Margaret Hill McCarter

“ Laura went on, "but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies. There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men." ”

“ Behind the most expensive mourner's crape to be had in Philadelphia Jerusha Darby hid the least mournful of faces. Not that she had not been shocked that one bolt out of all that summer storm-cloud, barely splintering the rose-arbor, should strike the head leaning against it with a blow so faint and yet so fatal; nor that she would not miss Cornelius and find it very inconvenient to fill his place in her business management. Every business needs some one to fetch and carry and play the watch-dog. And in these days of expensive labor watch-dogs come high and are not always well trained. ”

“ Outside, the river was gone, taking with it all the cool-breathing alfalfa, and elm and cottonwood shade, and leaving in their stead only bare earth-ridges and low dunes. As far as Jerry could see, there was nothing but a hot yellow plain, wrinkled here and there in great barren folds, with wave and crest and hollow of wind-shifted sand crawling endlessly back and forth along the face of the landscape. A few spiny green shrubs struggled through at intervals, but their presence only intensified the barrenness about them. ”

“ The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl—a girl with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous, untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. ”

“ Every object in that car, human being or salt pork, crying baby or kingbolt, was a thing to Jerry Swaim. And all of them were very warm and nervously tense, as if the hot June wind had blown them all inside, that the hot June sun, through the closed windows, might stew them stinkily; or, through the open windows, grime their sweaty faces with hot dust off the hot prairie. ”

“ Look at 'Eden' here"—Jerry lifted a hand for silence as Eugene was about to speak—"it has only two hundred acres. Now multiply it by six and you'll have New Eden out in Kansas. And I own it. And I am going to manage it. And I am not going to be dependent on anybody. Won't it be one big lark for me to go clear to the Sage Brush Valley? If it is as beautiful as the Winnowoc, just think of its possibilities. It will be perfectly grand to feel oneself so free and self-reliant. And when we have won out, you by your brush and I by my Kansas farm, then, oh, Gene, how splendid life will be!" ”

“ The sun of a mid-June day glared down pitilessly on the little station at the junction of the Sage Brush branch with the main line. There was not a tree in sight. The south wind was raving across the prairie, swirling showers of fine sand before it. Its breath came hot against Jerry Swaim's cheek as she stood in the doorway of the station or wandered grimly down between the shining rails that stretched toward a boundless nowhere whither the "through" train had vanished nearly two hours ago. As Jerry watched it leaving, a sudden heaviness weighed down upon her. ”

“ Indeed, it would have been better—only Jerusha Darby never knew that—if Cornelius had gone before that discus-throw. Everything might have been different if he had gone earlier. But he lost the opportunity of his life to serve his wife by staying over and making one awkward fling too many.
The June evening was cool after the long rains. Aunt Jerry had a tiny wood fire burning in the parlor grate, and the tall lamps with the rose-colored shades lighted to add a touch of twilight charm to the place, when the young lovers came in. ”

“ Jerry was not accustomed to being accountable to anybody for what she chose to do, nor did she know that every man in New Eden, except York Macpherson and Junius Brutus Ponk—and every woman, without exception—really feared Stella Bahrr, knowing that she would hesitate at no kind of warfare to accomplish her purpose. It is generally easier to be decent than to be courageous, and peace at any price may be more desired than nasty word battles. Not knowing Stella for the woman she was, Jerry had no mind to consider her at all, so she waited for her caller to proceed or to leave her. ”

“ It made them ten times more tired and cross and hot to see that girl looking so cool and rested and exquisitely gowned and crowned and shod. The blue linen with white embroidered cuffs, the rippling, glinting masses of hair, the small shoes, immaculately white against the green sod—little wonder that, while the heir apparent to the Darby wealth felt comfortably indifferent toward this uninteresting line of nobodies in particular, the bunch of grubs should feel only envy and resentment of their own sweaty, muscle-worn lot in life. ”

“ Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier shade of thrifty moon-vines.
Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting than it was in the freshness of June.
The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference with Mrs. Darby.
The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young man. ”

“ You make what never did and never will be, with your free brush. And folks call it good and you earn a living by it. You are an artist. I am a foolish dreamer, but I am going out to Kansas and work my dreams into reality and beauty—and money—in a New Eden. If the Lord isn't there, I shall not mind any more than I do here. I am going to Kansas, though, because I want to."
"Look, Jerry, at the sunset yonder," Eugene said, gently, knowing of old what "I want" meant. "They couldn't have such pictures of green and gold out West as we see framed in here by the lilacs. ”

“ New Eden in the Sage Brush Valley, on the far side of Kansas, might never inspire the pen of a world genius, and yet in the small-town chronicle runs the same drama of life that is enacted on the great stage with all its brilliant settings. Only these smaller actors play with the simplicity of innocence, never dreaming that what they play so well are really world-sized parts fitted down to the compass of their settings. ”

“ We are living a real romance, Gene. And we'll be true to our word to make the best of ourselves and not let Aunt Jerry frighten us into changing our plans, will we, Gene? My father's wish for me was that I should not always be a spender of other folks's incomes, but that I would find out what it means to live my own life. ”

“ She had thought the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future. Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do either one, who had not offended anybody?
As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught her ear—a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard sole on the cement driveway. ”

“ Whoever takes up the business of self-support, depending solely on the earnings that must be won, has a sure battle with uncertainty, failure, sacrifice, and slow-wearing labor. Of course it is a glorious old warfare—but it has that other side. In the face of the fact that I am your fortunate host, and that my sister is happier now than she has ever been before in New Eden, and hopes to keep you here, I urge you, Jerry, to consider well before you refuse to go back to your father's sister and your artist cousin. ”

“ Jerry Swaim sat in the doorway of the rose-arbor, watching Uncle Cornie throwing his discus again along the smooth white clover sod. Aunt Jerry had trailed off with Eugene to the far side of the spacious grounds to see the lily-ponds where the pink lotuses were blooming.
"Young folks mustn't be together too much. They'll get tired of each other too quickly. I used to get bored to death having Cornelius forever around." Aunt Jerry philosophized, considering herself as wise in the affairs of the heart as she was shrewd in affairs of the pocketbook. ”

“ The owner of all this dainty comfort and restfulness and beauty hurried away, leaving Eugene Wellington alone in the rose-arbor—alone with memories of Jerry Swaim, and Uncle Cornie, and life, and love, and hope and high ambition, and himself—the self that a man must go right with, if he goes with him at all. ”

“ Jerry said. Even in the soft light Joe saw the pink flush deepen on the girl's cheek. "Good night." She offered him her hand. "I hope I may see you often. Oh, I hate that blowout, and you ought to hate me on account of it."
"It is a brainless, hateful thing," Joe Thomson declared, as he took her proffered hand. "All my streams seem to be Rubicons, even to the crooked old Sage Brush. I can't be an inspiration to anybody. It is you who can give me courage. If you can teach mathematics in New Eden, I believe I can kill that blowout."
The strength of a new-born purpose was in the man's voice. ”

“ Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was impossible, too. I've seen both—land and sky—to-day, and both are greater than the artist painted them."
"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he create anything utterly unreal. ”

“ As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.
"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will become," he said to himself. ”

“ If anybody should put me in a novel, the critics would say 'such a girl never came to Kansas.' But then if Gene should paint that blowout, the critics would say 'there never was such a landscape in Kansas.' These critics know so much. Only Gene will never paint any more pictures—not masterpieces, anyhow. But I'm going to live my life my own way. I won't go back to idleness and a life of sand at 'Eden.' I'll win out here—I will, I will! 'If a woman goes right with herself.' Oh, Uncle Cornie, I am starting. ”

“ You must get some Swaim notions of living, too. Not that either of us ever criticized your mother's sweet spirit and her ideal-building and love of adventure. Romance belongs to some lives and keeps them young and sweet if they live to be a million. I'm not down on it like your Aunt Jerry is."
Romance had steered wide away from Cornelius Darby's colorless days. And possibly only this once in the sweet stillness of the June twilight at "Eden" did that hungering note ever sound in his voice, and then only for a brief space. ”

“ The sound of voices and Eugene Wellington's light laughter came faintly from the lily-pond.
"Eugene is a good fellow," Uncle Cornie said, meditatively. "He's got real talent and he'll make a name for himself some day that will be stronger, and do more good, and last longer than the man's name that's just rated gilt-edged security on a note, and nowhere else. Gene will make a decent living, too, independent of any aunts and uncles. But he's no stronger-willed, nor smarter, nor better than you are, Jerry, even if he is a bit more religious-minded, as you might say. ”

“ Something in the cultivation of a new land puts a gentler culture into the soul. Out of the common heartache, the common sacrifice, the common need, have grown the open-hearted, keen-sighted, fine-fibered folk of the big and generous Middle West, the very heart of which, to the Kansan, is Kansas.
The postmaster turned quickly back to his task. He did not see the girl's face; he only felt that she walked away on air.
At York Macpherson's office she hesitated a moment, then hurried inside. York was in his private room, but the door to it stood open, and Jerry caught sight of a woman within. ”

“ You are a good deal like your father, too, Jerry, and you'll value property some day as the only thing on earth that can make life anything but a hard grind. If you don't want to be like that bunch of everlasting grubs that ride on the Winnowoc train every afternoon, or the poor country folks around here that never ride in anything but a rickety old farm-wagon, you'll appreciate what I—and Uncle Cornie—can do for you. ”