DIVERGING ROADS
BY ROSE WILDER LANE
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919
Copyright, 1919, by THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, March, 1919_
PROLOGUE
The tale of California's early days is an epic, an immortal song of
daring, of hope, of the urge of youth to unknown trails, of struggle,
and of heartbreak. Across the great American plains the adventurers
came, scrawling the story of their passing in lines of blood; they came
around the Horn in wind-jammers, beating their way northward in the
strange Pacific; they forced their way into the wilderness, awakening
California's hills from centuries-long sleep, and they pitched their
tents and built their cabins by thousands in Cherokee Valley.
Those were the great days of Cherokee, days of feverish activity,
of hard, fierce living, of marvelous event. The tales came down to
Masonville, where the stage stopped to change horses, and drivers,
express-messengers, and prospectors gathered in Mason's bar. The
Chinese laundryman had found beside his cabin a nugget worth sixteen
hundred dollars; the stage to Honey Creek had been held up just north
of Cherokee Hill; Jim Thane had struck it rich on North Branch.
Mason, prospering, ordered a billiard-table sent up from San
Francisco, built a dance-hall. Richardson came in with his family and
put up a general store. Cherokee was booming; Cherokee miners came down
with their sacks of gold-dust, and Masonville thrived.
But the great days passed. The time came when placer mining no longer
paid in Cherokee, and the camp moved on across the mountains. Cherokee
Valley was left behind, a desolate little hollow among the hills,
denuded of its trees, disfigured here and there by the scars of shallow
tunnels where hope still fought against defeat. A handful of dogged
miners remained, and a few Portuguese families living in little cabins,
harvesting a bare subsistence from the unwilling soil.
A few discouraged men came down to Masonville and took up homestead
claims, clearing the chaparral from their rolling acres, sowing grain
or setting out fruit-trees. They had wives and children; in time they
built a school-house. Later the railroad came through, and there was a
station and a small bank.
But the stirring times of enterprise and daring were gone forever. The
epic had ended in bad verse. Masonville slipped quietly to sleep, like
an old man sitting in the sun with his memories. And youth, taking
up its old immortal song of courage and of hope, went on to farther
unknown trails and different adventure.
DIVERGING ROADS
CHAPTER I
There is a peculiar quality in the somnolence of an old town in which
little has occurred for many years. It is the unease of relaxation
without repose, the unease of one who lies too late in bed, aware that
he should be getting up. The men who lounge aimlessly about the street
corners cannot be wholly idle. Their hands, at least, must be busy. The
scarred posts and notched edges of the board sidewalks show it; the
paint on the little stations is sanded shoulder-high to prevent their
whittling there. Energy struggles feebly under the weight of the slow,
uneventful days; but its pressure is always there, an urge that becomes
an irritation in young blood.
Helen Davies, pausing in the doorway of Richardson's store on a warm
spring afternoon, said to herself that she would be glad never to see
Masonville again. The familiar sight of its one drowsy street, the
rickety wooden awnings over the sidewalks, the boys pitching horseshoes
in the shade of the blacksmith-shop, was almost insupportable.
She did not want to stand there looking at it. She did not want to
follow the old stale road home to the old farm-house, which had not
changed since she could remember. She felt that she should be doing
something, she did not know what.
A long purple curl of smoke unrolling over the crest of Cherokee Hill
was the plume of Number Five coming in. Two short, quick puffs of white
above the bronze mist of bare apricot orchards mutely announced the
whistle for the grade.
Men sauntered past, going toward the station. The postmaster appeared
in his shirt-sleeves, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with mail sacks down
the middle of the street. The afternoon hack from Cherokee rattled by,
bringing a couple of tired, dust-grimed drummers. And the Masonville
girls, bare-headed, laughing, talking in high, gay voices, came
hurrying from the post-office, from the drug-store, from one of their
Embroidery Club meetings, to see Number Five come in. Helen shifted the
weight of the package on her arm, pulled her sunbonnet farther over her
face, and started home.
Depression and revolt struggled in her mind. She passed the wide,
empty doorway of Harner's livery-stable, the glowing forge of the
blacksmith-shop, without seeing them, absorbed in the turmoil of her
thoughts. But at the corner where the gravel walk began, and the
street frankly became a country road slipping down a little slope
between scattered white cottages, her self-absorption vanished.
A boy was walking slowly down the path. The elaborate unconcern of his
attitude, the stiffness of his self-conscious back, told her that he
had been waiting for her, and a rush of dizzying emotion swept away all
but the immediate moment. The sunshine was warm on her shoulders, the
grass of the lawns was green, every lace-curtained window behind the
rose-bushes seemed to conceal watching eyes, and the sound of her feet
on the gravel was loud in her ears. She overtook him at last, trying
not to walk too fast. They smiled at each other.
"Hello, Paul," she said shyly.
He was a stocky, dark-haired boy, with blue eyes. His father was dead,
killed in a mine over at Cherokee. He had come down to the Masonville
school, and they were in the same class, the class that would graduate
that spring. He was studying hard, trying to get as much education as
possible before he would have to go to work. He lived with his mother
in a little house near the edge of town, on the road to the farm.
"Hello," he replied. He cleared his throat. "I had to go to the
post-office to mail a letter," he said.
"Did you?" she answered. She tried to think of something else to say.
"Will you be glad when school's over?" she asked.
Paul and she stood at the head of the class. He was better in
arithmetic, but she beat him in spelling. For a long time they had
exchanged glances of mutual respect across the school-room. Some one
had told her that Paul said she was all right. He had beat her in
arithmetic that day. "She takes a licking as well as a boy," was what
he had said. But she had gone home and looked in the mirror.
The flutter at her heart had stopped then. No, she was not pretty. Her
features were too large, her forehead too high. She despised the face
that looked back at her. She longed for tiny, pretty features, large
brown eyes, a low forehead with curling hair. The eyes in the mirror
were gray and the hair was straight and brown. Not even a pretty, light
brown. It was almost black. For the first time she had desperately
wanted to be pretty. But now she did not care. He had waited for her,
anyway.
They walked slowly along the country road, under the arch of the trees,
through the branches of which the sun sent long, slanting rays of
light. There was a colored haze over the leafless orchards, and the
hills were freshly green from the rains.
"Well, I've got a job promised as soon as school is over," said Paul.
"What kind of job?" she asked.
"Working at the depot. It pays fifteen a month to start," he replied.
It was as if they were uttering poetry. The words did not matter. What
they said did not matter.
"That's fine," she said. "I wish I had a job."
"Gee, I hate to see a girl go to work," said Paul.
His lips were full and very firm. When he set them tightly, as he did
then, he looked determined. There was something obstinate about the
line of his chin and the slight frown between his heavy black brows.
Her whole nature seemed to melt and flow toward him.
"I don't see why!" she flashed. "A girl like me has to work if she's
going to get anywhere. I bet I could do as well as a boy if I had a
chance."
The words were like a defensive armor between her and her real desire.
She did not want to work. She wanted to be soft and pretty, tempting
and teasing and sweet. She wanted to win the things she desired by
tears and smiles and coaxing. But she did not know how.
Paul looked at her admiringly. He said, "I guess you could, all right.
You're pretty smart for a girl."
She glowed with pleasure.
They had often walked along this road as far as his house, when
accident brought them home from school at the same time. But their talk
had never had this indefinable quality, as vague and beautiful as the
misty color over the orchards.
Sometimes she had stopped at his house for a few minutes. His mother
was a little woman with brisk, bustling manner. She always stood at
the door to see that they wiped their feet before they went in. The
house was very neat. There was an ingrain carpet on the front-room
floor, swept till every thread showed. The center-table had a crocheted
tidy on it and a Bible and a polished sea-shell. This room rose like a
picture in her mind as they neared the gate. She did not want to leave
Paul, but she did not want to go into that room with him now.
"Look here--wait a minute--" he said, stopping in the gateway. "I
wanted to tell you--" He turned red and looked down at one toe, boring
into the soft ground. "About this being valedictorian--"
"Oh!" she said. There had been a fierce rivalry between them for the
honor of being valedictorian at the graduating exercises. There was
nothing to choose between them in scholarship, but Paul had won. She
knew the teachers had decided she did not dress well enough to take
such a prominent part.
"I hope you don't feel bad about it, Helen," he went on awkwardly. "I
told them I'd give it up, because you're a girl, and anyway you ought
to have it, I guess. I don't feel right about taking it, some way."
"That's all right," she answered. "I don't care."
"Well, it's awfully good of you." She could see that he was very much
relieved. She was glad she had lied about it. "Come in and look at
what I've got in the shed," he said, getting away from the subject as
quickly as possible.
She followed him around the house, under the old palm-tree that stood
there. He had cleared out the woodshed and put in a table and a chair.
On the table stood a telegraphic-sounder and key and a round, red, dry
battery.
"I'm going to learn to be an operator," he said. "I've got most of the
alphabet already. Listen." He made the instrument click. "I'm going to
practise receiving, listening to the wires in the depot. Morrison says
I can after I get through work. Telegraph-operators make as much as
seventy dollars a month, and some of them, on the fast wires, make a
hundred. I guess the train-dispatcher makes more than that."
"Oh, Paul, really?" She was all enthusiasm. He let her try the key. "I
could do it. I know I could," she said.
He was encouraging.
"Sure you could." But there was a faint condescension in his tone, and
she felt that he was entering a life into which she could not follow
him.
"That's the trouble with this rotten old world," she said resentfully.
"You can get out and do things like that. A girl hasn't any chance at
all."
"Oh, yes, she has," he answered. "There's lots of girl operators.
There's one down the line. Her father's station agent. And up at Rollo
there's a man and his wife that handle the station between them. He
works nights, and she works daytimes. They live over the depot, and if
anything goes wrong she can call him."
"That must be nice," she said.
"He's pretty lucky, all right," Paul agreed. "It isn't exactly like
having her working, of course--right together like that. I guess maybe
they couldn't--been married, unless she did. He didn't have much, I
guess. He isn't so awful much older than--But anyway, I'd hate to
see--anybody I cared about going to work," he finished desperately.
He opened and shut the telegraph-key, and the metallic clacks of the
sounder were loud in the stillness. Unsaid things hung between them.
Dazzled, tremulous, shaken by the beating of her heart, Helen could not
speak.
The palpitant moment was ended by the sound of his mother's voice.
"Paul! Paul, I want some wood." They laughed shakily.
"I--I guess I better be going," she said. He made no protest. But when
they stood in the woodshed doorway he said all in a rush:
"Look here, if I get a buggy next Sunday, what do you say we go driving
somewhere?"
She carried those words home with her, singing as she went.