I
Chicago has 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 the south 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 the Star block
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 his heart 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 the Star. In addition to his regular work he
occasionally hazarded 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'll write 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 hurrying to 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.