CHAPTER II

JOAN TO WINT

The months of that winter passed quietly in Hardiston. The excitement of the election was not forgotten; the drama of Wint’s choice as Mayor became one of the stories to be told about the stoves on cold home-keeping days. But Wint himself was no longer an object of curious interest; he was just the Mayor. An inconsiderable figure in the town. There had been Mayors in the past, and there would be again. Never amounted to much, one way or another. Hardiston went along just the same; the winters were just as cold, the summers just as hot, the rains just as wet, the sun just as warm.

Hardiston is infamous for its winters and for its summers. In the spring or in the fall there is no lovelier spot. In the spring, apple blossoms clothe the hills; in the fall the woods are great splashes of flame against the dull green of the fields. But in winter the mercury drops far below zero, and climbs forty degrees in half a day. The snow comes tempestuously, eight, ten, twelve inches of it; and it melts as quickly as it comes. The roads turn into mud at the first snow; they remain mud till the increasing heat of the northing sun bakes them to dust. On Monday, every water pipe in town freezes tight; on Tuesday, violets bloom in sheltered corners about the houses. On a cold morning, adventurous boys skate on the film of ice that forms on streams and ponds; but by noon the ice is unsafe, and some one has broken through, and by mid-afternoon, it is freezing hard again.

This winter in Hardiston was like all others. The new Mayor stuck strictly to business. Jack Routt let him alone. When boys were arrested for misdemeanor, or children of a larger growth for more pretentious wrongs, they were brought before Wint and he passed sentence upon them, marveling that he, Wint Chase, should be passing judgment on his fellow man. At first, this feature of his work shamed him; later it awed him, and made him look into his own heart and ask whether he were fit for such a rôle. He tried to make himself fit.

To act as judge of the Mayor’s court and to preside at council meetings comprised the bulk of Wint’s official duties. They took only a fraction of his time. When the electric-light plant went out of commission with a broken cylinder head, Wint had to do the explaining; when a sewer became stopped up, he had to see that it was opened; when the old project for a sewage-disposal plant came up on its annual burst of life, he had to consider it. When Ned Howell filed his regular yearly suit for damages done to his pasture by overflow from the sewage-filled creek, Wint had to attend court and testify. But--there was time on his hands and to spare. He did not know what to do with himself.

He did not undertake any crusades. A certain diffidence, in these first months, restrained him. He was not sure of his ground; he was not sure of himself. V.R. Kite’s underlings continued to peddle their wares, and the Mayor’s court had to deal, now and then, with one of Kite’s bibulous customers. Wint dealt with them, but he did not dig for the root of the evil, to tear it out. Matters in Hardiston went on much as they had in the past. Men rose, did their day’s work, ate, and went to bed again. Women likewise. The annual Chautauqua lecture course began and was finished; Number Four theatrical companies came to town with Broadway attractions, played one-night stands, and departed as they had come. The moving-picture houses had new films every day, and the same audiences day after day. The dramatic teacher in the high school organized a pageant, and it was presented to the eyes of admiring parents in the Rink. The high school played basket ball, the women played bridge, the men played poker of a night. Now and then the Masons or the Knights of Pythias gave a dance. The preachers preached sermons in which they tried to prove there was nothing the matter with the churches. The schools developed their annual scandal over the discharge of a school-teacher. There were the regular rumors of a new factory that was to come to town; and the rumors fell through in the regular way. Now and then a baby was born, now and then there was a wedding, now and then there was a funeral.

Wint stuck to his guns, and the world rolled majestically and interminably on.

When Wint took hold of his job, he wondered what there was for him to do. Dick Hoover told him. Dick was a lawyer, in with his father, who had the biggest practice in town. He showed Wint where to look, in the statute books, for the duties of a Mayor. Wint was surprised to discover that laws were simple, everyday things, having to do with life as it was lived. One day when he went to Dick’s office to look up a statute, the book he sought was in use. To kill time, he took down a volume of Blackstone and peered into it curiously. He discovered that Blackstone said water was a “movable, wandering thing,” and the description fascinated him. He read on....

The more law he read, the more interested he became. In January, he asked Dick Hoover if it were possible to study law in leisure hours. Hoover told him it was not only possible, it was easy. The end of January saw Wint putting in his spare time on calfskin-bound volumes of which each page was one-third reading matter and two-thirds footnotes. The first day he picked up a book of cases was marked with a red letter on his mental calendar. He found these cases as interesting as fiction.

He began to read law systematically. Dick Hoover’s father was interested, helped him. The elder Hoover told Wint’s father one day:

“Chase, your boy is going to make a lawyer before he’s through.”

The senior Chase looked at Hoover, half minded to resent the fact that his son had been mentioned in his presence. But--the old wound was healing. Men no longer took occasion to remind him of last fall’s election with a jeer in their eyes. His conditional alliance with Kite had languished, because Wint had made no move to make the town dry. Chase hated Amos Caretall as ardently as ever; but he could not hate his son. That is not the way with fathers. He loved Wint; he had been, for some time, secretly proud of him.

He said to Hoover: “He’s smart enough, if he sticks to it.”

“He’s sticking,” Hoover told Wint’s father.

Winthrop Chase, Senior, nodded indifferently, hiding the light in his eyes. “He never stuck to anything before,” he said, and turned away.

He thought of telling Wint’s mother, that night, but did not do so. When he spoke of Wint to her, it precipitated one of her endless remarks. They wearied him. But he had to tell some one, so he told Hetty Morfee, when he went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Hetty was washing dishes at the time, and she stopped with a plate in one hand and a dish-rag in the other, and listened, and said with a cheerful wistfulness in her voice:

“Wint’s smart, sir. You’ll be proud of him.”

Chase was proud of him, but he would not admit it to himself, much less to Hetty.

“He’s smart enough,” he told her. “But he’s ... He’s....”

He turned abruptly and went out of the kitchen without saying what Wint was, and Hetty looked after him with understanding in her smile. Then her face became still and somber again. There was growing in Hetty’s eyes a certain unhappy light. A desperate fashion of unhappiness, which no one was sufficiently interested to notice. She was not so cheerful as she used to be. And there was a helplessness about her.

Word of Wint’s new industry spread slowly through Hardiston. It was Dick Hoover himself who told Joan of it. Dick was a Mason, and he took Joan to a Masonic dance one night. She spoke of Wint. “I have heard that he is studying law,” she said. “Is it true?”

So Dick told her. “True as Gospel,” he said. “And he’s darned quick to pick it up, too. The principles.... Of course, it will take time. But I’d just as soon have him try a case for me now, as some of these....”

He went on enthusiastically. Hoover was always enthusiastic about things. He was an extremist. His friends were the finest chaps in the world, his enemies were the least of created things. But he had few enemies. People liked him, and he liked people. Joan liked him; liked him particularly this evening because he talked to her of Wint.

Joan Arnold was, in a way of speaking, a girl to tie to. There was a peculiar steadfastness in her. She was a little taller than Wint, and she was habitually grave and quiet, especially when she was with him. In his presence she had always been faintly abashed and reticent as a girl is apt to be in the presence of a man she cares for. Joan had always cared for Wint. In spite of the fact that she was a year or two his junior, they had played together as children: and they had grown up together. When they were little children, they fought as only good friends can fight. When they were a little older, Wint scorned her because she was a girl. A year or so later, she scorned Wint because she was at the age when girls resolve to have a career and never marry at all. But in their late teens, they were devoted to each other, so that the mothers of the town smiled when they passed by, and nodded to each other, and whispered, with the delight women take in such matters, that they were a nice-looking couple together. Wint’s short, sturdy strength matched well the girl’s slightly larger stature and her quiet poise.

The first passage of affection between them had come when she was eighteen, when he went away to college. Before that they had been much together, but none save the most casual words had passed between them. The night before Wint went away, he went to see her. He was feeling adventurous and heroic and important as a boy does feel when he leaves home for the first time. He talked vastly, of big things he meant to do, of his dreams. She thrilled to his dreams with the half of her that was still child; she smiled at his enthusiasm with the half that was already woman. They were sitting on the porch of her home. There were locust trees about the veranda. They sat in a two-seated swing, facing each other, Wint leaning toward her earnestly.

He became melancholy, and she comforted him softly. He did not want to go away, he said. She told him he would be happy. The movement of the swing made him lean toward her. There was a moon, and the September evening was warm, and the very air seemed trembling in a rhythm that beat upon them both.

When he got up to go, she got up at the same time, and the swing lurched and threw them together. Ineptly, he kissed her, fumblingly, on the cheek. She did not move, she trembled where she stood. He took her awkwardly in his arms, as though afraid she would break, and kissed her cheek again. He rubbed his cheek against hers. She looked at him with wide eyes, lips a little parted, and he kissed her lips. They were cool, unused to kisses.

The months thereafter, till Wint was expelled from college, passed smoothly with them. Too smoothly, too placidly. They wrote short, broken letters; they saw each other when Wint came home. They thought they were very happy; yet each was conscious of a lack in their happiness. There was no fire in it, none of the exquisite anguish of love. They missed this, without knowing what they missed. All went too well with them.

Joan wept on her pillow when he was expelled, but she did not let him see her weep. She reassured him. There was an unsuspected strength in her. Women are full of these surprises. They are indescribably dainty creatures, habitually clad in fabrics like gossamer, seeming light as air and fit to vanish at a breath, who reveal--in a bathing suit, for instance--a surprising physical solidity. It was so, spiritually, with Joan. She was so quiet and so still that Wint, if he had thought at all, would have supposed she was a simple girl and nothing more; but in the revelations of his disaster, she showed a poise and a power which heartened him immensely, and made him a little afraid of her. She was a tower of strength for him to lean upon, a miracle of understanding and of sympathy.

He had expected her to be shocked and revolted at the shame of his expulsion; she was simply sorry for him, and loved him none the less. Wint knew, then, how much he loved her. There is nothing that so inspires love in a man as to find himself beloved. This is the conceit of the creature!

Joan had told Wint that she was done with him, when the story of his drunken sleep in the Weaver House went abroad through Hardiston. But--she had done it for his sake. She thought there was good in him. How could she love him else? She thought it might come out if he had to fight; she thought his very stubbornness might save him. Joan had no illusions about Wint. She knew he was prideful and stubborn. But--she loved him. And so had told him she would have no more of him. With a reservation in her heart....

Thus what Dick Hoover told her made Joan happy; happier than Hoover could possibly guess. Another girl would have cried herself to sleep with happiness that night, but Joan was not given to tears. She lay awake for a long time, thinking....

Three or four days later, she met Wint on the street. They had met thus, often, for Hardiston is a small place. But heretofore they passed with a word, unsmiling. This time, Wint would have passed her in that fashion; but Joan stopped and spoke to him.

“Wint,” she said.

He had been sick with hunger for a word from her for weeks. He stopped as though she had struck him, and his cheeks burned red as fire. He could not have spoken, for his life. He stood, hat in hand, face crimson, staring at her.

Joan knew what she wished to say. “I want you to know that I am proud of you, Wint,” she said.

His impulse was to laugh, to reject her friendliness. The old Wint, stiff with pride, would have done this. But the old Wint was gone; or at least, he was going. This Wint who stood before Joan tried to find something to say, but all he found to say to her was:

“Oh!”

Joan smiled at him. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have dared say this, Wint,” she said. “But I do dare now. Stick to the fight, Wint. This is what I want to say.”

He said, sullen in his embarrassment: “I’m going to.”

“There was a time when you were not going to--just because I--your friends--told you to stick.”

Wint looked away from her. “Well, that’s all right,” he told her uncomfortably.

“There’s never any harm in having friends, Wint, and taking their advice,” she said.

The old impatience burst out for a moment. “Don’t preach,” he said harshly.

“I’m not going to preach.” She was afraid she had spoiled it all. But he reassured her, hot with shame at his own decency.

“It’s all right, Joan,” he said. “I know you mean to help. I’ll try.”

“Do try,” she echoed softly.

He nodded, and she watched him, and at last added:

“I’d like to have you come to see me some time.”

He hesitated, then he said swiftly: “All right. Some time. Good-by!”

He jerked his head in farewell and hurried away as though he were afraid of her. Joan watched him go, and she pressed her hand to her lips as though to still them.