Other Main-Travelled Roads Part 39

"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"

"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"

When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat face could express.

"You ain't needed _here_," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything, find a man and send him for the Doctor--quick. If she dies you'll be her murderer."

Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.

When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.

"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of l.u.s.ty children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she needs better care than the babe!"

"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move over here--and live."

A FAIR EXILE

The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle odor of September gra.s.s and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thras.h.i.+ng crews, the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine flapping and s.h.i.+ning like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.

The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward, frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with pa.s.sengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.

A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after pa.s.sing him several times, said, in a friendly way:

"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."

"Yes--if we ever get there."

"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."

"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."

"Your name is Allen, I believe."

"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."

"I thought so. I've heard you speak."

The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's voice.

"When do you reach the junction?"

"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends there?"

"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."

At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught the odor of violets as two persons pa.s.sed him and took a seat just before him.

The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young lawyer--Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but in the latest city fas.h.i.+on, and her gloves were spotless. She gave off an odor of cleanliness and beauty.

She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a peculiar way--trustfully, almost reverently--and yet with a touch of coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or glance of her eyes.

Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch chain, and his tie was disarranged.

His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless nose and retreating forehead of the girl.

The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such women use--a coquette's defence.

"You did! you did! you _did_! _Now_! You know you did! You told me that! You told me you despised girls like me!"

"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he replied, rather soberly.

"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting self-depreciation.

The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of the car.

"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did,"

she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're straight."

The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered by those red lips in childish pout.

"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if she had gone back to an old attack.

"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here in six weeks. I know I should."

The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.

"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me, but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square man."

"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden fury in her eyes.

"Do you call it square for a man--married, and gray-haired, too--to take up with a woman like Mrs. Sh.e.l.lberg? Say, do you, now?"

"Well, I don't quite believe--"

"Oh, I _lie_, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach.

"You can't take my word for Mrs. Sh.e.l.lberg's visits to his office."

"But he was her lawyer."

"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private office for? Come, now, tell me that!"

"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.