Chapter II: Part III: Jerry and Eugene--And Joe (2)

There was a steady downpour of summer rain on the day following the funeral at "Eden." Mrs. Darby was very busy with post-mortem details and Eugene Wellington's services were in constant demand by her, while Jerry Swaim wandered aimlessly about the house with a sense of the uselessness of her existence forcing itself upon her for the first time. Late in the afternoon, when the big rooms with all their luxurious appointments seemed unbearable, she slipped down the sodden way to the rose-arbor. There was a shower of new buds showing now under the beneficence of the warm rain, and all the withered petals of fallen blossoms were swept from sight.

As Jerry dropped into an easy willow rocker her eye fell on the splintered angle of the trellis by the doorway where Uncle Cornie had sat when the last summons came to him. A folded paper lay under the seat, inside the door, as if it had been blown from his pocket by a whirl of wind in that midnight thunder-storm.

Jerry stared at the paper a long time before it occurred to her to pick it up. At last, in a mechanical way, she took it from under the seat and spread it out on the broad arm of her chair. As she read its contents her listlessness fell away, the dreamy blue eyes glowed with a new light, the firm mouth took on a bit more of firmness, and the strong little hands holding the paper did not tremble.

"A claim in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas." Jerry spoke slowly. "It lies in Range--Township--Oh, that's all Greek to me! They must number land out there like lots in the potter's-field corner of the cemetery that we drove by yesterday. Maybe they may all be dead ones, paupers at that, in Kansas. It is controlled, or something, by York Macpherson of the Macpherson Mortgage Company of New Eden--_New Eden_--Kansas. Uncle Cornie told me it hadn't brought any income, but that wasn't York Macpherson's fault. Strange that I remember all that Uncle Cornie said here the other night."

The girl read the document spread out before her a second time. When she lifted her face again it was another Jerry Swaim who looked out through the dark-blue eyes. The rain had ceased falling. A cool breeze was playing up the Winnowoc Valley, and low in the west shafts of sunlight were piercing the thinning gray clouds.

"Twelve hundred acres! A prince's holdings! Why 'Eden' has only two hundred! And that is at _New_ Eden. It 'hasn't been well managed.' I know who's going to manage it now. I'm the daughter of Jim Swaim. He was a good business man. And Aunt Darby--" A smile broke the set line about the red lips. "I'd never dare to say she didn't understand how to manage things, Chief of Staff to the General who runs the Universe, she is."

Then the serious mood came back as the girl stared out at the meadows and growing grain of the "Eden" farmland. A sudden resolve had formed in her mind--Jerry Swaim the type all her own, not possible to forecast.

"Father wanted me to know what it means to be independent. I'll find out. If this 'Eden' can be so beautiful and profitable, what can I not make out of twelve hundred acres, in a New Eden? And it will be such a splendid lark, just the kind of thing I have always dreamed of doing. Aunt Jerry will say that I'm crazy, or that I'm Lesa Swaim's own child. Well, I am, but there's a big purpose back of it all, too, the purpose my father would have approved. He was all business--all money-making--in his purposes, it seemed to some folks, but I think mother knew how to keep him sweet. Maybe her adventurous spirit, and all that, kept her interesting to him, and her romancing kept him her lover, instead of their growing to be like Uncle Cornie and Aunt Jerry. There's something else in the world besides just getting property--'if a man went right with himself,' Uncle Cornie said. There was a good sermon in those seven words. Uncle Cornie preached more to me than the man who officiated at the funeral yesterday could ever do. 'If a man went right with himself.' And Eugene." A quick change swept Jerry Swaim's countenance. "He said he wanted to say something to me. I think I know what he wanted to say. Maybe he will say it some day, but not yet, not yet. Here he comes now."

There was a something new, unguessable, and very sweet in Jerry Swaim's face as Eugene Wellington came striding down the walk to the rose-arbor.

"I'm through at last, little cousin," he declared, dropping into a seat beside her. "Really, Aunt Jerry is a wonderful woman. She seems to know most of the details of Uncle Cornie's business since he began in business. But now and then she runs against something that takes her breath away. Evidently Uncle Cornie knew a lot of things he didn't tell her or anybody else. She doesn't like to meet these things. It makes her cross. She sent me away just now in a huff because she was opening up a new line that I think she didn't want me to know anything about. Something that took her breath away at first glance. But she didn't have to coax me off the place. I ran out here when the chance came."

How handsome and well-groomed he was sitting there in the easy willow seat! And how good he had been to Mrs. Darby in these trying days! A dozen little services that her niece had overlooked had come naturally to his hand and mind.

The words of Uncle Cornie came into Jerry Swaim's mind as she looked at him: "He's a good fellow, with real talent, and he'll make a name for himself some day. He'll make a decent living, too, independent of anybody's aunts and uncles, but he's no stronger-willed nor smarter nor better than you are." A thrill of pleasure quickened her pulse at the recollection, making this new decision of hers the more firm.

"It has seemed like a month since we sat here the evening before Uncle Cornie passed away," Eugene began. "He made a bad discus-throw and came over here just as I began to tell you something, Jerry. Do you remember what we were saying when he appeared on the scene?"

"Yes, I remember." Jerry's voice was low, but there was no quaver in it.

Her face, as she lifted it, seemed to his eyes the one face he could never paint. For him it was the fulfilment of a man's best dream.

"There's only one grief in my heart at this minute--that I can never put your face as it is now on any canvas. But let me tell you some things that Aunt Jerry has been telling me. She seems so fond of you, and she says that after all the claims against your father's estate are settled there is really no income left for you. But she assures me that it makes no difference, because you can go on living with her exactly as you have always done. She told me she had never failed in the fruition of a single plan of hers, and she is too old to fail now. She has some plan for you--" The young artist hesitated.

Jerry had never thought much about his good looks until in these June days in "Eden" when Love had come noiselessly down the way to her. And yet--a little faint, irresolute line in the man's face--a mere shadow, a ghost of nothing at all, fixed itself in her image of his countenance. A quick intuition flashed into her mind with the last words.

"Aunt Jerry is too old for lots of things besides the failure of her plans. I know what she said, Gene, because I know what she thinks. She isn't exactly fond of me; she wants to control me. I believe there are only two planes of existence with her--one of absolute rule, and the other of absolute submission. She couldn't conceive of me in the first plane, of course, so I must be in the second."

"Why, Geraldine Swaim, I never heard you speak so of your aunt before!" Eugene Wellington exclaimed. He had caught a new and very real line in the girl's face as she spoke.

"Maybe not. But don't go Geraldine-ing me. It's too Aunt Jerry-ish. I'm coming to understand her better because I'm doing my own thinking now," Jerry replied.

"As if you hadn't always done that, you little tyrant! I bear the scars of your teeth on my arms now--or I would bear them if I hadn't given up to you a thousand times years ago," Eugene declared, laughingly.

"That's just it," Jerry replied. "I've been let to have my own way until Aunt Jerry thinks I must go on having just what she thinks I want, and to do that I must be dependent on her. And--Wait a minute, Gene--you will be dependent on her, too. You have only your gift. So both of us are to be pensioners of hers. That's her plan."

"I won't be," Eugene Wellington declared, stoutly. And then, in loving thought of Jerry, he added: "I don't want to, Jerry. I want to do great things, the best that God has given me to do, not merely for myself, but for your sake--and for all the world. That seems to me to be what artists are for."

"And I won't be, either," Jerry insisted. "I won't. You needn't look so incredulous. Let me tell you something. The evening before Uncle Cornie died--" Jerry broke off suddenly.

It seemed unfair to betray the one burst of confidence that the colorless old man had given up to on the last evening of his earthly life. Jerry knew that it was to her, and for her alone, that he had spoken.

"This is what I want to tell you. I have no income now. Aunt Jerry is right, although she never told me that herself. But I have a plan to make a living for myself."

Eugene Wellington leaned back and laughed aloud. "You, Miss Geraldine Swaim, who never earned a dollar in your precious life! I always knew you were a dreamer, but you are going wrong now, Jerry. You must look out for belfry bats under that golden thatch of yours. Only artists dare those wild flights so far--and they do it only on canvas and then get rejected by the hanging committee."

Jerry paid no heed to his bantering words as she went on with serious earnestness: "My estate--from my father--is a claim out at New Eden, Kansas. Twelve hundred acres. It has never been managed well, consequently it has never paid well. 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 big, dreamy eyes were full of light. The level beams of the sun stretched far across green meadows and shaven lawns, between tall lilac-trees, to the rose-arbor, just to glorify that rippling mass of brown-shadowed golden hair.

"Jerry"--Eugene Wellington's voice trembled--"you are the most wonderful girl in the world. I am so proud of you. But, dear girl, it is an old, threadbare fancy, this going to Kansas to get rich. My father tried it years ago. He had a vision of great things, too. He failed. Not only that, he ruined everybody connected with him. That's why I'm poor to-day. Truly, little cousin mine, I don't believe the good Lord, who makes Edens like this in the Winnowoc Valley, ever intended for well-bred people to leave them and go New-Eden-hunting in the Sage Brush Valley. We belong here where all the beauty of nature is about us and the care of a loving God is over us. Why do you want to go to Kansas? I wouldn't know how to pray out there where my father made such a botch of living. I really wouldn't."

"I don't know how to pray here, Gene," Jerry said, softly, with no trace of flippant irreverence in her tone. "I forgot how to do that when God took my father away. But listen to me." The imperious power of the uncontrolled will was Jerry's always. "You don't _live_ here; you _stay_ here. And you take a piece of canvas and go to the ends of the earth on it, or down to the deeps, or into the heavens. 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. You always have been a determined little girl, so you will have your own way now, I suppose. We can try it, anyhow, for a while. And if you find your way a rocky road you must come back to 'Eden.' When your new playthings fail, you can play with the old ones. But I really love your spirit of self-reliance. I don't want you ever to be dependent. I don't want any other Jerry than I have always known. And I want to work hard and make my little talent pay me big, and make you proud of me."

"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. I never knew that until last week. Everything seems changed for me since Uncle Cornie died. Isn't it strange how suddenly we drop off one life and take up another?" Jerry's eyes were on the deepening gold of the sunset sky.

"Yes, we have been two idlers. I'm glad to quit the job. But, somehow, for you I could wish that you would stay here, if you were only satisfied to do it," Eugene replied.

"I don't wish it." Jerry spoke decisively. "I couldn't be happy, now I've this splendid Kansas thing to think about. Let's go and tell Aunt Jerry and have it out with her."

"And if she says no?" the young man queried.

Jerry Swaim paused in the doorway and looked straight into Eugene Wellington's face, without saying a word.

"Geraldine Swaim, there was a big mistake made in your baptismal ceremony. You should have been christened 'The Sphinx.' Some day I'll make a canvas of the Egyptian product and put your face on it. After all, _are_ you really in earnest about this Sage Brush Valley New Eden? It is so lovely here, I want you to stay here."

Again Jerry looked at him without speaking, and that faint line of indecision that scarcely hinted at its own existence fixed itself in the substratum of her memory.

Mrs. Darby met the young people in the parlor, where only a few nights ago the three had watched the summer storm, not knowing that it was beating down on the unconscious form of Cornelius Darby. Mrs. Darby felt sure that the young people would be coming to her to-night. Well--the end of her plan was in sight now. Really, it may have been better for Cornelius to have gone when he did, since we must all go sometime. 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.

"Aunt Jerry, we want to tell you what we have been talking about," Eugene began, when the three were seated together. "Jerry and I have decided that we must look on life differently now since--" Eugene hesitated.

"Yes, I know." Mrs. Darby spoke briskly. "We must face the truth now and speak of Cornelius freely. He was fond of both of you. Poor Cornelius!"

"Poor Cornelius," Jerry Swaim repeated, under her breath.

"Of course I know it is difficult for a girl reared as Jerry has been--" Eugene began again.

"She can go on living just as she has been. This will be her home always," Mrs. Darby broke in, abruptly.

"And I know that I have nothing but the prospect of earning a living and winning to a successful career in my line--" the young man went on.

"Hasn't Jerry the prospect of enough for herself? I'll need you to help me for several months. You know, Eugene, that I must have some one who understands Cornelius's way of doing things." There was more of command than request in the older woman's voice.

"I'll be glad to help you as long as I am needed, but I am speaking now of my life-work. When I cannot serve you any longer I must begin on my own career. I have some hopes and plans for the future."

"Humph! What's the use of talking about it? I tell you Jerry will have enough for all her needs, and I want you here. I shall not consider any more such notions, Eugene. You are both going to stay right here as you have done. Let's talk of something else."

"We can't yet, Aunt Jerry, because I have not enough for myself, even if Gene would accept a living from you," Jerry Swaim declared.

Jerusha Darby opened her narrow eyes and stared at her niece. If the older woman had made one plea of loneliness, if she had even hinted at sorrow for the loss of the companion of her business transactions, Jerry Swaim would have felt uncomfortable, even though she knew her aunt too well to be deceived by any such demonstration.

"Geraldine Swaim, what are you saying?" Mrs. Darby demanded, in a hard, even voice. Something in her manner and face could always hold even the brave-spirited in frightened awe of her.

Eugene Wellington lost courage to go on, and the same thing came again that Jerry Swaim had twice seen on his face in the rose-arbor this evening. The two were looking straight at the girl now. The firelight played with the golden glory of her hair and deepened the rose hue of her round cheeks. The dark-blue eyes seemed almost black, with a gleam in their depths that meant trouble, and there was a strength in the low voice as Jerry went on:

"I'm talking about what I know, Aunt Jerry. All there is of my heritage from my father is a 'claim,' they call it, at New Eden, in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas; twelve hundred acres. I'm going out there to manage it myself and support myself on an income of my own."

For a long minute Jerusha Darby looked steadily at her niece, her own face as hard and impenetrable as if it were carven out of flint. Then she said, sharply:

"Where did you find out all this?"

"It is all in a document here that I found in the rose-arbor this afternoon," the girl replied. "Aunt Jerry, I must use what is mine. I wouldn't be a Swaim if I didn't."

"You won't stay there two weeks." Mrs. Darby fairly clicked out the words. Her face was very pale and something like real fright looked through her eyes as she took the paper from her niece's hand.

"And then?" Jerry inquired, demurely.

"And then you will come back here where you belong and live as you always have lived, in comfort."

"And if I do not come?"

Jerusha Darby's face was not pleasant to see just then. The firelight that made the girl more winsomely pretty seemed to throw into relief all the hard lines of a countenance which selfishness and stubbornness and a dictatorial will had graven there.

"Jerry Swaim, you are building up a wild, adventurous dream. You are Lesa Swaim over and over. You want a lark, that's what you want. And it's you who have put Eugene up to his notions of a career and all that. Listen to me. Nothing talks in this world like money. That you have to have for your way of living, and that he's got to have if he wants to be what he should be. Well, go on out to Kansas. You know more of that prosperous property out there than I do. I'll let you find it out to the last limit. But when you come back you must promise me never to take another such notion. I won't stand this foolishness forever. I'll give you plenty of money to get there. You can write me when you need funds to come back. It won't take long to get that letter here."

"And if I shouldn't come?" Jerry asked, calmly.

"Look what you are giving up. All this beautiful home, to say nothing of the town house--and Eugene--and other property."

"No, no; you don't count him as your property, do you?" Jerry cried, turning to the young artist, whose face was very pale.

"Jerry, must you make this sacrifice?" he asked, in a voice of tenderness.

"It isn't a sacrifice; it's just what I want to do," Jerry declared, lightly.

Jerusha Darby's face darkened. The effect of a long and absolute exercise of will, coupled with ample means, can make the same kind of a tyrant out of a Kaiser and a rich aunt. The determination to have her own way in this matter, as she had had in all other matters, became at once an unbreakable purpose in her. She wanted to keep fast hold of these young people for her own sake, not for theirs. For a little while she sat measuring the two with her narrow, searching eyes.

"I can manage him best," she concluded to herself. At last she asked, plaintively, "With all you have here, Jerry, why do you go hunting opportunities in Kansas?"

"Because I want to," Jerry replied, and her aunt knew that, so far as Jerry was concerned, everything was settled.

"Then we'll drop the matter here. I can wait for you to come to your senses. Eugene, if you can give her up, when you've always been chums, I certainly can."

With these words Mrs. Darby rose and passed out, leaving the two alone under the rose-colored lights of the richly furnished parlor.

It was not like Jerusha Darby to make such a concession, and Jerry Swaim knew it, but Eugene Wellington, who was of alien blood, did not know it.

The room was much more beautiful without her presence; and her sordid hinting at the Darby wealth which Jerry must count on, and Eugene must meekly help to guard for future gain, rasped harshly against their souls, for they were young and more sentimental than practical. Left alone to their youth, and strength, and nobler ideals, they vowed that night to hold to better things. Together they builded a dream of a rainbow-tinted world which they were going bravely forth to create. Of what should follow that they did not speak, yet each one guessed what was in the other's mind, as men and maidens have always guessed since love began. And on this night there were no serpents at all in their Eden.

IV

BETWEEN EDENS

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. And when the Pullman porter's white coat on the rear platform of the last coach melted into the dull, diminishing splotch on the western distance, she felt as if she were shipwrecked in a pathless land, with the little red station house, reefed about by cinders, as the only resting-place for the soles of her feet. When her eyes grew weary of the monotonous landscape, Jerry rested them with what she called "A Kansas Interior." The rustic station under the maples at "Eden" was always clean and comfortably appointed. Big flower-beds outside, Uncle Cornie's gift, belonged to the station and its guests, with the spacious grounds of "Eden," at which the travelers might gaze without cost, lying just beyond it.

This "Kansas Interior" seemed only a degree less inviting than the whole monotonous universe outside. The dust of ages dimmed the windows that were propped and nailed and otherwise secured against the entrance of cool summer breezes, or the outlet of bad, overheated air in winter. Iron-partitioned seats, invention of the Evil One himself, stalled off three sides of the room, intending to prove the principle that no one body can occupy two spaces at the same time. In the center of the room a "plain, unvarnished" stove, bare and bald, stood on a low pedestal yellowed with time and tobacco juice. A dingy, fly-specked map of the entire railway system hung askew on the wall--very fat and foreshortened as to its own extent, very attenuated and ill-proportioned as to other insignificant systems cutting spidery lines across it.

Behind a sealed tomb of a ticket-window Jerry could hear the "tick-tick, tick-a-tick-tick, tick-tick" of a telegraph-wire. Somebody must be in there who at set times, like a Saint Serapion from his hermit cell, might open this blank wall and speak in almost human tones. Just now the solitude of the grave prevailed, save for that everlasting "tick-a-tick" behind the wall.

When Jerry Swaim gripped her hands on the plow handles, there would be no looking back. She persuaded herself that she wasn't going to die of the jiggermaroos in the empty nothingness here. It would be very different at New Eden, she was sure of that. And this York Macpherson must be a nice old man, honest and easy-going, because he had never realized any income from her big Kansas estate. She pictured York easily--a short, bald-headed old gentleman with gray burnsides and benevolent pale-blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, driving a fat sorrel nag to an easy-going old Rockaway buggy, carrying a gold-headed cane given him by the Sunday-school. Jerry had seen his type all her life in the business circles of Philadelphia and among the better-to-do country-dwellers around "Eden."

At last it was only fifteen minutes till the Sage Brush train would be due; then she could find comfort in her Pullman berth. She wondered what Aunt Jerry and Eugene were doing now. She had slipped away from "Eden" on her wild adventure in the early dawn. She had taken leave of Aunt Jerry the night before. Old women need their beauty sleep in the morning, even if foolish young things are breaking all the laws by launching out to hunt their fortunes. Eugene had been hurriedly sent away on Darby estate matters without the opportunity of a leave-taking, two days before Jerry was ready to start for Kansas. Everything was prearranged, evidently, to make this going a difficult one. So, without a single good-by to speed her on her quest, the young girl had gone out from a sheltering Eden of beauty and idleness. But the tears that had dimmed her eyes came only when she left the lilac walk to the station to slip around by Uncle Cornie's grave beside the green-coverleted resting-places of Jim and Lesa Swaim.

"Maybe mother would glory in what I am doing, and father might say I had the right stuff in me. And Uncle Cornie--'If a man went right with himself'--Uncle Cornie might have said 'if a woman went right with herself,' too. I'm going to put that meaning into his words, even if he never seemed to think much of women. Oh, father! Oh, mother! You _lived_ before you died, anyhow, and I'm going to do the same. Uncle Cornie died before he ever really lived."

Jerry stretched out her hands to the one good-by in "Eden" coming to her from these silent ripples of dewy green sod. Then youth and the June morning and the lure of adventure into new lands came with their triple strength to buoy her up to do and dare. Behind her were her lover to be--for Eugene must love her--her home ties, luxury, dependent inactivity. Before her lay the very ends of the earth, the Kansas end especially. The spirit of Sir Galahad, of Robinson Crusoe, of Don Quixote, combined with the spirit of a self-willed, inexperienced girl, but dimly conscious yet of what lay back of her determination to go forth--_because she wanted to go_.

Chicago and Kansas City offered easy ports for clearing. And the Kaw Valley, unrolling its broad acres along the way, gave larger promise than Jerry had yet dared to dream of for the New Eden farther west. The train service, after the manner of a Pacific Coast limited, had been perfect in every appointment. And then--this junction episode.

Two eternity-long hours before the Sage Brush branch could take her to New Eden were almost ended.

"It's not so terrifying, after all." Jerry was beginning to "see things again." "It's all in the game--and I am going to be as 'game' as the thing I am playing. Things always come round all right for me. _They must._"

The square white chin was very much a family feature just now. And the shapely hands had no hint of weakness in their grip on the iron arms of the station seat.

The door which the wind had slammed shut was slammed open again as three prospective passengers for the Sage Brush train slammed through it laden with luggage. At the same time the sealed-up ticket-window flew open, showing the red, grinning face of the tick-tick man behind its iron bars. If Jerry had never paid the slightest heed to the bunch of grubs on the Winnowoc branch, except as they kept down the ventilation, or crowded their odors of Limburger on her offended senses, the Sage Brush grubs were a thousandfold less worthy of her consideration. As the three crowded to the ticket-window, laughing among themselves, she stared through the doorway, unconsciously reading the names on the cars of a freight-train slowly heaving down alongside the station. Who invented freight-cars, anyhow? The most uninteresting and inartistic thing ever put on wheels by the master mechanic of the unbeautiful, created mainly to shut off the view of mankind from what is really worth looking at. Jerry read the dulled lettering mechanically: "Santa Fe" with its symbol of a fat cross in a circle, "Iron Mountain," "Great Northern," "Rock Island," "Frisco," "Union Pacific," "Grand Trunk," came creeping by. "New York Central," "Lehigh Valley," "Pennsylvania Line." These took her back to "Eden" and the Winnowoc country. The station building shook; the ugly old cars slam-banged a bit faster back and forth; the engine, with the breath almost knocked out of it, was puffing down by the switch, and the whole body behind it quivered to a standstill. But Jerry Swaim's tear-blurred eyes were seeing only the green fields of the Darby country-place and the rose-arbor and Eugene Wellington. A voice loud, but not unpleasant, and a laugh, a merry, catching, giggling guffaw, drove the picture of "Eden" and all that belonged to it into "viewless air" that went flapping and flaring across the Kansas landscape.

"You don't mean it! He, he! Haw!" Everybody must smile now. "The old Sage Brush local is locoed 'way up toward S'liny. Engine shortage, car shortage, common sense shortage. He, he! And we must ride in that sunflower de luxe limited standing out there. Come on, Thelmy. You can take lower nothin', car one-half. We'll soar in now while the soarin's good."

Jerry looked at the bunch of grubs for the first time. One had to see where that big gloom-chasing giggle came from. Thelma was a spotlessly clean, well-made country product, wherein the girl had easily given place to the woman, erect, full-bosomed, strong of frame. The hazel eyes were arched over by heavy brown brows. There was no rosebud curve to the rather wide mouth that showed a set of magnificent white teeth. The brown hair wound braid on braid about the head was proof of the glory of Saint Paul's scriptural decree. Not that Jerry Swaim really noted any of these features. She merely saw a country girl--a not offensive native. The native's comrade, he with the big-laugh fixtures, was short and stout, with a round face on the front side of a round head, set on top of a tight-built body. Grub though he was, Jerry involuntarily smiled with him. That far the fat little man controlled everybody. But the funny little strut in his gait as he walked was irresistible. The third passenger, the grubbiest of the three grubs, was a nondescript of whose presence Jerry was not even aware until she heard his voice. It was a thin, high, unused voice, and its pitch wabbled up and down.

"Be you goin' on the Sage Bresh train, lady?"

The questioner had turned back after the country girl and the fat man had passed out.

Jerry looked at him without taking his question to herself. His shoes, draped with wrinkled-down hose, were very much worn. His overalls flapping around his legs, his shirt and neck and face and hair and hat, were all of one complexion, a fuzzy, yellow brown.

"Be you goin' on this train, too?"

It was a humble, kindly voice, and the scaly old hand holding the door open against the high prairie wind was only a fisherman's hand. The deep-set eyes in the yellow-brown old face were trained to read the river; the patient mouth set to wait for the catch of lines and nets.

Jerry had never in her life spoken to such a creature. So far as she was concerned, he did not exist.

"This is the only train on the Sage Bresh to-day, lady. The reg'lar train's busted through a culbert out yander," the high, quavering voice persisted.

A sharp tooting from the engine down the line emphasized the statement, and Jerry saw the grinning red-faced tick-tick man hastily wheeling mail-sacks and sundry other parcels by the door. In a bewildered way she rose and passed out, giving no recognition to the shabby old man who had been thoughtful of her ignorance.

"We gotta go to the last car down yander, lady," the old man squeaked out, as he started down the cinder-paved way with a bearlike, shuffling, sidewise sort of gait.

Jerry followed him slowly to "the last car down yander."

A plain day coach, the sixtieth and last vertebra in this long mechanical spine, was already crowded with a bunch of grubs, none of whom could belong to Jerry Swaim's sphere. Moreover, they were all tightly packed in and wedged down so that it was impossible to detect the leaving off of the full-fare passenger and the beginning of suit-cases, old-style telescopes, baskets, bundles, boxes, half-fare children, bags of fruit, lunch-crates, pieces of farming tools, babes in arms, groceries--everything to cabbages and kings. Jerry wondered where all these _things_ came from. 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. There was only one vacant seat left. It was on the shady side, facing the rear of the car, and was half occupied already by the humble grub of the squeaky voice. The girl, Thelma, and the fat little man had taken the seat opposite him. As Jerry entered the car the little man was on his feet, bowing and strutting and insisting that a woman with a babe in arms should exchange seats with him, putting her on the cool side, while he took her place in the sun across the aisle from Thelma. In the transfer he did not see Jerry, who was looking in vain for an opening in that mass of "human various." It was the humble grub who saw her standing there. Evidently his little yellow-green eyes took her measure at a glance, but he did not spread out his effects and stare out of the window as some other men were doing, nor gather himself and his into his own half of the seat to make room for her beside him. He rose, and in a shrill little quaver he bade her take his place. It did not occur to Jerry to tell him that there was room for two, as she saw him shuffle down the aisle with a queer, limping hitch. In the same impersonal way she watched him through the open door, sitting on the rear platform during the long afternoon, humpbacked against the cinders and dust that beat upon him, swaying with the rocking car, jerked along over a sun-baked, treeless prairie at the tail of a long jerky freight-train. He meant nothing to this dainty city product; his kind had never entered her world; no more had the red-faced, tow-headed young mother, with white eyebrows and hat knocked rakishly aslant, with her big, restless, bald-headed baby rolling over her in waves, sprawling about Thelma, and threatening to bump its head off as it overflowed all the narrow space, aimlessly and persistently.

But if Jerry Swaim felt out of her element in this company, her fellow-passengers felt much more embarrassed by her presence. Thelma's neat gingham dress became limp and mussy and common. The tired mother's yellow lawn was rumpled into a dish-rag. And with every jerk of the train she lost a hair-pin from her tow hair that was already stringing down in long wisps on her neck. The baby, really a happy, white, blue-veined infant, became a fussy flushed impossibility.

All this, it seemed, just because of the presence of a faultlessly dressed, fair-faced stranger who awed everybody by not seeing them, but whose very daintiness and beauty drew them hungrily to her. Nobody could be in Jerry Swaim's presence and not feel the spell of her inherent magnetism.

The laughter and complaints of the passengers dulled down to endurance. Only the face of the short man wore a smile. But his mouth was made with that kind of a curve, and he couldn't help it. Breathing deeply and perspiring healthfully, he sat against the heat streaming into his side of the car, and forgot his troubles in his unbreakable good nature. For a long time he and Thelma had talked across the aisle above and through the train's noises. Their talk was all of Paul and Joe's place, and the crops; of how glad Thelma was to be at home again on Paul's account; and how long it would take her yet if the alfalfa and wheat turned out well.

Jerry heard it all without knowing it, as she looked at the monotonous landscape without knowing it. And then the dry prairies began to deepen to a richer hue. Yellow wheat-fields and low-growing corn and stretches of alfalfa broke into the high plains where cattle grazed. And then came the gleam of a river, sometimes shallow along sandy levels, sometimes deep, with low overhanging brush on either side. And there were cottonwood-trees and low twisted elms and scrubby locust and oak saplings, and the faint, fresh scent of moisture livening the air.

The train jerked itself to a standstill, thought better of it, and hunched along again for a rod or two, then jostled itself quiet again.

Jerry was very drowsy now, but she was conscious of hearing the fat man calling out, cheerfully:

"Home at last, Thelmy. There's Paul waiting for you. Well, good-by."

And of Thelma's "Good-by" in a louder tone than was necessary. Of more strutting and bowing and no end of luggage clearing itself away.

Through the window Jerry caught sight of a tall, fair-haired boy, who looked like Thelma, except that in his white face was the pathos of the life-cripple. She saw Thelma kiss him, and then the two started down the sunny, cindery side-track together. In the distance, close to the river, there was a small plain house under a big cottonwood-tree. The glimpse of red about a little porch meant that the crimson ramblers were in bloom there. Oh, the roses of "Eden," and the cool rose-arbor! Jerry must have dreamed then, for "Eden" was about her again. Through it the limping grub came humbly to claim his sundry own from behind and under the seat. Even in "Eden" she thought how much like a clumsy bear his gait was. And when the little man called him "Teddy" she knew he was not a fisherman sort of creature, but a real bear in yellow-brown overalls, and that the general fuzziness of his make-up was fur, and that his stubby, scaly hands were claws. He dropped off somewhere when the freight took a siding very near the river. It was the Sage Brush, but it ran through the "Eden" grounds and Uncle Cornie was throwing his discus beside it. The rose-arbor was just across the aisle. The little fat man was sitting in its doorway, with a new moon of a smile on the smooth side of his round head where his face was, a half-quizzical, half-sympathetic smile with no guile in it. Jerry really liked him for that kind of a smile. It belonged to him. The rose-arbor was very warm, for the man was sweating more copiously than ever.... Uncle Cornie was gone. The limping Teddy Bear was gone.... It was very, very hot and sunny in "Eden." The big maples and cool lilacs were gone.... "Eden" was gone. In its stead came the art exhibit in the cool gallery in the city. And that yellow-gray desert landscape with the flaming afterglow and purple mists. The flames seemed almost real, and the yellow gray almost real, and the art-gallery was getting warmer as "Eden" had done. It was positively hot.... And then the Sage Brush freight was laboring slowly and painfully through a desert with clack and roar and cloud of cindery dust.... Jerry sat up, wide awake, and looked up at the fat stranger who was looking at her, the smile on the inside of his face, as it were, showing only in the eyes.

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 train was entering a deep wrinkle not unlike that cut beyond the third crossing of the Winnowoc. Jerry remembered the day she had watched that other train from the bluff road, and her exultation in pounding her big car up the steep way instead of crawling through, as Eugene was doing. Later she had found out that Eugene really preferred that to the more daring climb. Jerry involuntarily gripped the car seat with a subconscious longing to get out and drive over the whole thing. Across the aisle, the smile on the fat man's face was coming outside as he watched the stranger passenger.

They were deep in now--a valley-like thing that was hotter than any other inch of the whole way they had come. On either side tall slabs of timber, planted upright, closed in the right of way. They were barely moving through this narrow lane. The engine was gasping for breath, and the cars dragged themselves after it by inches. Then all came to a dead stop.

"Everybody turn out and help," somebody in uniformed authority called through the car door, and all the men passengers stirred to action.

"_The_ dickens!" the short fat man exclaimed to everybody. "Stuck in a sand-drift in that danged blowout. That's what comes of letting this wind go all day. I told 'em up at the junction to stop it, but they wouldn't listen to me. Now we've got to soar out of here and shovel for our lives."

When he laughed everybody else had to laugh, too, and it was a really good-natured company of men that piled down from the train to help the cause of railway transportation.

The fat man had been last to leave the car.

"Let me close all these windows," he urged, strutting from seat to seat. "It'll be hot with 'em shut, but you'll be buried in sand in here if we leave 'em open, and we men don't want to dig you and the engine all out in one day. We mightn't find all the children, you know, and leave some of 'em in here covered up. He, he! Haw!" He struggled with the last windows until they were sealed down, then turned away to lend his aid in a good cause.

The tow-headed woman and her little perpetual-motion baby, who had been sleeping wearily for a few miles, roused at the jolly man's loud laugh.

"It's the blowout," the mother said, as Jerry looked at her for the first time. "Them timbers is driv in to keep out all that sand. See how it's heaped up ag'in' 'em on the outside. On awfully windy days it blows over and fills the tracks and stops the train, and then the men all get out and help to shovel it off. Gee whiz! but it's hot in here! We'd be just smothered in sand if we left the windows open, though. There! There!"

The last to the big baby, stirring uneasily, whom the mother patted off to slumber again.

Jerry walked to the rear door and looked out at the narrow space walled in by palisades, and at glimpses of sand waves on either side of the road beyond them; at the little hot-looking green shrubs clinging for life to their shifting depths, and the heat-quivering air visible above them. In all her life she had never felt so uncomfortable as now; never realized what it means to _endure_ physical misery. She had seen the habitable globe features--lake-shore, and seaside, and mountain resorts; big navigable rivers; big forests; narrow little valleys; sheer cliffs and wonderful waterfalls. She didn't know that the world held such a place as this that anybody but a Hottentot was supposed to inhabit. Through a long hour and a half the train was held back by the sand of what Jerry heard was a "blowout." She did not know nor care what the term meant. _She wanted to get_ out of it and go on, and what Jerry Swaim _wanted_ she had always had the right to have.

The sun was getting low in the west when the local freight labored up the Sage Brush Valley to its terminal in the yards at New Eden. All of the passengers except Jerry tumbled out, much as tired boys rush from the church door after a long doctrinal sermon. The car was stopped at the freight-station, some distance down the line from the passenger-station, which was itself a long way out from New Eden, after the manner of Western small towns. The middle '80's, when railroad branch lines were building, found road directors and town councils falling out over technicalities, with the result that the railroad seldom secured the ground it wanted and the town was seldom given a convenient station site.

The buses filled rapidly, and the mail and express wagons were rattling off ahead of buses and foot passengers, and still the young stranger sat in the car. A sudden sense of loneliness had enveloped her like a cloud. She was not a novice abroad. She had gone to strange towns alone before. She knew all the regulations of hotel service. She knew why she had come here and what she had to do, and she had abundant means for all her needs. But with all these points in her favor a helplessness swept over her, and the "what next" for the moment perplexed her. The engine was getting restless again. However long it may require a local freight to get from one given point to another, the engine, like an ill-broken colt, will keep stepping up or pulling back through every halt of the train. Jerry sat inside, watching the last bus, loaded and hung-on-to, swinging off down the dusty road toward the town, a full half-mile across the prairie from the station. Life was getting a trifle too interesting in this foreign clime, and when the short man appeared in the doorway, even the full-moon face and half-moon smile, the profound bow and comical strut, could not out-weigh the genuine comfort his presence seemed to bring.

"Pardon me, Miss--Miss--"

"Miss Swaim," Jerry informed him, sure of herself and unafraid again.

"Oh, Miss Swaim! My name is Ponk--Junius Brutus Ponk. Pardon again if I seem to intrude. This is the Sage Brush terminal. Excuse me if I say thank the Lord for the end of _this_ day's journey! The buses are all gone. May I take you to your destination here in my little gadabout? You want to stop somewhere in New Eden overnight, anyhow."

"Thank you very much."

Jerry looked at him gratefully, even if he was only one of the bunch of grubs she had been forced to ride with all this long afternoon, she who had once repudiated the Winnowoc train and all trains without Pullman accommodations. "The smile on her face was mightily winsome," Ponk declared afterward, "and just took all my ramparts and citadels and moats and drawbridges at one fell swoop."

He gathered up her bags and helped her off the car pompously, saying:

"Here she is, Miss Swaim. Step right in." And then with a flourish of arms he had Jerry and her belongings stored inside a shiny gray runabout and was off down the grassy road with a dash.

"Where shall I take you to, Miss Swaim?" he inquired, when the little car had glided gracefully around the lumbering buses and rattling wagons.

"To the best hotel, please," Jerry replied. "Do you know which one that is?"

"Yes'm. There isn't but one. The Commercial Hotel and Gurrage. I'm the proprietor, so I know." The smile that broke around the face of the speaker was too good-natured to make his words seem presumptuous.

Jerry smiled, too, finding herself in the grasp of a strange and complete confidence in the pompous little unknown chauffeur.

"Do you know an old gentleman here named York Macpherson, a Mortgage Company man?" she asked, looking at him directly for the first time.

Ponk seemed to gulp down a smile before he replied: "Ye-es, I do know York very well. He's prob'bly older than he looks. His office is right across the street from the Commercial Hotel and Gurrage."

Afterward he declared: "From the minute that girl turned her eyes full on me and I saw how blue them orbs were, I begun to wish I had a gold button instead of a bone one in the back of my collar. I knew she could see that cheap bone thing right through my neck and I was willing right then to lay down and play dead if she wanted me to, and I'm never going to recover, never."

"Would you do--me a favor?" Jerry asked, hesitatingly.

Asking favors was a new line for her and she followed it prettily.