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Page 35
But twelve years, and the confidence born of deserved success, had
softened his memories. After all, she was the mother of his boy, and it
was incontestable that she had always meant well. Besides, he was not
working so hard now, and he had more time to think of things besides his
business. He wanted to see the boy, whom he had never seen and who had
turned three before his father ever learned he was a father. Then, too,
homesickness had begun to crawl in him. In a dozen years he had not seen
snow, and he was always wondering if New England fruits and berries had
not a finer tang than those of California. Through hazy vistas he saw
the old New England life, and he wanted to see it again in the flesh
before he died.
And, finally, there was duty. Agatha was his wife. He would bring her
back with him to the West. He felt that he could stand it. He was a man,
now, in the world of men. He ran things, instead of being run, and
Agatha would quickly find it out. Nevertheless, he wanted Agatha to come
to him for his own sake. So it was that he had put on his frontier rig.
He would be the prodigal father, returning as penniless as when he
left, and it would be up to her whether or not she killed the fatted
calf. Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come back wondering if he
could get his old job in the general store. Whatever followed would be
Agatha's affair.
By the time he said good-bye to his staff and emerged on the sidewalk,
five more of his delivery wagons were backed up and loading.
He ran his eye proudly over them, took a last fond glance at the
black-and-gold letters, and signalled the electric car at the corner.
II
He ran up to East Falls from New York. In the Pullman smoker he became
acquainted with several business men. The conversation, turning on the
West, was quickly led by him. As president of the Oakland Chamber of
Commerce, he was an authority. His words carried weight, and he knew
what he was talking about, whether it was Asiatic trade, the Panama
Canal, or the Japanese coolie question. It was very exhilarating, this
stimulus of respectful attention accorded him by these prosperous
Eastern men, and before he knew it he was at East Falls.
He was the only person who alighted, and the station was deserted.
Nobody was there expecting anybody. The long twilight of a January
evening was beginning, and the bite of the keen air made him suddenly
conscious that his clothing was saturated with tobacco smoke. He
shuddered involuntarily. Agatha did not tolerate tobacco. He half-moved
to toss the fresh-lighted cigar away, then it was borne in upon him that
this was the old East Falls atmosphere overpowering him, and he resolved
to combat it, thrusting the cigar between his teeth and gripping it with
the firmness of a dozen years of Western resolution.
A few steps brought him into the little main street. The chilly, stilted
aspect of it shocked him. Everything seemed frosty and pinched, just as
the cutting air did after the warm balminess of California. Only several
persons, strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and they favoured
him with incurious glances. They were wrapped in an uncongenial and
frosty imperviousness. His first impression was surprise at his
surprise. Through the wide perspective of twelve years of Western life,
he had consistently and steadily discounted the size and importance of
East Falls; but this was worse than all discounting. Things were more
meagre than he had dreamed. The general store took his breath away.
Countless myriads of times he had contrasted it with his own spacious
emporium, but now he saw that in justice he had overdone it. He felt
certain that it could not accommodate two of his delicatessen counters,
and he knew that he could lose all of it in one of his storerooms.
He took the familiar turning to the right at the head of the street, and
as he plodded along the slippery walk he decided that one of the first
things he must do was to buy sealskin cap and gloves. The thought of
sleighing cheered him for a moment, until, now on the outskirts of the
village, he was sanitarily perturbed by the adjacency of dwelling houses
and barns. Some were even connected. Cruel memories of bitter morning
chores oppressed him. The thought of chapped hands and chilblains was
almost terrifying, and his heart sank at sight of the double
storm-windows, which he knew were solidly fastened and unraisable, while
the small ventilating panes, the size of ladies' handkerchiefs, smote
him with sensations of suffocation. Agatha'll like California, he
thought, calling to his mind visions of roses in dazzling sunshine and
the wealth of flowers that bloomed the twelve months round.
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