Wayside Courtships Part 1

Wayside Courtships.

by Hamlin Garland.

AT THE BEGINNING.

She was in the box; he was far above in the gallery.

He looked down and across and saw her sitting there fair as a flower and robed like a royal courtesan in flame and snow.

Like a red torch flamed the ruby in her hair. Her shoulders were framed in her cloak, white as marble warmed with firelight. Her gloved hands held an opera gla.s.s which also glowed with flashing light.

His face grew dark and stern. He looked down at his poor coat and around at the motley gallery which reeked with the smell of tobacco and liquor.

Students were there--poor like himself, but with great music-loving, hungry, ambitious souls. Men and women of refinement and indomitable will sat side by side with drunken loafers who had chanced to stumble up the stairway.

His eyes went back to her. So sweet and dainty was every thread on her fair body. No smell of toil, nor touch of care, nor mark of weariness.

Her flesh was ivory, her eyes were jewels, her heart was as clean and sweet as her eyes. She was perfectly clothed, protected, at ease.

No, not at ease. She seemed restless. Again and again she swept her gla.s.s around the lower balcony.

The man in the gallery knew she was looking for him, and he took a bitter delight in the distance between them. He waited, calm as a lion in his power.

The man at her elbow talks on. She does not hear. She is still looking--a little swifter, a little more anxiously--her red lips ready to droop in disappointment.

The noise of feet, of falling seats, continues. Boys call shrilly.

Ushers dart hastily to and fro. The soft laughter and hum of talk come up from below.

She has reached the second balcony. She sweeps it hurriedly. Her companion raises his eyes to the same balcony and laughs as he speaks.

She colors a little, but smiles as she lifts her eyes to the third balcony.

Suddenly the gla.s.s stops. The color surges up her neck, splashing her cheeks with red. Her breath stops also for a moment, then returns quick and strong.

Her smile settles into a curious contraction that is almost painful to see. His unsmiling eyes are looking somberly, sternly, accusingly into hers. They are charged with all the bitterness and hate and disappointed ambition which social injustice and inequality had wrought into his soul.

She shivered and dropped her gla.s.s. Shivered and drew her fleecy, pink and pale-blue cloak closer about her bare neck.

Her face grew timid, almost appealing, as she turned it upward toward him like a flower, to be kissed across the height that divided him from her.

His heart swelled with exultation. His face softened. From the height of his intellectual pride he bent his head and sent a winged caress fluttering down upon that flowerlike face.

And then the stealing harmony of the violins began, gliding like mist above the shuddering, tumultuous, obscure thunder of the drums, and the man's soul swept across that sea of song with the heart of a lion and the wings of an eagle.

A tender, musing smile was on the woman's lips.

WAYSIDE COURTSHIPS

A PREACHER'S LOVE STORY.

I.

The train drew out of the great Van Buren Street depot at 4.30 of a dark day in late October. A tall young man, with a timid look in his eyes, was almost the last one to get on, and his pale face wore a worried look as he dropped into an empty seat and peered out at the squalid buildings reeling past in the mist.

The buildings grew smaller, and vacant lots appeared stretching away in flat s.p.a.ces, broken here and there by ridges of ugly squat little tenement blocks. Over this landscape vast banners of smoke streamed, magnified by the misty rain which was driven in from the lake.

At last there came a swell of land clothed on with trees. It was still light enough to see they were burr oaks, and the young student's heart thrilled at sight of them. His forehead smoothed out, and his eyes grew tender with boyish memories.

He was seated thus, with head leaning against the pane, when another young man came down the aisle from the smoking car and took a seat beside him with a pleasant word.

He was a handsome young fellow of twenty-three or four. His face was large and beardless, and he had beautiful teeth. He had a bold and keen look, in spite of the bang of yellow hair which hung over his forehead.

Some commonplaces pa.s.sed between them, and then silence fell on each.

The conductor coming through the car, the smooth-faced young fellow put up a card to be punched, and the student handed up a ticket, simply saying, "Kesota."

After a decent pause the younger man said "Going to Kesota, are you?"

"Yes."

"So am I. I live there, in fact."

"Do you? Then perhaps you can tell me the name of your County Superintendent. I'm looking for a school." He smiled frankly. "I'm just out of Jackson University, and----"

"That so? I'm an Ann Arbor man myself." They took a moment for mutual warming up. "Yes, I know the Superintendent. Why not come right up to my boarding place, and to-morrow I'll introduce you? Looking for a school, eh? What kind of a school?"

"Oh, a village school, or even a country school. It's too late to get a good place; but I've been sick, and----"

"Yes, the good positions are all snapped up; still, you might by accident hit on something. I know Mott; he'll do all he can for you. By the way, my name's Allen."

The young student understood this hint and spoke. "Mine is Stacey."

The younger man mused a few minutes, as if he had forgotten his new acquaintance. Suddenly he roused up.

"Say, would you take a country school several miles out?"

"I think I would, if nothing better offered."

"Well, out in my neighborhood they're without a teacher. It's six miles out, and it isn't a lovely neighborhood. However, they will pay fifty dollars a month; that's ten dollars extra for the scrimmages. They wanted me to teach this winter--my sister teaches it in summer--but, great Peter! I can't waste my time teaching school, when I can run up to Chicago and take a shy at the pit and make a whole term's wages in thirty minutes."

"I don't understand," said Stacey.

"Wheat Exchange. I've got a lot of friends in the pit, and I can come in any time on a little deal. I'm no Jim Keene, but I hope to get cash enough to handle five thousand. I wanted the old gent to start me up in it, but he said, 'Nix come arouse.' Fact is, I dropped the money he gave me to go through college with." He smiled at Stacey's disapproving look.

"Yes, indeedy; there's where the jar came into our tender relations. Oh, I call on the governor--always when I've got a wad. I have fun with him." He smiled brightly. "Ask him if he don't need a little cash to pay for hog-killin', or something like that." He laughed again. "No, I didn't graduate at Ann Arbor. Funny how things go, ain't it? I was on my way back the third year, when I stopped in to see the pit--it's one o'

the sights of Chicago, you know--and Billy Krans saw me looking over the rail. I went in, won, and then took a flyer on December. Come a big slump, and I failed to materialize at school."

"What did you do then?" asked Stacey, to whom this did not seem humorous.