“Humph. A little.” Suddenly I saw her face quiver, her mouth twist. I
crossed to her and knelt on the floor beside her, put my arms round her
and looked into her working face.
“Aunt, tell me, what’s the matter? Tell--”
“There, Jane, I’m an old fool.” She tried to laugh but failed. Her
voice cracked. “I can’t help it. You’re so different that I’m scared.
Janey, Janey, you’ve no call to be so different.” She put her large
worn hands on my shoulders.
“I’m not changed in my heart, Aunt.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am sure.”
“There ain’t nothing real wrong with you, Jane?”
“No, Aunt.”
“You can tell me solemnly that your heart’s not changed, that you’ve
come to no harm?”
I looked into her eyes. Humbly, I knelt and looked into those honest
eyes, not beautiful, with blistered, opaque irises, the whites yellow
now with age. I knew what she meant, and I knew what would put things
right between us. If I told her everything, all about Philibert and
Bianca and my own loneliness she would give me the sympathy I wanted.
Then all her criticism and disappointment would be swallowed up in
pity. I hesitated. I did not believe that she knew anything of my
troubles with Philibert. I had never written her one word about being
unhappy. My happiness, I knew, was the most precious thing on earth to
her. How, then, tell her now, and why? Break her old heart so that she
might comfort me? Sadden the remaining years of her life that I might
enjoy the luxury of being understood? And how explain? What could she
ever understand of such things? She was an innocent woman.
So I lied. I chose my words in order to keep as near to truthfulness as
I could.
“No, Aunt, I have come to no harm. I am just the same as the girl
who left you twelve years ago. My looks, why should they matter to
you, Aunt? They are not my own. All that is just dressmakers and
hairdressers and the people round me. I have grown to look like them
there, but I am more like you and yours than you think. I have been so
home-sick, Aunt. I have longed so longingly for this, just this, Aunt,
just to come home.”
Her face had changed, her eyes searched mine wistfully now.
“You are unhappy, child.”
“No, Aunt.”
“Your husband?”
I felt myself turn pale as she held my head between her hands. What
could I safely say? There was a look in her face that frightened me.
Did she know after all? Had she heard?
“Aunt, he is a Frenchman, different from us.”
“But is he a good man?”
“Yes.”
“True to you as you are to him?”
“Yes.”
For a moment longer she looked at me closely, then with a sigh of
relief leaned back. “I believe you, Jane, I always said it wasn’t true.
I couldn’t believe my girl wouldn’t tell me.”
I buried my head in her knees. I felt sick and guilty, and as I knelt
there I saw that long ago I had thrown over my Aunt Patience for your
mother, though I loved Patience Forbes better than any one in the world.
Presently she said humorously with her slow American twang--“Well, I
guess I’ll have to get used to your looks, Jane, and not be silly, but
I reckon it would be easier if your voice weren’t so French. You’ve got
a queer sort of accent. I don’t know what all your aunts and uncles
will say when they see you. I expect if you explain it’s just the
effect of the world you’ve come from they’ll think it’s a pretty queer
world.”
But I had no intention of explaining myself to my relatives. Aunt Patty
had the right to bring me to book, but no one else had. It seemed to me
that night, lying awake in my cool, puritan bed, rather funny to think
of the people of St. Mary’s Plains holding me to account. What had I
done, after all, to come in for a scolding? I had told my aunt I was
unchanged. In a sense it was true. If I had not been the same I should
not have wanted to come.
I could hear Celestine fussing about in the next room. Celestine was
going to be a thorn in the side of the Grey House. She was out of
place. There she was surrounded by my clothes. My clothes looked
horribly gawdy littered all over that room. Presently her light was
extinguished. I lay in the dark between the sheets that smelled of
lavender, my eyes open in the kind familiar darkness, and told myself
that it was true, that I was unchanged, the same--the very same
person that had lain in that bed in that same homely safe obscurity
years before--and for a time, the sounds and the unseen but palpable
presences round me, seemed to agree, to reassure me.
I heard the tram rumbling by up the Avenue, I could see in my mind’s
eye, the arc light above the street shining on the high branches of
the elm trees, the comfortable houses set back in their grass plots,
shrouded in shadow, lighted windows showing here and there, and beyond
them to the West, I knew was the river, filled with the dark hulls of
ships, lumber schooners from the great lakes, pleasure boats, tugs,
their red lights riding high above the black water. From the side of
my bed my mind could move surely out through the night among known
objects, along familiar and friendly streets, past houses and shops
and churches, all acquainted with me as I was with them. And I felt
the furniture of the room was kindly, sedate and prim, taking me
for granted, assuming that all was well, that I belonged there--but
did I? Was it true? The years seemed to have been rolled up, as if
the intervening time were a parchment scroll, put away in a corner,
but there was something else, something different that could not be
put away. It was in me. It existed in my blood, in my body. It was
restless and it gnawed me. No--no--it was not true. I was not the
same. No miracle could undo what had been done to me. No relief could
obliterate from my mind what I had learned. I was old--I was tired and
corrupt--something irrevocable had happened to me--something final and
fatal, that no longing and no prayers could ever exorcise.
St. Mary’s Plains had “got a move on” during my absence, so my
relatives told me. I saw as much. It had entered upon one of those
sensational periods of industrial success that come to American towns
so unexpectedly. Some one had invented a stove, some one else a
motor car. Former modest citizens were making millions and building
factories. Down town was encroaching on the pleasant shady districts of
up town. The lots on either side of the Grey House had been bought by a
syndicate who proposed to put there a hotel and an apartment building.
The Grey House would be sandwiched in between them. It would become a
little dark building at the bottom of a well, but Patience Forbes had
refused to sell, though the price offered her would have left her more
than comfortably off for the rest of her life. I asked leave to buy the
Grey House from her for greater security, but she refused. “I’m safe
enough, Jane, because I don’t want money. No man alive can make me sell
if I don’t want to. You’ve no call to worry about me.”
My Uncle Bradford was not in town but there were a great many other
family connections who came to see us and asked us to come to them for
large hospitable succulent meals. They greeted me with hearty kisses
and handshakes. “Well, Jane, glad to see you home at last. Hope you
left your husband well.” And then we settled down into chairs.
“You certainly have changed. You’re real French, aren’t you? We’ve
heard a lot about your doings. It sounds pretty funny to us, giving
parties all the time to crowned heads, aren’t you?” This from the men,
or from the women more gently--
“Dear, couldn’t you have brought your baby? We’re so disappointed. Yes,
you do seem different, but we hope you’re happy. We can’t imagine your
life, you know. It seems so empty, so artificial. The papers give such
strange accounts. All those gambling places, your cousin fighting a
duel, it sounds so strange. France seems to be turning to atheism with
terrible rapidity. The separation of Church and State might be good if
it led to a spiritual revival, but they don’t keep Sunday at all, do
they? All the theatres are open Sundays they say.”
The elders were gentle but positive in their disapproval, the younger
generation frankly intolerant. They had been struck by various
religious and emotional disturbances that had swept the country,
evangelical revivals, a thing called the “Student Movement,” and a
university type of socialism. I felt myself being measured up to a
certain high standard and found lamentably wanting. Had I forgotten
their standards, I asked myself, or was this something new? When they
asked me what I was doing with my life I said I didn’t know, that it
took me about all my time just to live it. Wasn’t I interested in
anything? Oh, yes, a great many things, music especially, and old
enamels. They didn’t mean that, they meant causes. I didn’t understand.
What causes, I asked, did they refer to? Women’s suffrage, the negro
question, sweated labour. No, I was obliged to admit that women’s
suffrage had not interested me and that there being no negro question
in France I hadn’t thought about the subject. As for sweated labour,
I supposed it did exist in Paris, but that its evils had never been
brought to my notice. All the young people were espousing causes. They
quite took my breath away. They believed so hard in so many things,
and they talked so much about the things they believed in. Really they
were violent talkers. Their fresh young lips uttered with ease the
most astounding phrases. They were fond of big words. Their talk was a
curious mixture of undigested literature and startling slang. Some of
the things they believed in were love, democracy, the greatness of the
American people and the equality of the sexes. What they didn’t believe
in they condemned off-hand. There was for them no quiet region where
interesting questions were left pleasantly unanswered. They abhorred an
unanswered question as nature abhors a vacuum. Every topic was a bull
to be taken by the horns. Everything concerned them. There was nothing
that was not their business. They were crusaders, at war with idleness
and cynicism, vowed to the regeneration of the world. They went for
me, but how they went for me! I was a renegade, a back-slider, a poor,
misguided victim of an effete and vicious foreign country. I had
nothing to give them of any value. When I talked of the charm of Paris
they yawned. When I mentioned my friends they called me a snob. When
I spoke of my activities they laughed in gay derision. On the whole I
didn’t mind. I was too tired to mind. They were so young, so keen, so
good to look at, so full of hope. I wouldn’t have stopped their talking
for the world, and I liked them for despising my money.
I envied them. They were happy, they were free. Deep in my heart I
suspected that they were right to despise my life. In the evenings when
they gathered on the shadowy verandahs of their comfortable countrified
houses, the young men with mandolins, the girls in billowy muslin
dresses, I listened to their laughter and their tinkling music, feeling
so old, so very old. On those summer nights Aunt Patty and I would
sometimes sit on the front steps of the Grey House as the custom was in
the town, and all the street would seem to be charged with romance and
joy and mystery. Through the trees one could see young forms flitting
from house to house where lights streamed from hospitable windows down
across the plots of grass, while on the shadowed verandahs young hearts
whispered to young hearts, whispered of dreams that must come true,
gallant, innocent dreams.
And there was the difficulty of religion. They couldn’t swallow my
having become a Catholic. On the first Sunday morning I asked my Aunt
Patience if she would like me to go to church with her.
“Why, yes, Jane, but I thought you’d be going to the Catholic Church.”
“I’d rather go with you, Aunt.”
“Come, then.” But I saw that she was troubled.
“You see, Aunt, I don’t really care what church I go to; I’m only a
Catholic for social convenience.”
“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” She was putting on her bonnet.
“I don’t know, I don’t seem to have any feeling about it one way or
another. I never could seem to learn much about God, Aunt, don’t you
remember?”
“But don’t you believe in Him, Jane?”
“Honestly, Aunt, I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I could, but that’s
when I’m in trouble and only because I want some one to help me out.
That’s not believing, is it? It’s just cowardice.”
My aunt grunted. “Religion mostly is, but there’s something else, like
what your grandmother had.”
“Yes, I know.”
She said no more, and I was grateful to her for taking it like that. We
were companions in spite of everything.
But when my Aunt Beth came with her husband to visit us things became
more difficult. She had taken my turning Roman Catholic as a dreadful
personal problem of her own, and felt, dear little soul, that she
must try to bring me back to the fold. The result was painful. She
came armed with tracts and pamphlets, a whole bag full of appalling
literature. I was greatly astonished, for I remembered her as a very
gentle little creature. With age she had grown militant in the cause of
evangelical truth. She took me to camp meetings and prayer meetings.
She would come into my room at night in her pink flannel dressing gown,
her little middle-aged face aglow with ecstatic resolve, and would
press into my hand just one more message, a dreadful booklet, “The
Murder of God’s Word,” or something of that kind. I was at last driven
to appeal to my Aunt Patience for protection. She took up the cudgels
for me.
“I guess Jane’s all right, Beth, I wouldn’t worry. God’s the same,
whatever your Church.”
“But Patty, it’s heathen idolatry, worshipping the Virgin Mary. The
Virgin Mary was just a woman like you and me.”
“Well, dear, what does it matter? Perhaps Jane doesn’t worship her in a
heathen spirit, do you, Jane?”
“No, Aunt, I’m afraid I don’t worship her at all.”
“But think of the Jesuits,” wailed Aunt Beth.
“I don’t,” snapped Aunt Patty.
“Patty, I believe you’re in danger of losing your faith.”
“No, I’m not, Beth, don’t you fret about me. I’ve a good conscience
before my God and my Saviour. Now just you leave Jane in peace and
trust her to God. That’s what you’re told to do in the Bible. Just you
trust the Lord. He’ll look after Jane.”
And Beth would be momentarily silenced more by the sense of her elder
sister’s family authority than by any respect for her arguments.
Aunt Patty and I were happiest when we were left alone.
In July it became very hot. The back garden was ablaze with flowers.
Rows of hollyhocks lined the wooden fences at either side. Butterflies
fluttered in the sun. The bee-hives at the bottom of the garden were
all a-murmur. We spent long hours on the back verandah, and Aunt Patty,
her knitting needles moving swiftly (she knitted a good deal, but
always had a book open on her lap), would question me about my life
in Paris, and I would tell her as much of the truth as I could. Her
conclusions were characteristic.
“Your set over there doesn’t seem to have too much sense,” she would
say. “You sound a very giddy lot. You take no interest in science, do
you? I don’t suppose you’ve any of you an idea of what’s being written
and done.”
“Oh, come, Aunt, some of us are awfully clever. Fan knows all about art
and music. My sister-in-law paints and embroiders quite beautifully,
and all our relatives are gifted.”
“Humph, art is all very well, but do you keep up with the times?”
“How do you mean, ‘keep up’?”
“I mean, child, with what’s going on in the world of thought,
intellectual progress. They’re making great strides in medicine in
Germany. France is doing most in mathematics. But I daresay you never
heard of Professor Lautrand. He lives in Paris. Ever met him? Ever
heard of him?”
“I’m afraid not, Aunt.”
“Well, there you are, one of the great spirits of the age.” And she
rubbed her nose with her knitting needle. “A noble intellect. His books
have opened up for me a new world. To think you could talk to him and
don’t even know he’s there! Why, landsakes, Jane, if I were in your
shoes I’d wait on his doorstep till my bones cracked under me.” She
laughed.
“Come and visit me, dear, do, and we’ll have him to lunch every day,”
I urged. At which she laughed again her young, hearty laugh, but with
a wistful look in her eyes as if the light of a lovely dream glowed a
moment before her.
“No, Jane, no. I’m too old to go gallivanting about Europe, but I do
wish you’d take my advice. You never did take any interest in science.
If you did you’d not be so dependent upon mere human beings. If you’d
only study geology and biology and the history of races, you’d see
that human beings are no great shakes, anyhow, and don’t count for
much, save that they’ve the power of thought. Has it ever occurred
to you to stop and consider how wonderful it is that you can think,
and how little you avail yourself of the privilege? Go one day to the
_Bibliothèque Nationale_, that’s what it’s called, they’ve got one of
my books there, and just think for a moment that all that building is
crammed full of the records of man’s thought. Stupid, most of it, you’d
say, too dull to read, all those books. Well, that may be their fault
and it may be yours, but it’s neither here nor there. The fact is that
the recording of knowledge is a miracle.”
Wonderful Patience Forbes, taking me to task for the frivolity of my
world, sitting on the back verandah, her spectacles on the end of
her nose, her knitting on her lap, her heelless slippers comfortably
crossed, her little modest volume tucked away on a shelf in the
_Bibliothèque Nationale_. She seemed to me very remarkable, and she
seems even more so now. Time for most of us is just a process of
disintegration, old age is often pitiful and ugly, but at the age of
sixty-five Patience Forbes had the heart of a child and the robust
enthusiasm of a student. She had been persuaded by the State Board of
Education to write a series of text-books on birds, and in the evenings
she would work in the room she called the museum, and I would sit
watching her while she chewed her pen, rapped irritably with her hard
old fingers on the desk, or went down on her knees before a shelf of
books to look up some reference. Sometimes she would walk the floor and
grumble--“Gracious, how difficult it is to write a decent sentence.
English certainly isn’t my strong point. I write like a clucking hen.
Style never was in my line.” And then she would laugh, her young,
vigorous, chuckling laugh.
When I compared my life with hers, how could I not feel that there was
justice in all that young American condemnation. Patience Forbes was
old, she was poor, she went about in tram-cars, she worked for her
living, and she was happy. There was no doubt that she was happy. She
envied no man and no woman, and asked nothing of any one. She would not
even let me help her. She said that she had everything she wanted and I
was bound to believe her.
Early in August we went up to my Uncle Bradford’s camp in the woods
at the head of the lake. He had written urging us to come and saying
that if we didn’t he would come down to St. Mary’s Plains as he wanted
particularly to see me.
A white steam-boat, with side paddles churning peacefully through the
water, carried us for a long day and night and part of another day west
by north-west, past little white straggling towns, calling at long
piers to deliver mails and provisions, moving on and on, farther and
farther across the wide shining expanse of water, away from the world
of men. Timber schooners passed us, square-rigged, coming down from the
great forest lands. The skies were boundless and light and high above
the water. We moved in marvellous translucent space. The air was new as
if the world had been created yesterday.
Uncle Bradford and his sons with their wives and children had built
themselves log houses on the shore of the lake. The forest stretched
away behind them as far as the Canadian border, and a great tract of
it belonged to them, with its rivers, its game and its timber. Some
of them were in the lumber business, others came there merely for the
summer holidays. I found my Aunt Minnie there, and an even greater
crowd of youngsters than in St. Mary’s Plains. Uncle Bradford, dressed
in a red flannel shirt and a sombrero, ruled his camp like a Russian
patriarch, and again I found every one interested in things that I
had forgotten were interesting. There in that glorious pagan world
surrounded by virgin forests they worshipped a stern and exacting
God, read the Bible, and argued in the evening before the blazing log
fire as to whether the mind were separate from the soul, or evolution
incompatible with the principles of Christianity. And I wondered at
them, for they were not afraid of their puritan God, nor weary of
endless argument. Their consciences were clear. They could look God in
the face, and their brains, if rather empty, were admirably keen.
I watched the women. They all seemed to have devoted husbands who
assumed the sanctity of marriage to be the basis of life and took
the beauty of their women for granted. Extravagant youngsters, how
I envied them. Husbands who remained faithful lovers, wives who
remained innocent girls, all contented and unafraid, and with their
outspokenness, shy people keeping secret the sacred intimacy of love.
The children were splendid animals. They liked me and included me in
their games. We used to go swimming before breakfast when the heavenly
morning was crystal pale. I would slip from my cabin and join those
little bronze figures, run through the clearing to the shore and down
the wooden pier, stand an instant with them all about me breathing in
the sweet air, then with a shout all together we would dive. I swam as
well as any of those boys. It pleases me now to remember their respect
for my prowess. And I could paddle a canoe and throw a ball like a man,
and I caught the largest fish of all, a fine big salmon trout weighing
fifteen pounds. My thought was--“I want a boy like one of these to
become a man for Jinny. I want her to have a husband from my people.”
It was a delicious life. The air was fine and dry and sharply scented
with the scent of pine woods drenched in sunlight. Each morning was a
miracle as clear as the first morning of creation. Swift rollicking
streams tumbled over rocks, fat salmon jumped in deep pools. Mild-eyed
Indians came travelling down from the depths of the vast forest,
paddling their lovely canoes of birch bark, laden with grass baskets
and soft moccasins embroidered in beads. The nights were cold. One
was lifted up into sleep, one floated up and away into sleep under
sparkling stars, hearing the waves lapping the shore and the wind
murmuring through the branches of the innumerable pines of the forest
that spread away, further and further away, endlessly, countless trees
murmuring a strong chant under the wide sky, stretching beyond the edge
of the mind’s compass, as far as one could think, as far as one’s soul
could reach out, the forest, the sky, the water, calm, untroubled,
eternal.
Then suddenly something crashed into that crystal space.
My Uncle Bradford took me one morning to his office.
“You are nearly thirty now, Jane.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“I have a letter for you from your father. He left it with me to
deliver to you when you were thirty years old.”
I took the envelope he handed me. I was trembling. My uncle mopped his
forehead and cleared his throat.
“You will be absolute owner of your property when you are thirty.”
“Oh,” I said blankly.
“Yes, you were not to know. It was your father’s wish. Did your mother,
before she died, tell you anything about him?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’m sorry. It was her place to tell you. Your father is buried
out west, in Oregon.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He’s not buried in a cemetery. He’s buried on a hill. He bought the
tract of land himself.”
I waited. The noises of the camp came cheerily through the cabin
windows. There was a strong smell of pine wood and resin and of bacon
frying somewhere out of doors.
“Your father broke his neck falling down the elevator shaft in a
New York hotel. The verdict was accidental death, but it was not an
accident. Your mother knew, and I knew.”
I stood up, staring at him stupidly, holding the letter in my fingers,
then quickly turned and went out. I crossed the camp and struck off
into the woods. In a quiet place I sat down and opened the letter. It
began, “My dear daughter Jane.” I know it by heart. This is the letter.
“_My dear daughter Jane_: It is time for me to go. A man is free
to choose his time. This I believe, not much else. I am sorry to
leave you, but you are only five years old and you will be better
off with your grandmother in St. Mary’s Plains than you would be
with me. Your grandmother and your aunts will take care of you.
They are good women. It’s not their fault that they don’t like me.
The truth is, Jane, that I’m not their kind. I’m nobody’s kind and
I’m awful tired of being alone in a crowd. This world is getting
too full of people for me. I want space and I guess I’ll find it
where I’m going.
I wouldn’t leave you so much money if I knew what to do with it.
It never did me any good. It was only fun getting, not having. At
first I worked with my hands--in the earth--then I found gold. I
bought land and more land, built a railroad or two, and then Wall
Street got me. That was like the poker table I’d known when I was
a boy working on the Chippevale Ranch. That was just excitement,
no good to any one, but fun for a spell.
When you are thirty years old you’ll have as much sense as you’re
ever going to have. Perhaps you’ll do better than I did. Perhaps
you’ll know how to spend. I didn’t. I’d like you to enjoy what
I’ve left you. It would console me some.
I’m not a believer in the Cross of Jesus and I don’t want it on my
grave, but I’m not sure there isn’t something over yonder on the
other side. I hailed from the far West. It’s spoiling now, but a
wide prairie and a high sky are the best things I know, that and
working with your hands.
Good-bye, little girl Jane, you’re the only thing I mind leaving
behind. I’d kind of like to know what you’ll be like when you get
this.
Your Uncle Bradford’s an honest man, there aren’t many, you can
trust him. He’ll give you this and explain that there was no
disgrace. Only I didn’t feel like living any more. There are too
many people hanging round. I want to get away. If I’m doing you a
wrong by quitting I ask you to forgive me.
“Your loving father,
“_Silas Carpenter_.”
I worked it out that night with maps and time-tables. I had just enough
time to go to Redtown and get back to New York to catch my boat. I left
the next morning. My aunt went with me. Uncle Bradford’s steam launch
took us down the lake. We caught a train at a place called Athens and
joined the western express the middle of the next day. It took us three
days and three nights to get to Oregon. We crossed the Mississippi
river early one morning. The next day we thundered through the Rocky
Mountains. The plains beyond were immense and stupefying.
I visited the grave alone. A block of granite, reminding me of a
druid’s stone, marked the spot on the hill where he was buried. It
stood up stark and solid on the bare ground. It looked as if it had
been left there endless ages before by some slow, gigantic movement
of nature, some glacier travelling by inches from the north, or some
heaving of the earth’s surface. One side of it was polished and bore an
inscription cut into the stones:--
“HERE LIES SILAS CARPENTER, WHO WAS BORN IN THIS PLACE BEFORE IT
WAS A TOWN AND WHO DIED IN NEW YORK ON JANUARY 5TH 1885.”
From the hill-top one had a view of the city lying along the sea, a
new, bright city, an unfriendly sea of a dazzling blue. I sat down
on the grass by the great stone. Here, at last, was something that
belonged to me and to no one else. No one would dispute with me the
possession of my father’s grave. I felt excited and uplifted as if I
had come into a precious inheritance. And yet what had he left me?
A message of failure, an unanswered question, a sense of not having
counted for him enough myself to keep him on the earth. He had shuffled
me off with the rest of it. My mother must have hated him. She must
have had something to do with his giving it up like that. I would have
loved him. I would have understood him. If he had waited for me we
would have been good companions. If he had lived I would never have
gone to Paris. I would have gone west with him to his wide prairie
and high skies. Everything would have been different. I had missed
something. What had I missed? I looked out across the dry grass, the
rolling hills, the big, bare, blazing land, the glittering sea under
the windy sun, and I recognized it as mine. I had missed my life. I had
taken the wrong turn.
We boarded the train again next day and recrossed the continent of
America. It took us seven days and nights to reach New York. We passed
through Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, and countless other cities. We
crossed deserts white as sand and overgrown with cactus. In the middle
of the Mohawa desert we stopped at a place called Bagdad to give the
engine a drink of water. Bagdad was a single wooden shed standing
in a waste of sand. Bagdad, Bagdad. It was very hot in the train. My
aunt and I sat most of the time on the open platform at the end of
the observation car, watching the earth fly from under the train and
drinking iced drinks that the coloured porters brought us. It is very
exciting to be in a train like that, rushing across the earth at such
speed, suspended in space as if on a giant bridge, and the vast, the
immense, the overwhelming panorama flying endlessly past. Cities,
rivers, prairies, mountains, lonely farms, the steel jaws of stations
engulfing you, out again through the crowding buildings of a city you
will never know, full of people you will never see, into the open, the
horizon endlessly wheeling, the earth under the train flying backwards,
but the far edge of the earth towards the horizon wheeling with you.
Thundering along, the pounding of the engine, the grinding wheels
exciting your brain to a special liveliness, the train is a miraculous
thing, a steel comet cushioned inside imitating a dwelling, but a
long comet whirring through space, a blaze of flying light by night,
a streak and a noise by day, and from it you look out upon a thousand
worlds flying past, and you have glimpses, instant, quick glimpses, of
countless mysterious lives, a group of children hanging over a fence
waving, a farmer in a wide straw hat sitting in a blue wagon at a
railway crossing, a boundless golden field behind him of innumerable
garnered sheaves all gold, a village like a collection of wooden boxes,
saddled horses tethered to a rope in front of an unpainted post office.
Cowboys driving cattle, rolling prairies, horses, wild, running,
kicking up their heels, a lonely cabin against a hill, hens scratching
outside, thin smoke coming from the wobbling iron smoke stack, lost in
the boundless blue; families moving, all their household goods piled
on wagons, the men walking beside the horses with long whips, a mail
coach lurching along a mountain road, the driver has a Colt revolver in
his pocket. You know that. You hope he’ll get the highway robbers who
will be waiting for him at dark. Bret Harte wrote about him. And now
Walt Whitman’s country--Leaves of Grass--a great poem, the greatest.
He knew. He had found out. He understood the giant, the great urge of
life, in this my country.
And I thought of my father, crossing and recrossing the continent,
restless, lonely, powerful, dissatisfied, an isolated man moving up and
down the land, handling money, gambling with money, not knowing what to
do, growing tired of it all.
I said to my aunt--“It was twenty-five years ago, but it brings him
close.”
“Your father’s death?”
“Yes, it makes a difference.”
“How?”
“I’m with him. It clears the ground.”