by Willa Cather
Meanwhile Speckle—poor, deposed Speckle, sat by without demur and without more than an occasional pang of jealousy and watched the success of his protege, learning, as many another monarch had done before him, how pleasant it sometimes is to serve.
Now, alas! it is time to introduce the tragic motif in this simple chronicle of Speckleville, to bring about the advent of the heavy villian into the comedy. He came in the form of a boy from Chicago, to spend the summer with his aunt just across the street from Speckle’s home. From the first he found small favor in the eyes of the Speckleville boys. To begin with, he invariably wore shoes and stockings, a habit disgustingly effeminate to any true and loyal Specklevillian. To this he added the grievance of a stiff hat, and on Sundays even sunk to the infamy of kid gloves. He also smoked many cubeb cigarettes—cornsilks were considered the only manly smoke in Speckleville—and ate some odorous confection to conceal his guilt from his mamma. The good citizens of Speckleville all looked with horror upon these gilded vices—all, save one, perhaps.
The first time the New Boy visited the town he bought a cream puff of Mary Eliza, and on being told that the price of the same was ten pins, he laughed scornfully, saying that he did not carry a pincushion and had not brought his workbox with him. He then threw down a nickel upon the counter. Now to offer money to a citizen of Speckleville was an insult, like offering a bribe, and the boys were painfully surprised when Mary Eliza accepted that shameful coin, bestowing upon the purchaser a smile more desirable than many cream puffs.
After that the New Boy came often, usually confining his trade to the Delmonico resteraunt, where he hung about telling of his trip on Lake Michigan and his outings in Lincoln park, while the proprietor listened with greedy ears. He persisted in paying for his purchases in coppers and nickels, and Mary Eliza persisted in accepting the despised currency, while the Speckleville boys went about with a secret shame in their hearts, feeling that somehow she had disgraced herself and them. They began to wonder as to just what a girl’s notion of the square thing was, a question that has sometimes vexed older heads.
As for Mary Eliza, although she sometimes joined with the boys in a laugh at his expense, she by no means shared the general dislike of the New Boy. She thought his city clothes and superior manners very impressive, and felt more grown up and important when in his company. Even his letters, which were always written on real note paper with a monogram at the top and signed SEMPER IDEM seemed vastly more dignified than the rude scrawls of the other boys.
She had tact enough to know that this fine young gentleman would never wear tissue paper neckties, so she made him a red paper rose, which he wore, daily perfuming it with Florida water. Speckle had noted the growing discontent in his town, and sought to conceal Mary Eliza’s disgraceful conduct and shield her from open contempt by asking her to make him a paper rose. But she laughed heartlessly with a wink at the New Boy and said she had no more paper. I doubt if any of the rebuffs his gallantry may have received in after years ever cut Speckle as that wink did.
Matters hastened from bad to worse in the town. The days came and went as days will, but over Mary Eliza’s throne there was the shadow of the New Boy. The crisis came at last when in a meeting of the city council Mary Eliza boldly proposed admitting the New Boy to the town. Her motion was greeted by indignant howls and hisses and Speckle blushed to the roots of his red hair.
“Very well,” said Mary Eliza, “if you won’t have him in then I won’t be in either. Him and me’ll start another town over in his yard.”
“You can just go and do it, then! We won’t have that Chicago dude hanging around here any longer!” howled councilman Sanders, knocking over his chair.
To this all the rest echoed a wrathful assent. It was the utterance of an old grievance.
Mary Eliza arose with great dignity and began to pack her wares into her carpetbag. She made no display of ill humor, and talked cheerfully of her new town as she wrapped up her candies in tissue paper; the boys stood by and watched her, they did not believe she would go. But Mary Eliza departed even as she had come, with her carpetbag in her hand and her Japanese parasol tilted gaily over her head, while Speckle held the gate open for her, feeling that his illusions were vanishing fast.
“I’ll send over for my box in the morning, Speckle, and you must all come over to our town and buy things, and we’ll come over and buy things at yours,” she called after him.
The treachery, the infamy of her deception never seemed to have occurred to her. It was as though Coriolanus, when he deserted Rome for the camp of the Volescians, had asked the Conscript Fathers to call on him and bring their families!
“She’ll be back tomorrow all right enough,” said Speckle.
But on the morrow the New Boy came for the piano box, and by noon Mary Eliza was fairly installed across the street, making paper neckties for the New Boy and canvassing the neighborhood for the New Boy’s town. There could be no doubt that she had transferred her allegiance.
The Speckleville boys went resolutely to their stores and bought and sold and made a great show, but they had little heart in it all. They missed the cream puffs and the paper ties, and they missed something else more than these—something they could not name. If Speckle had chanced to confide in his young uncle, who was in the rapturous tortures of his first love affair, he would have been told that it was the “eternal feminine” they missed, and he would have been as much in the dark as before.
Mary Eliza had put herself at the head of everything, and now nothing went on without her. After the manner of her kind, she had come where she was not wanted, made herself indispensable, and gone again, taking with her, oh, so much more than her parasol and chocolate creams!
Everything went wrong in Speckleville that afternoon, and after the day was over the citizens of that passing village were quarreling violently, not, as in former times, because every one wanted to do something in a different way, but because no one wanted to do anything at all.
“It’s all your fault, Speckle. We ought never to have her in, and we wouldn’t if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Well, now she’s gone,” protested Speckle, “so why can’t we go on like we did before?”
No one attempted to answer. It was scarcely a wise question to ask.
“I always told you she’d spoil the town, Speckle, and now she’s done it,” said Jimmy Templeton.
“Well, you fellows seemed mighty glad to get her after she came, anyway, and you needn’t put your lip in, Temp; you loafed around her store like a ninny,” retorted Speckle, who felt that his persecution was more than he could bear.
Jimmy was not in a mood to endure a jibe at his weakness and by way of an answer he biffed Speckle one on the side of his nose, and it required the united strength of their fellow citizens to part them.
“I’m not going to stay in your old town any longer. I can have more fun in my own yard, and I’m going to take my things home,” announced Dick Hutchinson, as he began pocketing the properties of his museum.
“I’ll be darned if I do!” cried Jimmy Templeton. “And I’ll thank you to give me my pins out of your old tin box, Mr. Speckle.”
Speckle had woes enough without a run on his bank, but when Providence helps a man to trouble it is usually generous and dishes out all manner of calamities, regardless of what he may already have on his plate. Speckle sat there until he had paid out the last pin from his spice box. The boys all fell to packing their belongings as though fleeing from a doomed city, and they ceased not from making unkind remarks as they did so. Even Reinholt Birkner gathered up his chisels and monuments, all save one big block of granite that was too heavy for him, and that stood by his store box like a white tombstone. Under Speckle’s very eyes his town vanished as many another western town has done since then.
“lt’s all your fault, Speckle!” bawled Jimmy Templeton, a
s he vaulted over the back fence, and Speckle, after having said all the swear words he knew, went off to the barn to smoke innumerable cornsilk cigarettes and to wonder at the queer way things are run down here.
After he had taken his milk that night he heard Mary Eliza laughing as she played tag with the New Boy under the electric light, and he sat down with his empty pails in his deserted town, as Caius Marius once sat among the ruins of Carthage.
THE WEST BOUND TRAIN
A Thirty Minute’s Sketch for Two People
Persons Concerned:
Reginald Johnston, a railroad official.
Sybil Johnston, his wife.
Station Agent.
Messenger Boy, Western Union.
Scene
The waiting room of the Union Pacific depot at Cheyenne, with clock, mirror, maps and excursion circulars on the walls. The window communicating with the agent’s office is shut.
Mrs. Sybil Johnston enters attired in a traveling dress. She is followed by a messenger boy who carries a large valise and a small dog with a chain attached to its collar.
Sybil: “There boy, put it down. (She pays him.) That’s all you can do for me, so run along. (Boy scuffles toward the door.) O boy, where will I find the station agent? In there? (Boy nods and disappears.) There, now he’s gone, and how am I to find the agent! How uncivil the employees on these western lines are! Very different from those on my husband’s road. (Looks at the station clock.) It is almost twelve and I don’t remember at what time my train goes. Well, I’m certainly not equal to reading over those papers of instructions that Reginald sent me again. Why do all men cling to the tradition that women can’t travel alone? I must find the agent. (She raps on the window communicating with the agent’s office, but gets no response. She sits down again, rises and begins pacing up and down the waiting room, stopping occasionally to examine the maps and excursion posters.) What gloomy places these way stations are. I wish Reginald had gotten me through transportation from Chicago. I’ll be a wreck by the time I reach San Francisco. I almost hope he can’t get to the station to meet me, so that I will have an opportunity to get to his hotel and recover my composure and complexion before he sees me. Railway travel always utterly destroys my temper and leaves me a fright, and I never can get my hair to curl on a Pullman. (She raps again on the window, gets no response and resumes her aimless promenade up and down the waiting room.) I wonder if he thinks I have gone off much? There are a great many handsome women in San Francisco, and I may look different to him after a four month’s separation. (She approaches the mirror on the wall.) I can’t afford to go off yet awhile. If I hadn’t been more than passably good looking, I should never have dared to marry him, should I Bijou? (She picks up the dog.) It takes courage, sir, to marry a man whom dozens of stunning women have flattered and spoiled and begged pretty to and played dead for before you ever got a chance at him. It is a grave matter to assume the responsibility of a man with a naughty past like that. Yet I can’t blame him, I am not sure that I am not a little bit proud of it, in a disgusting sort of way. Yes, I rather like to think he is irresistible. Beside it is human nature, and he had only to look at a woman to make her fetch and carry and do tricks for him. Women are such fools, but I’ll know when I see him whether any spidery object has crossed his path. He might lie to me, but he could not deceive me. I know him too well; much, much better than he knows himself. Then he has been so busy. Business is a good thing for men. If it were not for business, women would never dare marry at all. That was why I didn’t take Jack Van Dynne; he had nothing to do but get into mischief. But Reginald is a man of affairs, he means something to the world. Let me see, it is still twentyeight hours to San Francisco, and I have not seen the dear boy for four months. He certainly means a great deal to me, at all events. It’s simply disgraceful the way women do get fond of men. And I thought I was in love with him before I married him. What a mercy that I didn’t even know what it meant, or I should have been as abject as the other creatures, and then he never would have wanted me. O dear! That agent! (She raps at the window again but gets no response. She takes out a letter from her pocket book, and reads aloud:) “This will land you at Cheyenne. There go to the Union Pacific Station, where the agent will hand you passes over the U.P. to ’Frisco.” (She shrugs her shoulders.) O, I know all that by heart. (Turns the page and reads on hurriedly, her voice gradually dying into an unintelligible murmur.) “There is no engine on the road that will get you here fast enough. My very desire for you seems strong enough to draw you over the plains and across the Rockies and the Sierras to me here, without the aid of such a slow contrivance as steam. I am checking off the days and hours until—.” (She moves her lips noiselessly, smiles and crushes up the letter in her hand.) O my boy, you can’t possibly long for it as I do, you can’t! Don’t I know what waiting is? Shall I ever forget that night at Calais before we were engaged, when I cabled you that you might come? And I sat out on the upper balcony of that horrid hotel in the storm, a pitiable object, with the rain drenching me, watching the lights of the incoming steamers and crying from loneliness and homesickness for you. Ah! Then I knew how much I wanted you, and I felt as though all my life I had just been living in hotels and watching the lights of other people’s ships out at sea. But mine came in at last; you came to me in the morning with the sun; such a sun, never rose before. What a meeting that was! And this will be almost another such. (Whistle of a train sounds.) Heavens! That may be my train, yes it must be my train! It is twelve o’clock and Reginald wrote that some train came or went at twelve o’clock. O that agent! (She pounds furiously on the window with her umbrella. The window opens and the station agent appears at the window. The agent is suave, welldressed and talkative, somewhat patronizing.)
Agent: “Well madam?”
Sybil: “Is that the westbound train that just whistled?”
Agent: “The through passenger, you mean?”
Sybil: “Yes, the through passenger for San Francisco, that’s what I want, and now I shall certainly miss it! I have been rapping here for half an hour!” (She dashes for her valise.)
Agent: “Don’t excite yourself, madam, the westbound passenger doesn’t leave until two o’clock.”
Sybil: “Then it comes in at twelve?”
Agent: “Not until twelve fortyfive.”
Sybil: “Then what train is there at twelve?”
Agent: “None here, either way, that I know of.”
Sybil: “I am sure my husband wrote me that something happened at twelve.”
Agent: “Nothing happens at twelve here but dinner.”
Sybil: (Stiffly.) My husband, sir, is vicepresident of the C.R. & S., and he instructed me to call for some passes. He doubtless will regret that I have taken so much of your valuable time.”
Agent: My time is valuable only when I can serve you, madam, and I would be just as glad to be of service to your husband’s wife if he were a brakeman. But there is no train out of Cheyenne over the U.P. at twelve o’clock.”
Sybil: “But my husband wrote me most explicit instructions.”
Agent: “Do you happen to have them with you?”
Sybil: (She produces the letter from her pocketbook, reads, blushes, and relaxes.) “I beg your pardon, sir, I am very stupid, it is dinner!” (They both laugh.)
Agent: “Excuse me a minute. (He steps back and puts on his coat. Sybil wanders absently to the mirror and after a quick glance back over her shoulder gives a few touches to her hair. Agent reappears at the window.
Sybil: “You see I have never traveled alone before, and my husband felt nervous about it, and he wrote me pages and pages of instructions, so that I would know what to do with every hour. I am afraid I got them mixed.”
Agent: “Most natural thing in the world on a long journey with lots of changes. You have come direct from New York, I take it?”
Sybil: Straight through. Mercy! That reminds me, I haven’t got my passes yet! Have you the transportation here from Cheyenne to San Francisco for Mrs. S. Johnston?”
(Agent looks grave, goes back and fumbles at the papers on his desk, returns to the window with a slip of paper in his hand.)
Agent: “We had transportation here made out for such a person, but it was called for several hours ago.”
Sybil: “Called for? Why I am Mrs. Johnston!”
(Agent looks interested and shakes his head.)
Agent: “Well, so was the other lady, or she claimed to be. Here is her receipt.”
Sybil: “I don’t care about her receipt. She is an impostor. I am Mrs. Johnston, and you have given my passes to the wrong person.”
Agent: “I don’t see how that could be, she had a letter from the Central office apologizing for the delay in sending her passes.”
Sybil: (Contemptuously) “A forgery, of course. It doesn’t take a very long head to see that. Do you mean to tell me that you gave them up to her without further question?”
Agent: “Well, she wasn’t exactly a lady one would question. She seemed very much like the real thing, you know. I beg your pardon! But I was glad enough to give them to her. She has been in town waiting for them several days, and she called here after every mail and a few times between mails. That is why you had such trouble in raising me; I thought she had come back from force of habit, or because the passes were written out in violet ink and didn’t match her clothes. My wife didn’t like it, so I kept my window shut. A man has to protect himself in some way.”
Sybil: “Of course, she wanted to get them before I got here. Any one could have seen that. And now what am I to do?”
Agent: “Well, the lady is still in town; she can’t get away before the two o’clock train. You might see her. She is just across the street, at the Inter Ocean hotel.”