Rose Wilder Lane

“ It's eight o'clock and of course you've had your supper. Your mother's probably finishing up the kitchen work and putting the bread to rise, and you haven't anything to do but sit on the porch and look at the stars and the lighted windows here and there in the darkness, and listen to the breeze in the trees. And here I am, sitting in a place that looks just like a hothouse with all the flowers come to life. There's a ball up-stairs, and a million girls have gone through the corridors, with flowers and feathers and jewels in their hair, and dresses and evening cloaks as beautiful as petals. ”

“ She felt ashamed while she finished dressing. They were lovely to her, she thought, and they accepted people as they were, without sneaking little criticisms and feelings of superiority. She did not know what she thought about anything.
Her indecisions were cut short by the squawk of an automobile-horn beneath the windows. With last hasty slaps of powder-puffs and a snatching of gloves, they hurried down to meet Mr. Kennedy at the door, and again Helen felt his charm like a tangible current between them. Words choked in her throat, and she stood silent in a little whirlpool of greetings. ”

“ The whirling dust-eddies over the cobbles, the blown scraps of paper, the flapping of her skirts, seemed part of the miserable confusion in her own mind.
How could she have forgotten Paul even for a moment? She had been heartless, head-strong, foolish to stay on in San Francisco, trifling so with the most precious thing in her life. Paul had been superhumanly patient and kind and unselfish to let her do it. She had never loved him more deeply than at that moment when with a dim sense of fleeing to him for refuge she hurried toward a telephone. ”

“ In a passion of pity and wild pain she held him close, lifting her face to his kiss in the darkness. She felt that her heart was breaking.
"You do," he said in deep content. "My dear, my dear!"
When she could reach her room she turned on the full glare of the electric lights and went softly to the mirror. She stood for a long time, her hands tight against her breast, looking into the eyes that stared back at her. "He doesn't love you," she said to them. "He doesn't want you. It's some one else he wants—the girl you used to be. O Paul, how can I hurt him so! ”

“ Sara cried.
"Yes. But lots of things are horrible. War isn't the worst one. One has to—" "Yes, get up and face them. And do something. As much as you can."
The words echoed Helen's own feeling. In the folds of her coat, curled against a drift log, she listened, quiet, adding a word occasionally. She felt now the charm of this companionship, demanding nothing, unconstrained, full of understanding. It was freedom, relaxation, without loneliness. ”

“ In an hour she was asking Helen to call her Louise, and although she made no attempt to conceal her astonishment at the barrenness of Helen's life, her generous desire to share her own good times took the sting from her pity. Why, Helen didn't know the city at all, she cried, and Helen could only assent. They must go out to some of the cafés together; they must have tea at Techau's; Helen must come to dinner and meet momma. Louise jumbled a dozen plans together in a rush of friendliness. It was plain that she was genuinely touched in her butterfly heart by Helen's loneliness. ”

“ Already the room had taken on something of the forlornness of all abandoned places, a coldness and strangeness shared in Helen's mind by the lands to which she was going, the unknown days before her.
The dull ache at her heart became pain at a sudden memory of Paul's face. She straightened in her chair, closing her fingers more warmly around Sara's.
"I'm sure of one thing," she said earnestly. "It hurts to—to let go of anything beautiful. But something will come to take its place, something different, of course, but better. The future's always better than we can possibly think it will be. ”

“ A blind impulse had brought her into this little place where she could lock a door behind her and be alone. She had felt that she could give way there to all the tears she had not shed. But she felt only a sense of peace. She laughed a little, wiping away the few tears that did brim over her lashes, thinking of the girls who still loved her and would love her wherever she was.
Deliberately she thought of Paul, and already the deep hurt was gone. He would be reading her letter now; she felt a pang of sharp pain because she had made him suffer. But he would forget her now. ”

“ The men who lounge aimlessly about the street corners cannot be wholly idle. Their hands, at least, must be busy. The scarred posts and notched edges of the board sidewalks show it; the paint on the little stations is sanded shoulder-high to prevent their whittling there. Energy struggles feebly under the weight of the slow, uneventful days; but its pressure is always there, an urge that becomes an irritation in young blood.
Helen Davies, pausing in the doorway of Richardson's store on a warm spring afternoon, said to herself that she would be glad never to see Masonville again. ”

“ Sara insisted softly, "you leave out everything that's important when you leave out love."
Anne's small exclamation was half fond and half weary.
"We'll always have love. Every one of us has some one around in the background, sending us flowers. A woman without a man who loves her feels like a promissory note without an endorsement. But marriage!"
"And there's always the question—what is love?" Helen roused at the little flutter of merriment, and after a moment she joined it with her clear laugh.
"Why, love is just love," said Sara, bewildered. ”

“ But to Helen the days were like notes in a melody. Linnet's songs and sunshine streaming through the attic windows or gray panes and rain on the roof were one to her. She woke to either as to a holiday. She slipped from beneath the patchwork quilt into a cold room and dressed with shivering fingers, hardly hearing Mabel's drowsy protests at being waked so early. Life was too good to be wasted in sleep. She seemed made of energy as she ran down the steep stairs to the kitchen. ”

“ Helen stole down the hallway at night, taking the broom from its corner as if she was committing a theft, and surreptitiously swept and dusted her own room, so that Mrs. Brown would not have to do it.
She wished that it took more time. When she had finished there was nothing to do but sit at her window and look down at the street. People went up and down, strolling leisurely in the warm summer evening. She saw girls in dainty dresses, walking about in groups, and the sight increased her loneliness. Buggies went by; a man with his wife and children out driving, a girl and her sweetheart. ”

“ The two years that had whirled past since she became Bert Kennedy's wife had taught her many things. She had drawn from her experience generalities on men, women, life, which made her feel immeasurably older and wiser. But there were problems that she had not solved, points at which she felt herself at fault, and they troubled her vaguely while she stood twisting the cord of the window-shade in her hand and gazing out at the many-windowed buildings of San Francisco.
She had learned that men loved women for being beautiful, gay, unexacting, sweet-tempered always, docile without being bores. ”

“ They were all talking, and every phrase seemed a flash of wit, since they all laughed so much.
"I love the cows and chickens, but this is the life!" Duddy cried at intervals. "Oh, you chickens!" and "This is the life!" the others responded in a chorus of merriment. Helen did not doubt that it all meant something, but her wits were too slow to grasp it, and the talk raced on unintelligibly. She could only sit silent eating delicate food from plates that waiters whisked into place and whisked away again, and laughing uncertainly when the others did.
Color and light and music beat upon her brain. ”

“ Sara sat on a bit of driftwood, her long, sensitive hands clasped around her knees, her eyes full of dreams. "How beautiful it is!" she said at intervals, lifting her face to the dark sky full of stars, or indicating with a nod the lights flung over the Berkeley hills like handfuls of jewels. Anne, stretched on the sand, spoke with passion of labor unions and I. W. W.'s, of strikes and lockouts, and the red glimmer of her cigarette sketched her gestures upon the darkness. Argument raged between her and Dodo, cross-legged like a boy, her fine, soft hair let down upon her shoulders. ”

“ It was all that Helen did not have. The crudely papered walls enclosed a haven warmed by innumerable homely satisfactions. How sweet to have no care but the crispness of curtains, the folding away of linen, the baking of bread! She was an alien spirit here, with her aching head and heart, her disheveled hair and dusty shoes. A tear slipped down her cheek and spread into a damp splash on the white pillow.
She rose quickly, knowing that she must be stronger than the longing that shook her. ”

“ Helen found occupation enough in the sheer delight of going so swiftly through a blur of light and darkness toward an unknown end. She did not resist the fascination of the man beside her; there was exhilaration in his being there, security in his necessary attention to handling the big machine. They passed the park gates, and the car leaped like a live thing at the touch of a whip, plunging faster down the smooth road between dark masses of shrubbery. ”

“ Time was going by; already twilight crept into the room, and looking at his watch, Paul spoke of his train. Helen led the way to the porch, where the shade of climbing rose-vines softened the last clear gray light of the day. There was sadness in this wan reflection of the departed sunlight; the air was still, and the creaking of the wicker chair, when Helen settled into it, the sharp crackle of Paul's match as he lighted his after-dinner cigar, seemed irreverently loud. ”

“ If she had stayed at home in Masonville, if she had given up the struggle in Sacramento; if she had been able to live in San Francisco with nothing to fill her days but work and loneliness—she saw as a series of merest chances the steps which had brought her at last to Bert.
One could not have everything. She had him. He was not a man who would work slowly, day by day, toward a petty job and a small house bought on the instalment plan. He was brilliant, clever, daring. He would one day do great things, and she must help him by giving him all her love and faith and trust. ”

“ On her third trip to the land with buyers she met Paul's mother on the main street in Ripley. Mrs. Masters appeared competent and self-assured, walking briskly from a butcher-shop with some packages on her arm. She was bare-headed, carrying a parasol above her smooth, gray hair. Small as she was, there was something formidable in the lines of her stocky figure and in the crispness of her stiff white shirt-waist. She looked at Helen with shrewd, interested eyes, and Helen realized that her hair was untidy, that there was dust on her shoes and on her blue serge suit. ”

“ She did not want to work, she wanted to live.
That night she went to the beach with the crowd. Bob was there and Duddy and a score of others she had met in cafés. There again was the stir of shifting colors under brilliant lights, the eddy and swirl of dancers, sparkling eyes, white hands, a glimmer of rings, perfume, laughter, and through it all the music, throbbing, swaying, blending all sensations into one quickening rhythm, one exhilarating vibration of nerves and spirit. Helen felt weariness slip from her shoulders; she felt that she was soaring like a lark ”