________________________________________________
"Next week Monday is the tenth," Alves announced, glancing at the calendar
that hung beside the writing-table.
"Well?" Sommers answered. He was preparing to make the daily trip to the
post-office on the other side of Perota Lake.
"The Chicago schools open this year on the tenth," Alves continued slowly.
"What difference does that make?"
For reply Alves took from the drawer of the table the old leather purse
that was their bank. The mute action made Sommers smile, but he opened the
purse and counted the bills. Then he shoved them back into the purse, and
replaced it in the drawer.
"I don't know why I haven't heard about my horse," he mused.
"That would only put the day off another month or two," Alves answered. "We
have had our day of play--eight long good weeks. The golden-rod has been
out for nearly a month, and the geese have started south. We saw a flock
yesterday, you remember."
"But you aren't going back to the school!" Sommers protested. "Not to the
Everglade School."
"I got the notices last week. They haven't discharged me! Why not?" she
added sanely. "You know that it will be hard to build up a practice. And
Miss M'Gann wrote me that we could get a good room at the Keystone. That
won't be too far from the school."
"I had thought of returning to Marion, where my father practised," Sommers
suggested. "If we could only stay _here_, in this shanty three miles
from a biscuit!"
Alves smiled, and did not argue the point. They went to the shore where
their little flat-bottomed boat was drawn up. Perota Lake, on which the
tiny frame cottage stood, was a shallow, reedy pond, connecting by sluggish
brooks with a number of other lakes. The shore on this side of the lake was
a tangled thicket; the opposite shore rose in a gentle slope to fields of
sun-dried grain. The landscape was rich, peaceful, uneventful, with wide
spaces of sun and cloud and large broad Wisconsin fields. The fierce west
wind came cool and damp from the water. Sommers pulled out of the reedy
shore and headed for a neighboring lake. After rowing in silence for some
time, he rested on his oars.
"Why couldn't we stay here? That is what I want to do--to keep out of the
city with its horrible clatter of ambitions, to return to the soil, and
live like the primitive peasant without ambition."
The Wisconsin woman smiled sympathetically. She had grown strong and
firm-fleshed these summer weeks, sucking vitality from the warm soil.
"The land is all owned around here!" she laughed. "And they use herb
doctors or homeopaths. No, we should starve in the midst of harvests. There
is only one thing to do, to go back where we can earn a bit of bread."
Sommers started to row, but put down the oars again.
"Do _you_ want to go back?"
"I never think about it. It is so arranged," she answered simply. "Perhaps
it will not be always so."
"Which means that we may be more fortunate than our neighbors?"
"I don't know--why think? We have until Monday," and she leaned forward to
touch his hand.
Why think! That is what she had taught him. They had sloughed off Chicago
at the first, and from the day they arrived at Perota they had sunk into a
gentle, solitary routine. Sommers had been content to smoke his pipe, to
ruminate on nothings, to be idle with no strenuous summoning of his will.
There had been no perplexity, no revolt, no decision. Even the storm of
their love subdued itself to a settled warmth, like that of the insistent
summer sun. They had little enough to do with, but they were not aware of
their poverty. Alves had had a long training in economy, and with the
innate capability of the Wisconsin farmer's daughter, adjusted their little
so neatly to their lives that they scarcely thought of unfulfilled wants.
Now why, the man mused, must they break this? Why must they be forced back
into a world that they disliked, and that had no place for them? If he were
as capable as she, there would be no need. But society has discovered a
clever way of binding each man to his bench! While he brooded, Alves
watched the gentle hills, straw-colored with grain, and her eyes grew moist
at the pleasant sight. She glanced at him and smiled--the comprehending
smile of the mothers of men.
"You would not want it always."
They landed at the end of the lake; from there it was a short walk over the
dusty country road to the village. The cross-roads hamlet with its saloons
and post-office was still sleeping in midday lethargy. Alves pointed to the
unpainted, stuffy-looking houses.
"You would not like this."
At the post-office they met a young fellow wearing a cassock, a strangely
incongruous figure in the Wisconsin village. "Are you coming to vespers?"
the young priest asked. His brown, heavy face did not accord with the
clerical habit or with the thin clerical voice.
"I think so--for the last time," Alves answered.
"Guy Jones will be there. You remember Guy, Alves? He used to be quite
sweet on you in the old days when your brother was at the seminary."
"Yes, I remember Guy," Alves answered hurriedly. She seemed conscious of
Sommers's bored gaze. The young priest accompanied them along the dusty
road.
"Guy'll be glad to see you again. He's become quite a man out in Painted
Post, Nebraska--owns pretty much the whole place--"
"We shall be at vespers," Alves repeated, interrupting the talkative young
man.
When his cassock had disappeared up the dusty road between the fields of
corn, she added,
"And that, too, you would not like, nor Guy Jones."
After beaching the boat in front of the cottage they walked to the seminary
chapel by a little path through the meadows along the lake, then across a
wooded hill where the birds were singing multitudinously. The buildings of
the Perota Episcopal Seminary occupied the level plateau of a hill that lay
between two lakes. A broad avenue of elms and maples led to the rude stone
cloisters, one end of which was closed by the chapel. To Sommers the cheap
factory finish of the chapel and the ostentatious display of ritualism were
alike distasteful. The crude fervors of the boy priests were strangely out
of harmony with the environment. But Alves, to whom the place was full of
associations, liked the services. As they entered the cloisters, a tiny
bell was jangling, and the students were hurrying into the chapel, their
long cassocks lending a foreign air to the Wisconsin fields. Only one other
person was seated on the benches beneath the choir, a broad-faced young
American, whose keen black eyes rested upon Alves. She was absorbed in the
service, which was loudly intoned by the young priest. The candles, the
incense, the intoned familiar words, animated her. Sommers had often
wondered at the powerful influence this service exerted over her. To the
training received here as a child was due, perhaps, that blind wilfulness
of self-sacrifice which had first brought her to his notice.
"The remission and absolution of sins--" Alves was breathing heavily, her
lips murmuring the mighty words after the priest. Was there a sore hidden
in her soul? Did she crave some supernatural pardon for a desperate deed?
The memory of miserable suspicions flashed over him, and gravely, sadly, he
watched the quivering face by his side. If she sought relief now in the
exercise of her old faith, what would come as the years passed and heaped
up the burden of remorse!
* * * * *
The service ended, and the three lay participants sauntered into the
graveyard outside the west door. The setting sun flooded the aisle of the
little chapel, even to the cross on the altar. The tones of the organ
rolled out into the warm afternoon. The young man approached Alves with
extended hand.
"The boys told me I could find you here. It's real good to see you again.
Yes, I'm back to have a look at the old place. Wouldn't return to
_stay_ for worlds. It's a great place out there, where a man counts
for what he is. Won't you make me acquainted with your husband?"
Sommers felt instinctively the hesitation in Alves's manner. She turned to
him, however.
"Howard, this is my brother's old friend, Mr. Jones,--Dr. Sommers."
The young man shook hands with great warmth, and joined them in their walk
home, talking rapidly all the way. When he left the cottage, he extended a
cordial invitation to Sommers to establish himself in Painted Post. "We
want a good, live, hustling doctor, one that is up in all the modern school
theories," he explained.
After he had gone, they sat in silence, watching the deepening twilight in
the cool woods. The day, the season, the fair passion of life, seemed to
wane. Like the intimations of autumn that come in unknown ways, even in
August, surely in September, this accidental visitor brought the atmosphere
of change.
"The struggle begins, then, next Monday," Sommers remarked at last.
She kissed him for reply.
To love, to forget unpleasant thoughts, to love again, to refrain from an
ignoble strife--alas! that it could not be thus for a lifetime.
Read next: PART II#CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART I#CHAPTER XXIV
Table of content of Web of Life
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
