As Grace and her mother washed the dishes and made the beds the next
morning Mrs. Durland recurred to the ill fortune that had brought
Grace home from the university. Repetition was a habit with her, and
she explained again and with more detail the manner in which Cummings
had thrust her husband out of Cummings-Durland. She praised the
spirit in which Ethel had met the situation--all this as a prelude
to another plea that Grace should plan her future with care and not
take the first employment that offered. One of these days the right
man would come along and she would marry; Mrs. Durland hoped that both
her daughters would marry good men and keep up the traditions of the
American home.
“Oh, I’ve never felt that I’d marry,” Grace replied. “The reason I went
to college was to fit myself to be something in the world; and now that
I’ve got to begin over again I’m going to experiment a little. I may
try a lot of things before I find something that suits me.”
“Well, Grace, you know I’ve done the best I could for all you children.
When my time comes to go I want to know that you are all happy and well
placed in life.”
“Yes, mother; you’ve been wonderful to all of us. And I want you to be
sure I’m not bitter about anything. You and father have always done the
best you could for us.”
It was a clear, crisp morning and Grace decided to walk the short
distance to the business district. Her buoyant step expressed her
lightness of spirit; never had she felt so well, never had she been
so sure of herself. She was convinced that it was only her pride that
had suffered in the sudden termination of her college life and that
the blow was not to any lofty ideal that she had erected for herself.
The thought of freedom fascinated her. Her mother’s constant lament
that the world was not what it used to be and that the change was not
all for the better only piqued her curiosity. While the university had
thrown its protecting arm about her she had not thought of perils or
dangers; they were only the subject of tedious warnings by pessimists
who had despaired of youth in all ages. But now that she had been
thrust into the world she refused to be appalled by hints of unseen
dangers; the fact that they were only hints, intimations, vague
insinuations, only increased her incredulity while creating a wonder
in her mind as to their exact nature. She was afraid of nothing; dared
everything.
A car screeched discordantly as it negotiated a turn on its way into
the interurban station. She noted the faces of the passengers at the
windows--country folk and small town people--and felt her comradeship
with them. She had once heard the president of the university say
that the state was like a big neighborhood of cheerful, industrious,
aspiring people, and the thought pleased her.
To Grace the capital city of her native state was merely an aggregation
of three hundred and some odd thousand people. The rust-colored
dome of the State House and the majestic shaft of the Soldier’s and
Sailor’s Monument connoted history and implied changes that were to
influence and affect her as a child of the commonwealth; but she was
only vaguely conscious of them. It was her fate to become an active
member of the community at a time when elderly citizens, who professed
to believe that nothing had changed since the last wild turkey was
shot within the town’s original mile square, found themselves walking
from the post office to the old Bates House site without meeting a
single acquaintance. The languor that for years gave Indianapolis a
half-southern air was gone. Here indeed was abundant material for the
student of change.
Still a sprawling country town at the end of the Civil War,
Indianapolis was booming gaily when the panic of ’73 punished it for
its temerity. The few conservative capitalists who patiently sawed
wood while the bubbles were bursting had money to invest when the
Eastern insurance companies began foreclosing their mortgages on the
best corners. Such banks as survived established new low records
of refrigeration. Newcomers, stupidly desirous of initiating new
enterprises, were chilled by their reception. Melancholy recollections
of the panic of ’73 were long a sufficient excuse for restricted
credits. Not going to take any chances! As a matter of fact they never
had taken any, those cautious souls, and in the trail of the whirlwind
they had gathered enough spoil to enrich themselves a thousand fold.
Stinginess nobly standardized by a few merely, one might think, that
the generous of hand and spirit might shine the more effulgently.
The town got by the pinching times of ’84 and ’93 and continued to
grow right along until the automobile craze arrived with a resulting
multiplication of smokestacks. With the old guard, and such portions
of a new generation as had been intimidated by its caution, sitting in
pigeon-toed fear predicting calamity, the growth persisted.
Prosperity began to wear strange faces; the old-timers didn’t know the
new people or pretended they didn’t. Many of these new folk who rolled
over the asphalt in large expensive limousines didn’t go to church
at all. A singular thing. Once it hadn’t been respectable to abstain
from church. Spectacle of perfectly good citizens riding gaily to the
country clubs on Sunday morning without fear of eternal damnation.
Churches moving uptown, or those that clung to their old sites trying
valiantly to adjust themselves to changing spiritual needs.
Sentiment--oodles and scads of sentiment about the town and its
people! Visitors expected to confess that here throbs a different
atmosphere--an ampler ether, a diviner air. Politics, no end.
Statesmen and stateswomen everywhere visible. Families torn asunder
by the battles of the primaries. A political bomb hidden under the
socks in every darning basket. The fine arts not neglected. An honest
interest, dating back to the founders, in bookish things; every mail
box a receptacle for manuscript. Riley in Lockerbie street thrumming
his lyre with the nation for audience.
No reason why any one should go friendless or stray from the straight
and narrow path in a town so solidly based on the ten commandments,
except that the percentage of the wayward seems bound to grow with a
mounting population, particularly when the biggest war in all creation
comes along and jars most disturbingly all the props of civilization.
Changes! Changes of course, not local as to cause and effect, but part
of the general onward sweep of the Time-Spirit impelled by gasoline to
jazzy music.
In so far as she paid any attention to the talk about changes that she
had heard at home and at the university, Grace believed it was all for
good; that it was well to be done with hypocrisy, cant, prudishness;
that a frank recognition of evil rather than an attempt to cloak it
marked a distinct advance. When she was about nine her mother had
rebuked her severely for using the word leg; a leg was a limb and
not vulgarly to be referred to as a leg. The use of leg when leg was
meant was still considered vulgar by fairly broad-minded folk in the
corn-belt, probably as late as 1906--if one may attempt to fix a date
for so momentous a matter.
Grace Durland was no more responsible for the changes going on about
her than her parents had been for the changes of their day. They had
witnessed the passing of the hoop-skirt and red flannel underwear,
the abandonment of the asafetida bag as a charm against infection, and
other follies innumerable. Boys and girls had once stolen down the
back stairs or brazenly lied to gain an evening of freedom; now the
only difference was that they demanded--and received--a key to the
front door. Civilization will hardly go to smash over the question of a
girl’s refusal to wear a corset or her insistence on her right to roll
her stockings. The generation of Grace Durland isn’t responsible for
changes that began the day after creation and started all over again
after the flood and will continue right on to the end of all things.