she looked when she finally turned away that it never occurred to him to
be depressed about her inability to pay the price.
He kept thinking of her, wondering about her, during the next day. At
a little before six he took up his station near the front window.
Once more the current of workers flowed by. “I'm an old fool,” he told
himself, irritated at the wait; “as if it makes any difference whether
she comes or not--when she can't buy it, anyhow. She's just as big a
fool as I am--liking it when she can't have it, only I'm the biggest
fool of all--caring whether she likes it or not.” But just then the
girl passed quickly by a crowd of girls who were ahead of her and came
hurrying across the street. She was walking fast, and looked excited and
anxious. “Afraid it might be gone,” he said--adding, grimly: “Needn't
worry much about that.”
She came up to the picture as some people would enter a church. And yet
the joy which flooded her face is not well known to churches. “I'll tell
you what it's like”--the old man's thoughts stumbling right into the
heart of it--“it's like someone that's been wandering round in a desert
country all of a sudden coming on a spring. She's _thirsty_--she's
drinking it in--she can't get enough of it. It's--it's the water of life
to her!” And then, ashamed of saying a thing that sounded as if it were
out of a poem, he shook his shoulders roughly as if to shake off a piece
of sentiment unbecoming his age and sex.
He went to the door and watched her as she passed away. “I'll bet she'd
never tip the scale to one hundred pounds,” he decided. “Looks like a
good wind could blow her away.” She stooped a little and just as she
passed from sight he saw that she was coughing.
Then the old man made what he prided himself was a great deduction.
“She's been there, and she wants to go back. This kind of takes her back
for a minute, and when she gets the breath of it she ain't so homesick.”
All through those July days he watched each night for the frail-looking
little girl who liked the picture of the pines. She would always come
hurrying across the street in the same eager way, an eagerness close
to the feverish. But the tenseness would always relax as she saw the
picture. “She never looks quite so wilted down when she goes away as
she does when she comes,” the old man saw. “Upon my soul, I believe she
really _goes_ there. It's--oh, Lord”--irritated at getting beyond his
depth--“_I_ don't know!”
He never called it anything now but “Her Picture.” One day at just ten
minutes of six he took it out of the window. “Seems kind of mean,” he
admitted, “but I just want to find out how much she does think of it.”
And when he found out he told himself that of all the mean men God had
ever let live, he was the meanest. The girl came along in the usual
hurried, anxious fashion. And when she saw the empty window he thought
for a minute she was going to sink right down there on the sidewalk.
Everything about her seemed to give way--as if something from which she
had been drawing had been taken from her. The luminousness gone from
her face, there were cruel revelations. “Blast my _soul!_” the old man
muttered angrily, not far from tearfully. She looked up and down the
noisy, dirty, parched street, then back to the empty window. For a
minute she just stood there--that was the worst minute of all. And
then--accepting--she turned and walked slowly away, walked as the
too-weary and the too-often disappointed walk.
It was with not wholly steady hand that the old man hastened to replace
the picture, all the while telling himself what he thought of himself:
more low-down than the cat who plays with the mouse, meaner than the
man who'd take the bone from the dog, less to be loved than the man who
would kick over the child's play-house, only to be compared with the
brute who would snatch the cup of water from the dying--such were the
verdicts he pronounced. He thought perhaps she would come back, and
stayed there until almost seven, waiting for her, though pretending
it was necessary that he take down and then put up again the front
curtains. All the next day he was restless and irritable. As if to make
up to the girl for the contemptible trick he had played he spent a whole
hour that afternoon arranging a tapestry background for the picture.
“She'll think,” he told himself, “that this was why it was out, and
won't be worried about its being gone again. This will just be a little
sign to her that it's here to stay.”
He began his watch that night at half-past five. After fifteen minutes
the thought came to him that she might be so disheartened she would go
home by another street. He became so gloomily certain she would do this
that he was jubilant when he finally saw her coming along on the other
side--coming purposelessly, shorn of that eagerness which had always
been able, for the moment, to vanquish the tiredness. But when she came
to the place where she always crossed the street she only stood there an
instant and then, a little more slowly, a little more droopingly, walked
on. She had given up! She was not coming over!
But she did come. After she had gone a few steps she hesitated again and
this time started across the street. “That's right,” approved the old
man, “never give up the ship!”
She passed the store as if she were not going to look in; she seemed
trying not to look, but her head turned--and she saw the picture. First
her body seemed to stiffen, and then something--he couldn't make out
whether or not it was a sob--shook her, and as she came toward the
picture on her white, tired face were the tears.
“Don't you worry,” he murmured affectionately to her retreating form,
“it won't never be gone again.”
The very next week he was put to the test. The kind of lady who did
not often pass along that street entered the shop and asked to see the
picture in the window. He looked at her suspiciously. Then he frowned at
her, as he stood there, fumbling. _Her_ picture! What would she think?
What would she do? Then a crafty smile stole over his face and he walked
to the window and got the picture. “The price of this picture, madame,”
he said, haughtily, “is forty dollars,”--adding to himself, “That'll fix
her.”
But the lady made no comment, and stood there holding the picture up
before her. “I will take it,” she said, quietly.
He stared at her stupidly. Forty dollars! Then it must be that the
picture was better than the young man had known. “Will you wrap it,
please?” she asked. “I will take it with me.”
He turned to the back of the store. Forty dollars!--he kept repeating
it in dazed fashion. And they had raised the rent on him, and the
papers said coal would be high that winter--those facts seemed to have
something to do with forty dollars. _Forty dollars!_--it was hammering
at him, overwhelmed him, too big a sum to contend with. With long, grim
stroke he tore off the wrapping paper; stoically he began folding it.
But something was the matter. The paper would not go on right. Three
times he took it off, and each time he could not help looking down at
the picture of the pines. And each time the forest seemed to open a
little farther; each time it seemed bigger--bigger even than forty
dollars; it seemed as if it _knew things_--things more important than
even coal and rent. And then the strangest thing of all happened: the
forest faded away into its own shadowy distances, and in its place was
a noisy, crowded, sun-baked street, and across the street was eagerly
hurrying an anxious little girl, a frail little wisp of a girl who
probably should not be crossing hot, noisy streets at all--then a
light in tired eyes, a smile upon a worn face, relief as from a
cooling breeze--and _anyway_, suddenly furious at the lady, furious at
himself--“he'd be gol-_darned_ if it wasn't _her_ picture!”
He walked firmly back to the front of the store.
“I forgot at first,” he said, brusquely, “that this picture belongs to
someone else.”
The lady looked at him in astonishment. “I do not understand,” she said.
“There's nothing to understand,” he fairly shouted, “except that it
belongs to someone else!”
She turned away, but came back to him. “I will give you fifty dollars
for it,” she said, in her quiet way.
“Madame,” he thundered at her, “you can stand there and offer me five
hundred dollars, and I'm here to tell you that this picture is not for
sale. Do you _hear_?”
“I certainly do,” replied the lady, and walked from the store.
He was a long time in cooling off. “I tell you,” he stormed to a
very blue Lake Michigan he was putting into a frame, “it's hers--it's
_hern_--and anybody that comes along here with any nonsense is just
going to hear from _me_!”
In the days which followed he often thought to go out and speak to her,
but perhaps the old man had a restraining sense of values. He planned
some day to go out and tell her the picture was hers, but that seemed
a silly thing to tell her, for surely she knew it anyway. He worried a
good deal about her cough, which seemed to be getting worse, and he had
it all figured out that when cold weather came he would have her come in
where it was warm, and take her look in there. He felt that he knew
all about her, and though he did not know her name, though he had never
heard her speak one word, in some ways he felt closer to her than to any
one else in the world.
Yet if the old man had known just how it was with the girl it is
altogether unlikely that he would have understood. It would have
mystified and disappointed him had he known that she had never seen a
pine forest or a mountain in her life. Indeed there was a great deal
about the little girl which the old man, together with almost all the
rest of the world, would not have understood.
Not that the surface facts about her were either incomprehensible or
interesting. The tale of her existence would sound much like that of
a hundred other girls in the same city. Inquiry about her would have
developed the facts that she did typewriting for a land company, that
she did not seem to have any people, and lived at a big boarding-house.
At the boarding-house they would have told you that she was a nice
little thing, quiet as a mouse, and that it was too bad she had to work,
for she seemed more than half sick. There the story would have rested,
and the real things about her would not have been touched.
She worked for the Chicago branch of a big Northwestern land company.
They dealt in the lands of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. The
things she sat at her typewriter and wrote were of the wonders of that
great country: the great timber lands, the valleys and hills, towering
mountain peaks and rushing rivers. She typewrote “literature” telling
how there was a chance for every man out there, how the big, exhaustless
land was eager to yield of its store to all who would come and seek. Day
after day she wrote those things telling how the sick were made well
and the poor were made rich, how it was a land of indescribable wonders
which the feeble pen could not hope to portray.
And the girl with whom almost everything in life had gone wrong came to
think of Out There as the place where everything was right. It was the
far country where there was no weariness nor loneliness, the land where
one did not grow tired, where one never woke up in the morning too tired
to get up, where no one went to bed at night too tired to go to sleep.
The street-cars did not ring their gongs so loud Out There, the newsboys
had pleasant voices, and there were no elevated trains. It was a pure,
high land which knew no smoke nor dirt, a land where great silences drew
one to the heart of peace, where the people in the next room did not
come in and bang things around late at night. Out There was a wide land
where buildings were far apart and streets were not crowded. Even the
horses did not grow tired Out There. Oh, it was a land where dreams
came true--a beautiful land where no one ate prunes, where the gravy was
never greasy and the potatoes never burned. It was a land of flowers and
birds and lovely people--a land of wealth and health and many smiles.
Her imagination made use of it all. She knew how men were reclaiming the
desert of Idaho, of the tremendous undeveloped wealth of what had been
an almost undiscovered State. She thrilled to the poetry of irrigation.
Often when hot and tired and dusty her fancy would follow the little
mountain stream from its birth way up in the clouds, her imagination
rushing with it through sweetening forest and tumbling with it down
cooling rocks until finally strong, bold, wise men guided it to the
desert which had yearned for it through all the years, and the grateful
desert smiled rich smiles of grain and flowers. She could make it more
like a story than any story in any book. And she could always breathe
better in thinking of the pine forests of Oregon. There was something
liberating--expanding--in just the thought of them. She dreamed cooling
dreams about them, dreams of their reaching farther than one's fancy
could reach, big widening dreams of their standing there serene in the
consciousness of their own immensity. They stood to her for a beautiful
idea: the idea of space, of room--room for everybody, and then much more
room! Even one's understanding grew big as one turned to them.
And she loved to listen for the Pacific Ocean, coming from
incomprehensible distances and unknowable countries, now rushing with
passion to the wild coast of Oregon, again stealing into the Washington
harbours. She loved to address the letters to Portland, Seattle,
Spokane, Tacoma--all those pulsing, vivid cities of a country of big
chances and big beauty. She loved to picture Seattle, a city builded
upon many hills--how wonderful that a city should be builded upon
hills!--in Chicago there was nothing that could possibly be thought of
as a hill. And she loved to shut her eyes and let the great mountain
peak grow in the distance, as one could see it from Portland--how noble
a thing to see a mountain peak from a city! Sometimes she trembled
before that consciousness of a mountain. Often when so tired she
scarcely knew what she was doing she found she was saying her prayers
to a mountain. Indeed, Out There seemed the place to send one's
prayers--for was it not a place where prayers were answered?
During that summer when the West was overrun with tourists who grumbled
about everything from the crowded trains to the way in which sea-foods
were served, this little girl sat in one of the hot office buildings of
Chicago and across the stretch of miles drew to herself the spirit of
that country of coming days. Thousands rode in Pullman cars along the
banks of the Columbia--saw, and felt not; she sat before her typewriter
in a close, noisy room and heard the cooling rush of waters and got the
freeing message of the pines. In some rare moments when she rose from
the things about her to the things of which she dreamed she possessed
the whole great land, and as the sultry days sapped of her meagre
strength, and the bending over the typewriter cramped an already too
cramped chest she clung with a more and more passionate tenacity to the
bigness and the beauty and rightness of things Out There. And it was so
kind to her--that land of deep breaths and restoring breezes. It never
shut her out. It always kept itself bigger and more wonderful than one
could ever hope to fancy it.
And the night she found the picture she knew that it was all really
so. That was why it was so momentous a night. The picture was a dream
visualised--a dreamer vindicated. They had pictures in the office, of
course--some pictures trying to tell of that very kind of a place. But
those were just pictures; this _proved_ it, told what it meant. It
told that she had been right, and there was joy in knowing that she had
known. She clung to the picture as one would to that which proves as
real all one has long held dear, loved it as the dreamer loves that
which secures him in his dreaming.
She came to think of it as her own abiding place. Often when too tired
for long wings of fancy she would just sink down in the deep, cool
shadows of the pines, beside the little river which one knew so well was
the gift of distant snows. It rested her most of all; it quieted her.
She smiled sometimes to think how no one in the office knew about
it, wondered what they would think if they knew. Often she would find
someone in the office looking at her strangely. She used to wonder about
it a little.
And then one day Mr. Osborne sent for her to come into his office. He
acted so queerly. As she came in and sat down near his desk he swung his
chair around and sat there with his back to her. After that he got up
and walked to the window.
The head stenographer had complained of her cough. She said she did not
think it right either to the girl or to the rest of them for her to be
there. She said she hated to speak of it, but could not stand it any
longer. That had been the week before, and ever since he had been
putting it off. But now he could put it off no longer; the head
stenographer was valuable, and besides he knew that she was right.
And so he told her--this was all he could think of just then--that they
were contemplating some changes in the office, and for a time would have
less desk room. If he sent her machine to her home, would she be willing
to do her work there for a while? Hers was the kind of work that could
be done at home.
She was sorry, for she wondered if she could find a place in her room
for the typewriter, and it did not seem there would be air enough there
to last her all day long. And she had grown fond of the office, with its
“literature” and pictures and maps and the men who had just come from
Out There coming in every once in a while. It was a bond--a place to
touch realities. But of course there was nothing for her to do but
comply, and she made no comment on the arrangement.
She pushed her chair back and rose to go. “Are you alone in the world?”
he asked abruptly then,
“Yes; I--oh yes.”
It was too much for him. “How would you like,” he asked recklessly, “to
have me get you transportation out West?”
She sank back in her chair. Every particle of colour had left her
face. Her deep eyes had grown almost wild. “Oh,” she gasped--“you can't
mean--you don't think--”
“You wouldn't want to go?”
“I mean”--it was but a whisper--“it would be--too wonderful.”
“You would like it then?”
She only nodded; but her lips were parted, her eyes glowing. He wondered
why he had never seen before how different looking and--yes, beautiful,
in a strange kind of way--she was.
“I see you have a cold,” he said, “and I think you would get along
better out there. I'll see if I can fix up the transportation, and get
something with our people in one of the towns that would be good for
you.”
She leaned back in her chair and sat there smiling at him. Something in
the smile made him say, abruptly: “That's all; you may go now, and I'll
send a boy with your machine.”
She walked through the streets as one who had already found another
country. More than one turned to look at her. She reached her room at
last and pulling her one little chair up to the window sat staring out
across the alley at the brick wall across from her. But she was not
seeing a narrow alley and a high brick wall. She was seeing rushing
rivers and mighty forests and towering peaks. She leaned back in her
chair--an indulgence less luxurious than it sounds, as the chair only
reached the middle of her back--and looked out at the high brick wall
and saw a snow-clad range of hills. But she was tired; this tremendous
idea was too much for her; the very wonder of it was exhausting. She lay
down on her bed--radiant, but languid. Soon she heard a rush of waters.
At first it was only someone filling the bath-tub, but after a while it
was the little stream which flowed through her forest. And then she was
not lying on a lumpy bed; she was sinking down under pine trees--all so
sweet and still and cool. But an awful thing was happening!--the forest
was on fire--it was choking and burning her! She awoke to find smoke
from the building opposite pouring into her room; flies were buzzing
about, and her face and hands were hot.
She did little work in the next few days. It was hard to go on with the
same work when waiting for a thing which was to make over one's whole
life. The stress of dreams changing to hopes caused a great languor to
come over her. And her chair was not right for her typewriter, and the
smoke came in all the time. Strangely enough Out There seemed farther
away. Sometimes she could not go there at all; she supposed it was
because she was really going.
At the close of the week she went to the office with her work. She was
weak with excitement as she stepped into the elevator. Would Mr. Osborne
have the transportation for her? Would he tell her when she was to go?
But she did not see Mr. Osborne at all. When she asked for him the clerk
just replied carelessly that he was not there. She was going to ask if
he had left any message for her, but the telephone rang then and the
man to whom she was talking turned away. Someone was sitting at her
old desk, and they did not seem to be making the changes they had
contemplated; everyone in the office seemed very busy and uncaring, and
because she knew her chin was trembling she turned away.
She had a strange feeling as she left the office: as if standing on
ground which quivered, an impulse to reach out her hand and tell someone
that something must be done right away, a dreadful fear that she was
going to cry out that she could not wait much longer.
All at once she found that she was crossing the street, and saw ahead
the little art store with the wonderful picture which proved it was all
really so. In the same old way, her step quickened. It would show her
again that it was all just as she had thought it was, and if that were
true, then it must be true also that Mr. Osborne was going to get her
the transportation. It would prove that everything was all right.
But a cruel thing happened. It failed her. It was just as beautiful--but
something a long way off, impossible to reach. Try as she would, she
could not get _into_ it, as she used to. It was only a picture; a
beautiful picture of some pine trees. And they were very far away, and
they had nothing at all to do with her.
Through the window, at the back of the store, she saw the old man
standing with his back to her. She thought of going in and asking to sit
down--she wanted to sit down--but perhaps he would say something cross
to her--he was such a queer looking old man--and she knew she would
cry if anything cross was said to her. That he had watched for her each
night, that he had tried and tried to think of a way of finding her,
that he would have been more glad to see her than to see anyone in the
world, would have been kinder to her than anyone on earth would have
been--those were the things she did not know. And so--more lonely than
she had ever been before--she turned away.
On Monday she felt she could wait no longer. It did not seem that it
would be _safe_. She got ready to go to see Mr. Osborne, but the getting
ready tired her so that she sat a long time resting, looking out at the
high brick wall beyond which there was nothing at all. She was counting
the blocks, thinking of how many times she would have to cross the
street. But just then it occurred to her that she could telephone.
When she came back upstairs she crept up on the bed and lay there very
still. The boy had said that Mr. Osborne was away and would be gone
two weeks. No one in the office had heard him say anything about her
transportation.
All through the day she lay there, and what she saw before her was a
narrow alley and a high brick wall. She had lost her mountains and her
forests and her rivers and her lakes. She tried to go out to them in the
same old way--but she could not get beyond the high brick wall. She was
shut in. She tried to draw them to her, but they could not come across
the wall. It shut them out. She tried to pray to the great mountain
which one could see from Portland. But even prayers could get no farther
than the wall.