One Woman's Life Part 47

Then they kissed.

There were tears in Ernestine's eyes as she stood waving a pocket-handkerchief after the receding train. Milly was at the rail of the observation platform, leaning on the bra.s.s sign and waving both hands to her old friends, Chicago, her past. Little Virginia at her side waved an inch or two of white also, while the smiling ranchman stood over them benignantly, protectingly, one hand on his wife's shoulder to keep her from falling over the rail.

When the train had swept out into the yards, the little party broke up.

Horatio, who was choky, turned to his wife. Mrs. Horatio was already studying through her spectacles a suburban time-card to ascertain the next "local" for Elm Park. Ernestine and Walter Kemp slowly strolled up the train-shed together. The banker was the first to break the silence:--

"Guess they'll have a comfortable journey, not too dusty.... He seems to be a good fellow, and he must have a fine place out there."

Ernestine said nothing.

"Well," the banker remarked, "Milly is settled now anyway--hope she'll be happy! She wasn't much of a business woman, eh?" He looked at Ernestine, who smiled grimly, but made no reply. "She's better off married, I expect--most women are," he philosophized, "whether they like it or not.... That's what a woman like Milly is meant for.... She's the kind that men have run after from the beginning of the world, I guess--the woman with beauty and charm, you know."

Ernestine nodded. She knew better than the banker.

"She'll never do much anywhere, but she'll always find some man crazy to do for her," and he added something in German about the eternal feminine, which Ernestine failed to get.

There was a steady drizzle from a lowering, greasy sky outside of the train-shed, and the two paused at the door. With a long sigh Ernestine emitted,--

"I only hope she'll be happy now!"

As if he had not heard this heartfelt prayer, the banker mused aloud,--

"She's Woman,--the old-fashioned kind,--just Woman!"

Ernestine looked steadily into the drizzle. Neither commented on what both understood to be the banker's meaning,--that Milly was the type of what men through the ages, in their paramount desire for exclusive s.e.x possession, had made of women, what civilization had made of her, and society still encouraged her to become when she could,--an adventuress,--in the banker's more sophisticated phrase,--a fortuitous, somewhat parasitic creature. In Ernestine's more vulgar idiom, if she had permitted herself to express her conviction, "Milly was a little grafter." But Ernestine would not have let hot iron force the words through her lips....

"And I suppose," the banker concluded, "that's the kind of women men will always desire and want to work for."

"I guess so," Ernestine mumbled.

Had she not worked for Milly? She would have slaved for her cheerfully all her life and felt it a privilege. Milly had stripped her to the bone, and wounded her heart in addition,--but Ernestine loved her still.

"Can I put you down anywhere?" Kemp asked, as his car came up to the curb.

"No, thanks--I'll walk."

"Remember when you want some money for your new business to come and see me!"

"I owe you too much now."

"Oh," he said good-naturedly, "that account is wiped off. The partnership's been dissolved."

"That ain't the way I do business."

"I wish more of my men customers felt like _you_," the banker laughed as the car drove away.

Ernestine plunged into the drizzle, and while the Sunshine Special was hurrying the old-fashioned woman westward to the golden slopes of California, with her pretty

"face that burned the topless towers of Ilium,"

the new woman plodded st.u.r.dily through the mucky Chicago streets on her way to the eternal Job.

Milly was settled at last, and, let us a.s.sume, "lived happily ever after."

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE HEALER

"Distinctly unusual--and distinctly interesting."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

"Mr. Herrick's finest."--_Omaha Herald._

"Had Ibsen been a novelist, and had he chosen Mr. Herrick's theme in 'The Healer,' he might have written much the same sort of a novel."--_The Dial._

"Of extraordinary vividness--a book of power."--_Chicago Tribune._

"Mr. Herrick has written a novel in which every page has sustained interest, though we think he does not intend the reader to grasp the full moral purport of his story until he reveals it himself in the last paragraph. We credit the writer not only with possessing a high ideal, but also with having carried out his object with great artistic success--two things which are unhappily not often found between the same covers."--_London Athenaeum._

"...exceedingly well done."--_Bookman._

"...bears directly upon great evils in society to-day."--_N.Y. Times._

TOGETHER

"Scarce a page but is tense and strong."--_Record-Herald._

"A masterpiece of keen vision and vivid depiction."--_Mail._

"An absorbing story ... likely to make a sensation."--_New York Evening Post._

"A book of the first magnitude, that handles a momentous theme boldly, wisely, sympathetically, and with insight."--_The Forum._

A LIFE FOR A LIFE

"A serious attempt to treat a big living question in a new way."--_Record-Herald._