For Sommers had joined the staff of the great specialist, and resorted
daily to the busy offices in the Athenian Building. A brief vacation had
served to convince him of the folly that lay in indulging a parcel of
incoherent prejudices at the expense of even that somewhat nebulous thing
popularly called a "career." Dr. Lindsay made flattering offers; the work
promised to be light, with sufficient opportunity for whatever hospital
practice he cared to take; and the new aspect of his profession--commercial
medicine he dubbed it--was at least entertaining. If one wished to see the
people of Chicago at near range,--those who had made the city what it is,
and were making it what it will be,--this was pretty nearly the best chance
in the world.
When he had mentioned Lindsay's offer to Dresser, who was rising at
laborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realized
how unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser's
enthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him something
valuable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for the
thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to other people--to the
Hitchcocks? Yet he made his reservations to himself at least: he was not
committed to his "career"; he should be merely a spectator, a free-lance, a
critic, who keeps the precious treasure of his own independence. Almost at
the start, however, he was made to realize that this nonchalance, which
vindicated himself in his own eyes, could not be evident to others. As he
was entering the Athenian hive one morning, he passed the Hitchcock
brougham drawn up by the curb near a jeweller's shop. Miss Hitchcock, who
was preparing to alight, gave him a cordial smile and an intelligent glance
that was not without a trace of malice. When he crossed the pavement to
speak to her, she fulfilled the malice of her glance:
"You find Dr. Lindsay isn't so bad, after all?" There was no time for
explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her
mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of
triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial
annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay,
whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this _camaraderie_
of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, this
same morning, came a note from Mrs. E. G. Carson, inviting him to dinner: a
sign that something notable was expected of his career, for the Carsons
were thrifty of their favors, and were in no position to make social
experiments. Such was the merry way of the world, elsewhere as here, he
reflected, as he turned to the routine of the day.
The office was in full blast: the telephones rang sharply every few
minutes, telling in their irritable little clang of some prosperous patient
who desired a panacea for human ailments; the reception-room was already
crowded with waiting patients of the second class, those who could not
command appointments by telephone. Whenever the door into this room opened,
these expectant ones moved nervously, each one hoping to be called. Then,
as the door into the private offices closed, the ones left behind fell back
with sighs to the magazines and illustrated papers with which they sought
to distract their fears or their ennui.
The thin, tall building shivered slightly at the blows of the fresh April
wind. The big windows of the reception-room admitted broad bands of
sunlight. The lake dazzled beneath in gorgeous green and blue shades.
Spring had bustled into town from the prairies, insinuating itself into the
dirty, cavernous streets, sailing in boisterously over the gleaming lake,
eddying in steam wreaths about the lofty buildings. The subtle monitions of
the air permeated the atmosphere of antiseptics in the office, and whipped
the turbulent spirits of Sommers until, at the lunch hour, he deserted the
Athenian Building and telephoned for his horse.
This saddle horse was one of the compensations for conformity. He had been
too busy lately, however, to enjoy it. From the bellow of the city he
cantered down the boulevards toward the great parks. As he passed the
Hitchcock house he was minded to see if Miss Hitchcock would join him. In
the autumn she had ridden with him occasionally, waiving conventionalities,
but lately she had made excuses. He divined that Parker Hitchcock had
sneered at such countrified behavior. She was to go away in a few days for
a round of visits in the South, and he wanted to see her; but a carriage
drew up before the house, and his horse carried him briskly past down the
avenue. From one boulevard to another he passed, keeping his eyes straight
ahead, avoiding the sight of the comfortable, ugly houses, anxious to
escape them and their associations, pressing on for a beyond, for something
other than this vast, roaring, complacent city. The great park itself was
filled with people, carriages, bicycles. A stream of carts and horse-back
riders was headed for the Driving Club, where there was tennis and the new
game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway,
where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretch
of sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horse
picked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that lay
scattered about for acres. A wagon road led across this waste land toward
the crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense of
repose, of vast quiet. Everything was dead; the soft spring air gave no
life. Even in the geniality of the April day, with the brilliant,
theatrical waters of the lake in the distance, the scene was gaunt, savage.
To the north, a broad dark shadow that stretched out into the lake defined
the city. Nearer, the ample wings of the white Art Building seemed to stand
guard against the improprieties of civilization. To the far south, a line
of thin trees marked the outer desert of the prairie. Behind, in the west,
were straggling flat-buildings, mammoth deserted hotels, one of which was
crowned with a spidery steel tower. Nearer, a frivolous Grecian temple had
been wheeled to the confines of the park, and dumped by the roadside to
serve as a saloon.
Sommers rose in his stirrups and gazed about him over the rotting buildings
of the play-city, the scrawny acres that ended in the hard black line of
the lake, the vast blocks of open land to the south, which would go to make
some new subdivision of the sprawling city. Absorbed, charmed, grimly
content with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No
evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the
waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar
dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous
clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a
thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it
shut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep of defaced earth.
The horse started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the
desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his
crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held
herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt
streaming behind her, her face thrust into the air. Sommers reined in his
horse and jumped down.
"How is your husband?" he asked brusquely.
Mrs. Preston looked up with a smile of glad recognition, but she did not
answer immediately.
"You remember, don't you?" the doctor said kindly. "You are Mrs. Preston,
aren't you? I am the doctor who operated on your husband a few weeks ago at
the hospital."
"Yes, I remember," she replied, almost sullenly.
"How is he? I left St. Isidore's the next day. Is he still in the
hospital?"
"They discharged him last Monday," Mrs. Preston answered, in the same dull
tone.
"Ah!" The doctor jerked the bridle which he held in his left hand and
prepared to mount. "So he made a quick recovery."
"No, no! I didn't say that," she replied passionately. "You knew, you knew
_that_ couldn't be. He has--he is--I don't know how to say it."
Sommers slipped the bridle-rein over the horse's head and walked on by her
side. She looked down at the roadway, as if to hide her burning face.
"Where is he now?" the doctor asked, finally, more gently.
"With me, down there." Mrs. Preston waved her hand vaguely toward the
southern prairie. They began to walk more briskly, with a tacit purpose in
their motion. When the wagon road forked, Mrs. Preston took the branch that
led south out of the park. It opened into a high-banked macadamized avenue
bordered by broken wooden sidewalks. The vast flat land began to design
itself, as the sun faded out behind the irregular lines of buildings two
miles to the west. A block south, a huge red chimney was pouring tranquilly
its volume of dank smoke into the air. On the southern horizon a sooty
cloud hovered above the mills of South Chicago. But, except for the monster
chimney, the country ahead of the two was bare, vacant, deserted. The
avenue traversed empty lots, mere squares of sand and marsh, cut up in
regular patches for future house-builders. Here and there an advertising
landowner had cemented a few rods of walk and planted a few trees to trap
the possible purchaser into thinking the place "improved." But the cement
walks were crumbling, the trees had died, and rank thorny weeds choked
about their roots. The cross streets were merely lined out, a deep ditch on
either side of an embankment.
"My God, what a place!" the young doctor exclaimed. "The refuse acres of
the earth."
The woman smiled bitterly, tranquilly, while her glance roamed over the
familiar landscape.
"Yet it is better than the rest, back there," she protested, in a low
voice. "At least, there is something open, and a little green in spring,
and the nights are calm. It seems the least little bit like what it used to
be in Wisconsin on the lake. But there we had such lovely woodsy hills, and
great meadows, and fields with cattle, and God's real peace, not this
vacuum." Her voice grew faint.
"You liked it there?" the doctor asked musingly.
"It's all that I have ever known that was--as it should be. My father had a
farm," she explained more easily, "and until he died and I was sent to
Rockminster College to school, my life was there, by the lake, on the farm,
at the seminary on the hill, where my brother was studying--"
The visions of the past developed with endless clews, which she could not
follow aloud. After waiting for her to resume, Sommers asked tentatively:
"Why don't you go back, then?"
She flashed a rapid, indignant glance at him.
"Now! Go back to what?--With _him_!"
Her lips set tight. He had been stupid, had hit at random.
"No, no," she continued, answering her own heart; "they would never
understand. There is never any going back--and, sometimes, not much going
ahead," she ended, with an effort to laugh.
They stopped while the horse nibbled at a tall weed in the roadway. They
had got fairly into the prairie, and now at some distance on left and right
gawky Queen Anne houses appeared. But along their path the waste was
unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who
flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned
electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue.
Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil,
sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but
the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across their faces.
"How came you to get into this spot?" the doctor asked, after his searching
eyes had roamed over the misty landscape, half swamp, half city suburb.
"I was transferred--about the time of the operation. My school is over
there," she pointed vaguely toward the southwest. "I could not afford to
live any distance from the school," she added bluntly. "Besides, I wanted
to be alone."
So she taught, Sommers reflected, yet she had none of the professional air,
the faded niceness of face and manner which he associated with the city
school-teacher.
"I haven't taught long," she volunteered, "only about a year. First I was
over by Lincoln Park, near where I had been living."
"Do you like the teaching?" Sommers asked.
"I hate it," she remarked calmly, without any show of passion. "It takes a
little of one's life every day, and leaves you a little more dead."
They walked in silence for a few minutes, and then Mrs. Preston suddenly
stopped.
"Why do you come?" she exclaimed. "Why do you want to know? It can do no
good,--I know it can do no good, and it is worse to have any
one--_you_--know the hateful thing. I want to crush it in myself,
never to tell, no,--no one," she stopped incoherently.
"I shall go," the doctor replied calmly, compassionately. "And it is best
to tell."
Her rebellious face came back to its wonted repose.
"Yes, I suppose I make it worse. It is best to tell--sometime."