THE SACKCLOTH OF SPRING VALLEY
Number five roared eastward through the town that day on time. No one
stepped down from the train, and no one took passage on it. Spring
Valley had dropped back into its customary uneventfulness so far as the
outer world might tell. It was but a little hamlet on the long line of
fields and trees that lies along the way of Number Five.
Hurrying on toward the vast confusion of the metropolis, Number Five
gave up its tenants to be lost in the cosmic focus of the great city,
where all about were the lights and the anxious faces. The city, with
its tall, dentated outline against the sky--wonderful, beautiful,
alluring; the city with its unceasing strife, its vast and brooding
peace, where walk side by side the ablest men, the most beautiful women
of all the world, all keyed to the highest pitch of effort, all living
at white heat of emotion and passion, of joy and of sorrow--the city and
its ways--we may not know these unless we, too, embark on Number Five.
In the silk-lined recesses of one of the city's greatest hostelries,
where anything in the world may be bought, there sat, soon after the
arrival of Number Five at the metropolis, the traveling man, Ben McQuaid
of Spring Valley, and a little milliner from a town east of Spring
Valley which Ben McQuaid "made" in his regular travel for his "house."
He had bought for her now the most expensive viands, the most confusing
and inspiring wines that all the city could offer. Soft-footed servants
were attending them both. They were having their little fling. To the
city that was a matter of small consequence.
Nor, when it comes to that, was all the city itself of so much
consequence. The great fact is that, while Ben McQuaid and the little
milliner were speeding east on Number Five, at midday, when the dusty
maples of Spring Valley still were motionless under the heat of the
inland summer day--old Nels Jorgens' wife was walking across the way
with a covered dish in her hands.... In the dish, you say, there was
only some crude cottage cheese for Aurora Lane? Was that all you saw?
Seek again: for you, too, are human and neither may you escape the great
things of life, nor ought you to miss its great discoveries.
Mrs. Nels Jorgens had on no hat. Her gown was God knows what--gingham or
calico or silk or cloth of gold, who shall say? She was a woman of
fifty-eight. Her sunken stomach protruded far below her flattened and
withered bosom as she walked. Her stringy hair was gray and uncomely.
But her face--now her face--have you not seen it? Perhaps not in the
city. But the little supper in the city (not yet come to the time of
sack-cloth) was by no means so great a thing as the service of Mrs. Nels
Jorgens, the wagon-maker's wife, when she carried across to Aurora Lane
a dish of something for her luncheon.
And others came. From the byways of this late cruel-hearted village came
women, surely not cruel-hearted after all. They seemed to have some
common errand. They were paying off the debt of years, though what they
brought was not in silver dishes and there was no bubbling wine. So far
from calling this a merciless, ignorant town, a hopeless town, at noon
of that day, had you been there and seen these women and their ways, you
would have called it charitable, kindly, beautiful; though after all it
was and had been only human.
Over the breathless maples there seemed now to hang a stratum of another
atmosphere, as sensible, as appreciable, as though a physical thing
itself. The sympathy of Spring Valley was awake at last--after twenty
years!
"'Rory, I just thought I'd come over and bring you a dish of this--I had
some already made. I said to myself, says I, if we can eat this all the
time, maybe you can just once"--it was the old jest, humble but kind. It
sounded wondrous sweet to Aurora Lane--after twenty years.
After these had gone away again, a little awed by the white, sad
dignity of Aurora Lane--even nature seemed to relent. Ben McQuaid and
the little milliner were cooled by swiftly revolving electric fans
yonder in the city. But along in the evening of this summer day in
Spring Valley the leaves of the maples were stirred by softly moving
breezes done by nature's hand.
"Aaron," said old Silas Kneebone to his crony, "seems like we're goin'
to get a change of weather. Maybe the hot spell's broke at last."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Silas," said his friend suddenly,
straightening up on his staff. "I'll tell you what I'll do with you,
Silas. Even if it _is_ goin' to be cool before long--I'll just take you
over to the drug store and buy you a drink of ice-cream sody at the
fountain!"
"Time comes," he continued after a time, "when a fellow's been feelin'
kind of stirred up, some way--when he feels just like he didn't care a
hang for no expense. Ain't that the truth?"