Wayside Courtships

by Garland, Hamlin

  She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense—as if I was a human being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never would believe in any man again."

  He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.

  "I wish I was as good as that woman looks."

  "You can be if you try."

  "Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father and a husband that beats you whenever the mood takes him."

  "I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel isn't any great help to you."

  "Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as hard as I do her. She used to go around telling, 'It's very peculiar, you know'"—she imitated her rival's voice—"'but no matter which end of the dining room I sit, all the men look that way!'"

  The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.

  "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me," she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."

  To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld where harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy recesses of the human heart.

  Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy, looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed unconscious of their public situation.

  The young lawyer looked straight before him while the girl, swept on by her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had been injected into her young life.

  "I don't see what men find about her to like—unless it is her eyes. She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar—ugh! The stories she tells—right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her, that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry and say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me.' Ugh! It makes me sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig, too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."

  The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set expression, and she felt it and was spurred on to do still deeper injustice to herself—an insane perversity.

  "Not that I care a cent—I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go and break down my faith in the judge."

  She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window again, seeking control.

  The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those already well known.

  The girl turned suddenly to her companion.

  "How do those people live out here on their farms?"

  She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the train go by.

  "By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."

  "Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"

  He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"

  "At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to boarding school. I learned a good deal more than you think."

  "Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours, speaking from experience."

  "Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"

  "They work like the men, only more so."

  "Do they have any new things?"

  "Not very often, I'm afraid."

  She sighed. After a pause she said:

  "You were raised on a farm?"

  "Yes. In Minnesota."

  "Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing machine in the field.

  "Yes, I plowed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm for my health."

  "You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked admiringly.

  "In a slab-sided kind of a way—yes."

  Her eyes grew abstracted.

  "I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a—a—holy terror. He struck me with the water pitcher once—that was just before baby was born. I wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country."

  "It might have saved you from more than you think," he said quietly, tenderly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you. They've made your future uncertain."

  "Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his hesitation.

  "You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness. "You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."

  Her voice shook painfully as she replied:

  "You don't think I'm all bad?"

  "You're not bad at all—you're simply reckless. You are not to blame. It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."

  The conductor eyed them as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their opportunity.

  Allen, sitting there, saw the terror and tragedy of the girl's life. Her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse, rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken, dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake—and this slender young girl, naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse—she was like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.

  The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes turned toward her had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.

  "Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead—and baby too!"

  "Live for the baby—let him help you out."

  "Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other mothers; but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too young."

  He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child. She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent; the case baffled him.

  "Oh, I wish you could help me. I wish I had you all the time. I do! I don't care what you think, I do, I do!"

  "Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said slowly. "My wife knows about you, and——"

  "Who told her—did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.

  "Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied quietly.

  She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.

  "Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here. I'd go insane. Perhaps I'm going insane anyway. Don't you think so?"

  "No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."

  "Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"


  "Certainly, without question."

  "Can I wait and go back with you?"

  "I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear the wait in this little town; it's not much like the city."

  "Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so? Please don't laugh."

  The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, birdlike ways formed her shield against ridicule and misprision.

  He said slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but it's an awful responsibility to be a man."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that we are responsible as the dominant sex for every tragic, incomplete woman's life."

  "Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete example with savage swiftness.

  "No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own living some way."

  "She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."

  "It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way all men would be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your divorce?"

  "Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."

  "What you need is a good husband and a little cottage where you'd have to cook your own food—and tend the baby."

  "I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this was, I wouldn't have started."

  "This is the route you all go," he replied with grim humor, and his words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcées.

  She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."

  "No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

  "It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

  "Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and it brings us into contact with men and women—I'm sick of the whole business."

  She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back to the personal.

  "You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!" she said, in a low tone.

  Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to hear her, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but the woman's God should hear this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.

  She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I respect, and you despise me."

  "No, I don't; I pity you."

  "That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of her desire.

  His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile even about the eyes. He knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of a woman.

  "Our home is yours, just as long as you can bear the monotony of our simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and unmistakable in its sincerity.

  She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her head, and they rode in silence.

  After they left the car, Allen sat with savage eyes and grimly set mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful, remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.

  It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.

  He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life but—he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his responsibility. He followed her on her downward path till he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual acquaintances—alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then——

  He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"

  * * *

  On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes debating whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones grew weary, the noise of the autumn wind—the lonely, woeful, moaning prairie wind—came to his ears and he shuddered. His wife observed it.

  "What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"

  "Oh, no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he took his little girl into his arms and held her close.

  * * *

  IV. THE PASSING STRANGER.

  This was the story the mystic told:

  It was about eleven o'clock of an October night. The street was one of the worst of the city, but it was Monday—one of its quiet nights.

  The saloons flared floods of feverish light upon the walk, and breathed their terrible odors, like caverns leading downward into hell. Restless, loitering crowds moved to and fro, with rasping, uncertain footsteps, out of which the click of health had gone.

  Policemen occasionally showed themselves menacingly, and the crowd responded to their impact by action quickened, like a python touched with a red-hot rod.

  It was nearly time to close, and the barkeepers were beginning to betray signs of impatience with their most drunken customers.

  A dark, tall man in cloak and fez moved slowly down the street. His face was serene but somber. In passing the window of a brilliantly lighted drinking place he stopped and looked in.

  In the small stall, near the window and behind the counter, sat three women and two men. All had mugs of beer in their hands. The women were all young, and one of them was handsome. They were dressed nattily, jauntily, in modish, girlish hats, and their dainty jackets fitted closely to their slight figures.

  Their liquor had just been served, and their voices were ringing with wild laughter. Their white teeth shone from their rouged faces with a mirth which met no answering smile from the strange young man without. He stood like a shadow against the pane.

  The smile on the face of the youngest girl stiffened into a strange contortion. Her eyes looked straight ahead into the eyes of the stranger.

  Her smile smoothed out. Her face paled; her eyes expanded with wonder till they lost their insane glitter, and grew sad and soft and dark.

  "What is it, Nell?" the others asked.

  She did not hear them. She seemed to listen. Her eyes seemed to see mountains—or clouds. A land like her childhood's home with the sunset light over it. Her mug fell with a crash to the table. She rose. Her hand silenced them, with beautiful finger raised:

  "Listen! Don't you hear him? His eyes are calling me. It is Christ."

  The others looked, but they saw only a tall figure moving away. He wore a long black cloak like a priest.

  "Some foreign duffer lookin' in. Let 'im look," said one of the other girls.

  "One o' them Egyptian jugglers," said another.

  "What's the matter of ye, Nell? You look as if you'd seen a ghost of y'r grandmother. Set down an' drink y'r beer
."

  The girl brushed her hand over her eyes. "I'm going home," she said in a low voice from which all individuality had passed. Her face seemed anxious, her manner hurried.

  "What's the matter, Nell? My God! Look at her eyes!—I'm going with her."

  The girl put him aside with a gesture. Her look awed him.

  One of the others began to laugh.

  "Stop! You fool," one of the girls cried. They sat in silence as the younger girl went out, putting aside every hand stretched out to touch her. She walked like one in stupor—her face ghastly. The arch of her beautiful eyebrows was like that of Ophelia in her bitterest moment.

  The others watched her go in silence.

  One of them drew a sigh and said: "I'm going home, too; I don't feel well."

  "I'll go with ye," one of the men said.

  "Stay where you are!" said the girl sharply.

  * * *

  Once on the street, the younger girl hurried on the way the stranger had gone. His face seemed before her.

  She could see it; she should always see it. It was the face of a young man. A firm chin, a strong mouth with a feminine curve in it, a face with a clear pallor that seemed foreign somehow. But the eyes—oh, the eyes!

  They were deep and brown, and filled with an infinite sadness—for her. She felt it, and the knot of pain in the forehead, that was also for her. Something sweet and terrible went out from his presence. A knowledge of infinite space and infinite time and infinite compassion.

  No man had ever looked at her like that. There was something divine in the penetrating power of his eyes.

  Some way she knew he was not a priest, though his cloak and turban cap looked like it. He seemed like a scholar from some strange land—a man above passion, a man who knew God.

  His eyes accused her and pitied her, while they called her.

  No smile, no shrinking of lips into a sneer—nothing but pity and wonder, and something else——

  And a voice seemed to say: "You are too good to be there. Follow me."

  As she thought of him he seemed to stand on an immeasurable height looking down at her.