away. Of course, I don’t miss things as much as you will. _I’m_
used to the old slow way, and besides, I’m too busy to have time to
think of what is lacking. But I don’t want you to be hungry for what is
not. The happiest thing I’ve had to think about all these four years,
has been your home-coming, but I’ve been a little worried about your
coming, sometimes. Do you think you are going to be contented with us?”
Barbara’s answer was judicial. “Why, yes, I think so,” she said. “Of
course I shall miss the college life, and the intellectual stimulus
I had there, but _I’m_ going to work hard, too. All the theories I
learned at Vassar are just ready to be put into practice, and I have
so much to give the world that I can hardly wait to take my pen in
hand. Oh, I am so glad, mother, that my life-work is laid out for me.
I tell you frankly that I never could stand living in Auburn if I were
not busy. The sordidness of the workers, and the pettiness of the
idlers, would make me desperate. But I shall go to work at once, and
write—write—all the things I have been longing to give utterance to for
four years.”
“But you can’t write all the time,” said Mrs. Grafton.
“No, I don’t intend to. There are other things to do. There has never
been any organized philanthropy in Auburn, and there is plenty of work
for somebody in that line. I hope, too, that I may fall in with some
congenial people who will care to do some regular, systematic study
with me,—though I suppose they will be hard to find in a town of this
size. Then, too, I thought that I might help Susan.”
Mrs. Grafton’s busy needle flew as she talked. “How, dear?”
“Oh, in her studies. Susan and I kept together in high-school days,
and I think that it has always been a tragedy in her life that she
couldn’t have a college education. She has a fine mind,—not original,
you know, but clear-thinking,—and she loves study. Poor girl, I can
help her so much. And of course it will be a mental stimulus to me,
too.”
“I’m afraid Susan won’t have time.”
“Why, what is she doing?”
“Housework,” replied her mother. “She is cooking, and caring for her
father and brothers, and she does it well, too.”
“What a shame!”
“What, to do it well?”
“You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that
mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured.
It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”
“Doesn’t it!” sighed Mrs. Grafton; “I find, all the time, that it takes
much more than I possess. When it comes to the problems of how to let
down Cecilia’s tucks without showing, how to vary the steak-chops diet
that we grow so tired of, and how to decrease the gas-bills, I feel my
mental inferiority. I’m glad that you have come home with new ideas; we
need them, dear.”
A voice rose from the foot of the stairs below,—a shrill soprano voice,
that skipped the scale from C to C, and back again to A.
“That’s Ellen,” said Mrs. Grafton, laying down her sewing with a sigh.
“I can’t teach her to come to me when she wants me. She says that she
doesn’t mind messages if she can ‘holler ’em,’ but she ‘won’t climb
stairs fer Mrs. Roosevelt herself.’ I suppose I’ll have to go down.”
“What does she want?”
“That’s what makes it interesting: you never know. Perhaps an
ironing-sheet, or the key to the fruit-closet. Maybe the plumber has
come, or the milkman is to be paid, or the telephone is ringing. Or
possibly a book-agent has made his appearance. She always keeps it a
mystery until I get down.”
“I don’t see how on earth you live in that way. I never could get
anything done.”
“I don’t accomplish much,” sighed her mother. “The days ought to be
three times as long, to hold all the things they bring to be done. My
life is like the mother’s bag in the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’”
“I can’t work that way,” said Barbara. “It’s ruinous to any continuity
of thought. I suppose that means that I’ll have to shut myself up in my
room to write.”
Mrs. Grafton had gone downstairs.
“I don’t see how mother can stand it,” said the girl to herself. “Two
telephone calls, an interview with the butcher, a stop to tie up
David’s finger, a hunt for father’s lost letter, some money to be sent
down to the vegetable man, and two calls to the front door,—that makes
eight interruptions in the last hour. If she would only systematize
things, so she wouldn’t be disturbed, she wouldn’t look so tired as she
does. There ought not to be so much work in this house.”
She glanced around the big, homey-looking living-room, through the
door into the narrow, old-fashioned hall, and beyond, into the
sunny dining-room. The house was an old one; the furnishing, though
comfortable, showed the signs of hard usage and disorder. An umbrella
reposed on the couch, Jack’s football mask lay on the table, and her
mother’s ravelings littered the floor. A heterogeneous collection of
battered animals occupied the window-sill, and a pile of the doctor’s
memoranda was thrust under the clock.
“I don’t wonder that things stray away here,” she added, “with no
one to pick them up but mother. She ought to insist upon orderliness
from each member of the family, and save herself. I’m afraid that her
over-work is partly her own fault.”
“Another mishap,” said her mother, as she picked up her sewing on
entering the room. “The gas-stove this time. Ellen can’t make it burn,
and I’ve had to telephone the gas-man. Her baking is just under way,
too, and I’ll have to send out for some bread for supper. I hate to ask
you to do it, dear, this first day, but I’m afraid that Jack won’t be
back in time to go.”
“Where shall I go? To Miss Pettibone’s?”
“Yes; my purse is on the table. Get a loaf of bread and some cookies,
and anything else that would be good for supper. The meal is likely to
be a slim one.”
Miss Pettibone’s tiny front room took the place of a delicatessen shop
in Auburn. She was a little, brown, fat acorn of a woman, who had been
wooed in her unsuspicious middle age by a graceless young vagabond, who
had brightened her home for six weeks and then departed, carrying with
him the little old maid’s heart, and the few thousand dollars which
represented her capital. She was of the type of woman who would feel
more grief than rage at such faithlessness, and she refused to allow
her recreant lover to be traced. After the first shock was over, she
turned to her one accomplishment as a means of livelihood, and produced
for sale such delicious bread, such delectable tarts, such marvelous
cakes and cookies, that all Auburn profited by the absence of the
rogue. She did catering in a small way, and sometimes, as an especial
favor, serving; and the sight of Miss Pettibone in a stiff white apron,
with a shiny brass tray under her arm, going into a side entrance, was
as sure a sign of a party within, as Japanese lanterns on the front
porch, or an order for grapefruit at the grocer’s. The tragedy of her
life had not embittered her, and all the grief that she had stirred
into her cakes was as little noticeable in the light loaves as the
evidences of sorrow in her intercourse with the world. Optimism was the
yeast of her hard little life, and had raised her to the soundness and
sweetness of her own bread.
There was no one in the shop as Barbara swung the door open and set
a-jingle the bell at the top. But there was encouragement in the sight
of a spicy gingerbread, some small yellow patty-cakes, some sugary
crullers, and a pot of brown baked beans, in the glass-covered counter.
Miss Pettibone came bustling into the room at the sound of the bell.
“Why, Barbara Grafton,” she said delightedly; “you, of all people! When
did you get back?”
“Last night,” answered Barbara.
“Well, I declare! If I’m not glad to see you! You haven’t changed a
mite,—even to get taller. I guess you’ve got your growth now. You
spindled a good deal while you was stretching, but you seem to be
fleshing up now.”
“I’m always a vulgarly healthy person,” said Barbara. “But how about
you? How is the rheumatism?”
“It’s in its place when the roll is called. I’ve had a lame shoulder
all spring.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Well, you don’t need to be. That’s one of the things that make dying
easy. Providence was pretty kind when she began to invent aches and
pains. Just think how hard it would be to step off, if you had to
go when you was perfect physically. But that ain’t the usual way,
thank goodness! All of the rheumatic shoulders, and bad backs, and
poor sights, and failing memories, are just stones that pave the road
to dying. I guess that’s what St. Paul meant when he said, ‘We die
daily.’ But you don’t look as though you had begun, yet.”
“College food seems to agree with me, Miss Pettibone, but it’s not like
your baking. I’ve come for a loaf of bread, and to carry off that pot
of beans.”
“You can have the bread, child, but not the beans; they was sold hours
ago.”
“Too bad,” sighed Barbara. “Give me the gingerbread.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s sold, too.”
“Why do you keep them, then?”
“I always ask my customers to leave them, if they ain’t in any hurry
for them. It keeps my shop full, and besides, it makes folks that come
in late see what they’ve missed. I notice that the minute a sold sign
goes on a thing, it raises its value with most people. Barbara, it does
my heart good to see you back again.”
“I’m glad to be back, too. How much are the little cakes?”
“Are you, my dear? Well, I’m glad to hear you say so. Twenty cents a
dozen. Do you want them right away? You see, going away from home
spoils lots of young folks, these days. Sending ’em away is like
teaching them to tell time when they’re children. Of course it’s a
matter of education, but after that they’re always on the outlook to
see if the clock is fast or slow. And most of the young people who go
away to college find it pretty slow in Auburn. I’m glad that _you_
ain’t going to be discontented.”
Barbara looked guilty. She did not want to accept undeserved praise,
and yet it was hard to be frank without being impolite.
“Of course I expect to miss college life, Miss Pettibone,” she began.
“Dear me, yes. I know what that will mean to you. Why, after I came
back from Maine, twenty years ago, I was as lonesome for sea-air as
though it had been a person. To this day I long for the tang of that
salt wind. That’s why I use whale-oil soap—because the smell of the
suds reminds me of the sea. Of _course_ you’re going to miss college,
Barbara.”
“I shall try to keep so busy that I won’t have time to be lonely,” said
Barbara.
“That’s the right spirit. It won’t be hard to do, either, in your
house. Your family is a large one, and your mother is put to it to do
everything. Gassy ain’t old enough yet to be of much help, and it’s
easier to keep a secret than a girl, in Auburn. I guess she’ll be
glad to have you here to pitch in. It’s a good thing that you like
housework.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. Housekeeping is not my forte.
Of course I shall help mother, but I don’t intend to do that kind of
work to the exclusion of all other. I intend to save the best of myself
for my writing.”
Miss Pettibone looked properly awed.
“Well, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to write. I always said that
you’d be an authoress, when I used to see those school compositions of
yours that the ‘Conservative’ used to print. Why, Barbara, you come in
here once when you was in Kindergarten school, and you set down on my
front window-sill, and you says, ‘Miss Pettibone,’ you says, ‘I’ve
written a pome.’ And I says, ‘Good fer you, Barbara, let’s hear it.’ So
you smoothed down your white apron, and recited it to me. ‘It’s about
my mother,’ you says; ‘and this is it:—
‘Oh, Mrs. Grafton,’ said Miss Gray,
‘Oh, do your children run away?’
‘Oh, no,’ said she, ‘they never do;
Because I always use my shoe.’
Then when you was through you explained to me that your ma didn’t
really whip you. You just had to put in that part about the shoe to
make it rhyme, you said. You was an awful old-fashioned child, Barbara!”
“My poetry was of about the same quality then that it is now,” laughed
Barbara. “I’ll take the bread and the cakes with me, Miss Pettibone.
This is like old Auburn days. I haven’t carried a loaf of bread on the
street since I left home.”
“Well, paper bundles with the steam rising from them ain’t very swell,
but sometimes the insides makes it worth while,” said the little
baker. “Come in and see me often, Barbara, when it ain’t an errand. And
give my love to your mother. She hasn’t been looking well lately, seems
to me.”
Barbara smiled her good-by, and the little bell jingled merrily as the
door swung shut.
“It’s always good to see Miss Pettibone,” she said to herself as she
started up the quiet street. “She belongs in a story-book,—a little
felt one with cheery red covers. It is queer about her, too. She is as
provincial as any one in Auburn, and yet she is never commonplace.”
At the corner she encountered another of the characters of Auburn. This
was Mrs. Kotferschmidt, the old German woman, whose husband had been
for years the proprietor of the one boat-livery of the town. He had
died during the past winter, and Barbara, meeting the widow, stopped to
offer her condolences. The old boatman had taught her to swim and to
row, and her expressions of sympathy were genuine.
“Mother wrote me about your loss,” she said. “I was so sorry to hear
about Mr. Kotferschmidt.”
The old lady rustled in her crape, but the stolid face in the black
bonnet showed no sign of emotion.
“Oh, you don’t need to mind that,” she said politely. “He was getting
old, anyways. In the spring I hired me a stronger man to help me mit
the boats.”
Mrs. Kotferschmidt was the only passer Barbara met on her way home.
Chestnut Street was practically deserted. The school-children’s
procession had passed, and the business-men’s brigade had not yet
started to move. The shaded avenue, with its green arch of trees
overhead, stretched its quiet, leisurely way from Miss Pettibone’s shop
to the Grafton house. A shaft of red sun cut its way through the thick
leaves, and covered with a glorified light the square, substantial
houses that bordered the road. A few children played upon the street, a
dog was taking an undisturbed siesta on the sidewalk, and three snowy
pigeons were cooing softly as they strutted along the gutter. It
was all pretty and peaceful, but quiet, desperately quiet. Barbara’s
thoughts went back to the college campus, crowded with chattering
students, leisurely professors, hurrying messenger-boys, and busy
employees, and full of activity at this hour. What if the Sphinx could
see her now, or the Infant, or the dear House Plant, with that plebeian
loaf of bread under her arm, on that deserted Western road? She knew
what they would say; she could almost feel their glances of pity. Oh,
it was a misfortune to be born in a place like Auburn,—a stultifying,
crude, middle-western town. She choked down a lump in her throat that
threatened her.
“I must get to work,” she thought. “Soon,—soon! I shall never be able
to exist in Auburn, if I give myself time to think about it.”