ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS
It was a pleasure to Marley to accept the homage the people paid him;
they confounded his success in journalism with a success in literature,
and under the impression that all writers are somehow witty, they
laughed extravagantly at his lightest observation.
But much as Marley relished all this, much as he enjoyed being at home
again, with Lavinia and with his father and mother, he was disturbed by
a certain restlessness that came over him after he had been in Macochee
a few days and the novelty and excitement of his return had worn off.
The glamour the town had worn for him had left it; it seemed to have
withered and shrunk away. He could no longer, by any effort of the
imagination, realize it as the place he had carried affectionately in
his heart during the long months of his absence; its interests were so
few and so petty, and he found himself battling with a wish to get away.
He was fearful of this feeling; he did not dare to own it to himself,
much less to his father and mother or to Lavinia.
He was glad that Lavinia would not let him mention going back to
Chicago, and as the days swept by with the swiftness of vacation time,
he was troubled that he did not feel more acutely the sorrow he felt
would best become the prospect of another separation. He was comforted,
finally, when he was able to analyze his sensations sufficiently to
discover that it was neither his sweetheart nor his parents that had
changed, but his own attitude toward life in a small town; he was vastly
relieved when he succeeded in separating his feelings and saw that it
was Macochee alone that he had lost his affection for, though he could
not analyze his sensations deeply enough to recognize himself as at that
period of life when external conditions are accepted for more than their
real value; he was still too young for that. And so he could spend his
days happily with Lavinia and grudge the moments which Lawrence and
Mayme Carter filched from them by their calls, and he was as resentful
of Mayme's invitation to the supper which she exalted into a dinner with
a reception afterward, as was Lavinia herself.
When Marley went to pay his call on Wade Powell, he found many
sensations as he glanced about the dingy little office where he had
begun his studies. Wade Powell himself, smoking and reading his
Cincinnati paper, was sitting at his old desk, with the same aspect of
permanence he had always given the impression of. Marley rushed in on
him with a face red and smiling and when Powell looked up, he threw down
his paper, and leaped to his feet, saying:
"Well, I'll be damned!"
But when their first greetings were over, Powell's manner changed; he
began to show Marley a certain respect, and he paid him the delicate
tribute of letting him do most of the talking, whereas he used to do
most of the talking himself. He was not prepared to hear that Marley was
still studying law; and it cost him an effort to readjust his conception
of Marley as a successful journalist to the old one of a struggling
student. He gave Marley some intelligence of this, and of his
disappointment when he said with a meekness Marley did not like to see
in him:
"Well, of course, you know your own business best."
But when Marley had taken pains to explain his position and when he had
described the Chicago law offices, Powell grew more reconciled.
"I've watched you," he said, "I've watched you, and I've asked your
father about you every time I've seen him; my one regret was that you
were not working on a Cincinnati paper; then I could have read what you
were writing. I did try to get a Chicago paper--but you know what this
town is."
Powell was deeply interested in Marley's description of his old friend,
Judge Johnson, and as Marley gave him some notion of the judge's
importance and prosperity Powell could only exclaim from time to time:
"Well, I'll be damned!"
Marley did not tell Powell that Judge Johnson had appeared to have
forgotten him; he felt that it would be more handsome to accept the
moral responsibility of a prevarication than to hurt Powell's feelings
in the way he knew the truth would hurt them. Even as it was, Judge
Johnson's success, now so keenly realized by Powell when it had been
brought home to him in this personal way, seemed to subdue him, and he
was only lifted out of his gloom when Marley said:
"But I'll tell you one thing, there isn't a lawyer in Chicago who can
try a case with you."
Powell's eye brightened and his face glowed a deeper red; then the look
died away as he said:
"Well, I made a mistake. I ought to have gone there."
"Is it too late?"
Powell thought a moment, and Marley regretted having tempted him with an
impossibility. He was relieved when Powell shook his head and said:
"Yes, it's too late now."
Powell, with something of the pathos of age and failure that was
stealing gradually over him, begged Marley to come in and see him every
day while he was at home.
"You see I've always kept your desk," he said, in a tone that apologized
for a weakness he perhaps thought unmanly, "just as it was when you went
away."
Marley thought cynically that Powell had kept everything else just as it
was when he went away, but he was instantly ashamed of the thought, and
ashamed, too, of the fact that he and Lavinia both considered even this
little morning call a waste of time, and a sacrifice almost too great to
be borne.
Powell went with Marley out into the street, and it gave him evident
pride to walk by his side down Main Street and around the Square.
"I want them all to see you," he said frankly.
He made Marley go with him to the McBriar House and then to Con's
Corner, and, in every place where men stopped him and shook Marley's
hand and asked him how he was getting along, Powell took the
responsibility of replying promptly:
"Look at him; how does he seem to be getting along?"
Powell found a delight that must have been keener than Marley's in
Marley's fidelity to Chicago, expressed quite in the boastful frankness
of the citizens of that city when abroad, though to Marley it seemed
that he was putting it on them by doing so. He found them all, however,
in a spirit of loyalty to Macochee that might easily have become
combative.
"Well, little old Macochee's good enough for us, eh, Wade?" they would
say.
Marley would not let them be ahead of him in praise of Macochee, and
Powell himself softened enough to admit that old Ohio was a pretty good
place to have come from.
When they suddenly encountered Carman in the street, Marley flushed with
confusion, first for himself and then vicariously for Powell. But there
was no escape from a situation that no doubt exaggerated itself to his
sensitiveness, and he was soon allowing Carman to hold his hand in his
right palm while with the other Carman solicitously held Marley's left
elbow, and transfixed him with that left eye which still refused to
react to light and shade.
"Well, how are you?" asked Carman. "How are you, anyway?"
"Oh, I'm all right."
"Guess you're glad now I didn't give you that job, eh?"
Marley could not look at Powell, but he hastened to say:
"Yes, I'm glad, now."
"Maybe it was for the best," said Carman.
When they had left him Marley quickly and crudely tried to change the
subject, but Powell insisted on saying:
"I want you to know that I've always felt like a dog over that."
"Oh, don't mention it," Marley begged. "I was honest when I told Carman
I was glad it turned out as it did."
"Yes," said Powell, "I guess it was all for the best."
To Marley's relief they dropped the matter then, and went over to Con's
Corner. There Powell lighted a cigar, and Marley could not resist asking
for a brand of cigarettes, the kind that Weston smoked, though he knew
that Con would not have them. He felt mean about it afterward, but he
could not forego some of the petty distinctions of living in a city and
he indulged a little revenge toward the people who had deserted him in
what had seemed to him his need, and now, in what seemed to them his
prosperity, were so ready to rally to him. Marley went home at noon
feeling that his triumph had been almost as great as if he had come home
in a private car.
His triumph soon was at an end; they came to the afternoon of the day
when Marley was to return to Chicago. It was a golden day, with a sun
shining out of a sky without clouds, and yet a delicious breeze blew out
of the little hills. Marley and Lavinia walked out the white and dusty
pike that made the road to Mingo. They walked slowly along the edge of
the road, in silence, under the sadness of the parting that was before
them. They longed ineffably that the moments might be stayed; somehow
they felt they might be stayed by their silence.
But when they had ascended the hill and stood beside the old oak-tree
which grew by the road, they looked out across the valley of the Mad
River, miles and miles away--across fields now golden with the wheat, or
green with the rustling corn that glinted in the sun, off and away to
the trees that became vague and dim in the hazy distance. Back whence
they had come lay Macochee; they could see the tower of the Court House,
the red spire of the Methodist church, the gleam of the sun on some
great window in the roof of the car-shops; on the other side of town
crawled a train, trailing its smoke behind it. Marley looked at
Lavinia--she was leaning against the tree, and as he looked he saw that
her blue eyes were filling slowly with tears.
"Isn't it beautiful!" he said, looking away from her to the simple
scenery of Ohio.
"Do you remember that day?"
"When we picked out our farm--where was it?"
"Wasn't it over there?"
"Yes," he said. "We could come and live here when we are old." He knew
he was but seeking to console himself for what now could not be. "And
there is the old town," he said. "It looks beautiful from here, nestling
among those trees, it seems peaceful, and calm, and simple. But it is
different when you are in it; for there are gossip and envy and spite,
and I can never quite forgive it because it had no place for me. Well,"
he went on defiantly, in the relief he had been able to make for himself
out of his immature reading of Macochee's character; "I don't need it
any more; it is little and narrow and provincial, and the real life is
to be lived out in the larger world. It's a hard fight, but it's worth
it."
"Don't you regret leaving it?" asked Lavinia, in a voice that was
tenderer than Marley had ever known it. Marley looked at Macochee and
then he looked at her.
"I regret leaving it, dear heart, because I must leave you behind in
it."
"Would you never care to come back if it were not for me?" she asked.
"I might," he admitted, "when we are old. We could come back here then
and settle down on our farm over there." He pointed.
"I'm half-afraid of the city," Lavinia said.
He turned and took her in his arms.
"Dearest," he said, "you must not say that; for the next time I come it
will be to take you away from Macochee."
"Will it?" she whispered.
"Yes; and it can't be long now. How we have had to wait!"
"Yes," she repeated, "how we have had to wait!"