DUST
a novel by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

with an introduction by Gene DeGruson, curator of the Haldeman-Julius Collection, Pittsburg State University, PIttsburg, KS

originally published by Brentano's of New York, 1921
this edition published by the Washburn University Center for Kansas Studies, 1992

introduction begins on page 2; text begins on page 9.

 INTRODUCTION

     We accept co-authorship of scientific studies and collaboration in the
musical theatre as traditional, but successful novels by joint authors are
an uncommon phenomenon. This novel probably could never have been written
by either of its authors alone. E. Haldeman-Julius's background was almost
antithetical to the rural Kansas society which Dust portrays. Born in
Philadelphia to Jewish immigrant parents from Odessa, Emanuel Julius joined
the Socialist Party as a teenager. Not formally educated, he nevertheless
became a successful writer for the leading Socialist newspapers of New
York, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
     He left these cosmopolitan centers in 1915 for Girard, Kansas, a town
of only 3,000 population, to become an editor of the Appeal to Reason, the
most widely circulated newspaper in America. There he met Marcet Haldeman,
a Republican Presbyterian who had been received by Theodore Roosevelt in
the White House. They were not youngsters: he was twenty-six; she, twenty-
eight. Both were starved for the culture left behind them in Greenwich Vil-
lage during perhaps its most flamboyant period. In six months they were
married and began their joint writing career as Mr. and Mrs. E. Haldeman-
Julius.
     In addition to privately printed books of poetry, essays, plays, and
humor, Emanuel had published over a thousand newspaper articles; Marcet, in
addition to her privately printed fairy tale about the Addams Homestead in
Cedarville, Illinois, had written literally hundreds of breezy, highly
emotional, and richly detailed letters to her relatives and friends.
     Although Marcet had left Girard at the age of sixteen to attend
various schools and pursue a dramatic career, she knew the people of her
birthplace well. As vice president and a loan officer of the Girard State
Bank, she heard intimate details about inhabitants of the county daily, and
she had established for the foreign youth of the area the Radley Jolly
Club, an educational and recreational center based upon her aunt's concepts
of Hull House. Her background differed too much from Emanuel's for them
ever to be compatible, Jane Addams worried, but marry they did and their
collaboration signalled a successful union to the outside world. Their
jointly written fiction enjoyed both popular and critical success. Their
Haldeman-Julius Publications firm, whose Little Blue Books revolutionized
America's reading habits, was to become one of the nation's most
significant publishing houses of the first half of the twentieth century.
     When published by Brentano's of New York in March 1921, Dust was
hailed as a brilliant example of the "new fiction in America." An Inde-
pendent and Weekly Review critic, agreeing that it was a "fine, gripping
novel," complained that "it grips with a cold hand." This coldness was
recognized by most reviewers as an objectivity which gave the work its
compelling strength. The New York Times, for example, in speaking of the
novel's central characters, concluded its lengthy critique: "The pitiless
skill with which the wretchedness of all their lives is set forth makes it
at times actually epic in its powerful, unsoftened realism. Painfully
gloomy as it is, 'Dust' must be classed among the 'big' novels of the
year."
     A psychological study set in the recent past, the novel explores the
psyches of those who had ventured with hope into what was then a new fron-
tier. The setting is that of the short stories which accompany this
edition: the coal district of Southeast Kansas, which until 1867 had been
the Cherokee Neutral Lands and earlier (from 1824 to 1835) the Osage
Neutral Lands. While under federal control, this 6,250 square mile tract
was a buffer zone between whites and Indians, owned by the Indians and
closed to white settlement. Nevertheless, whites gradually began to move
in. When Fort Scott was established in 1842 in adjacent Bourbon County, its
responsibilities included the overseeing of the Neutral Lands (troops being
dispatched to burn down dwellings of white squatters).
     An apparent disdain of Indian rights was fostered by the territorial
and state governments of Kansas. Legislatures largely ignored federal
negotiations with the Indians and the Neutral Lands were named McGee County
and, later, Cherokee County. In 1867 it was subdivided into Cherokee and
Crawford Counties, with its northernmost portion relegated to Bourbon
County.
     The early 1870s witnessed the development of mining and processing of
rich deposits of coal, lead, and zinc, making the region a significant
industrial center, not only of the state but of the nation. By 1885, for
example, it had become second only to Belgium in the production of lead and
zinc spelter. Purchased by the James F. Joy railroad interests of Michigan,
the land was never opened for homesteading. Options for purchase, there-
fore, attracted primarily industrial speculators, immigrant laborers from
Europe (over fifty nationalities responded to a call for employment in the
mines and smelters), and Civil War veterans who had been stationed in the
area and whose vivid descriptions of the Neutral Lands enticed friends to
come to Kansas.
     It was to this last category of settlers that Jacob Wade, father of
the protagonist of this novel, belonged. He and his wife Sarah came with
their three children from Illinois around 1871 at the behest of a former
comrade-in-arms. They settled in Fallon County (a prototype of Crawford
County) near the county seat of Fallon (i.e., Girard, founded in 1868).
Already on the scene was David Robinson, a local banker (a character
loosely based on Marcet Haldeman-Julius's father, Dr. Henry Winfield Hal-
deman, founder of the Girard State Bank. His widow, Sarah Alice Addams
Haldeman, like Mrs. Robinson, "lived alone after [his] death, taking his
place as president of the bank, during the years her only daughter, Janet
[i.e., Marcet], had been off at college and later travelling around the
country 'on the stage'--of all things for a daughter of Fallon"). The
novel was intended to have a dedication to the memory of Marcet's mother,
but it was omitted by the book designer. Not until the fifth printing was
this oversight corrected and "To S. A. H." discreetly added to the leaf
preceding the half title.
     This, however, is neither an historical novel nor a roman à clef. Its
authors, like Theodore Dreiser, were more concerned with the "chemism"
between characters, and critics were soon favorably comparing the Haldeman-
Juliuses with Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Floyd Dell, Ruth Suckow, Harold
Frederick, and other unnamed "lesser novelists" in their reporting the
"frustration, dullness, and spiritual insolvency" of the Midwest. The
work ethic, religious principles, and social mores of the new pioneer
(especially attitudes toward marriage) were explored in hitherto un-
conventional ways. The novel bears resemblances to Frank Norris's McTeague,
notes Roy W. Meyer, "chiefly in the husband-wife relationship, and it is
these resemblances that entitle the novel to whatever claim it may have to
being called a naturalistic work."
     As for style, typical reviewers observed that the novel made "no
compromise with its theme--the drab, unhorizoned, soul-destroying existence
of one who harvests, not to fill his bins, but to swell his coffers. As a
picture of the drudgery of farm life on the Kansas plains, it is a
substantial performance, free from affectation and skilful in
characterization." Within four months, it had "outstripped even Main
Street as a commercial success." Its royalties were used to remodel the
spacious farm house the Haldeman-Juliuses had purchased three years earli-
er. (The dream house described by Martin Wade in his proposal to Rose
Conroy, incidentally, is virtually identical to the Haldeman-Julius home.)
     The reviews were effective in enticing readers to Dust. A second
printing appeared one month later, in April 1921; a third was published in
June, a fourth in July, a fifth in September, and a sixth in March 1922.
Later that year, Andrew Melrose of London brought out the first British
edition. A Russian translation by Peter Ochremenko (also Upton Sinclair's
translator) was published in 1925 and went through five printings in as
many years. In 1928 the novel's electrotype plates were purchased from
Brentano's by Haldeman-Julius Publications and two paperback printings were
issued, the first (1928) with a cover bearing John Sloan's color il-
lustration originally used on the dust jacket of the first Brentano print-
ing. (The second Haldeman-Julius printing of 1930 utilized only the line
drawing of the Sloan illustration.) "In addition to the [second printing of
the] Russian edition just issued," states a 1928 article, "this novel has
been published in France, Germany and Sweden." The Haldeman-Juliuses had
"done something entirely new in the world in writing on Kansas with none of
the conventional Kansas trappings--the bleeding, Governor Allen, the indus-
trial code and Carrie Nation," wrote a Survey reviewer, who compared the
novel to Sherwood Anderson's Poor White in developing "a real understanding
of how the industrial Middle West grew out of the soil."
     The most detailed explanation of the Haldeman-Juliuses's work habits
was given in an interview by Marcet to Mrs. Arthur Hertzler, wife of the
"Horse and Buggy Doctor," in 1922, a year after the publication of Dust.
"We never put a pencil to paper until the story in its entirety is
definitely shaped and we do all this preliminary work literally in the
midst of things--'with the hairpins and razor in hand' as my husband once
wrote a friend in answer to this same question. We plan, discuss and
clarify at the breakfast table and dinner table (lunch is the one meal the
children are with us and book-making is put aside for the nonce for that
event) and when we go for a ride or when we stroll about the garden, just
whenever we have a moment together."
     "When you are ready to make the first draft, do you divide the book
into chapters and each take one?" Mrs. Hertzler asked.
     "No," Marcet responded, "it is a matter of convenience which one does
the blocking out. Each begins where the other leaves off, not infrequently
in the midst of a sentence and writes as long as time and occasion permit.
Sometimes, when interruptions are too frequent, Mr. Haldeman-Julius slips
away to the Ozarks for a few days to finish the blocking out. He returned
home yesterday from a three days' stay, with the first draft of our new
story which is to be brought out this winter. After the story is blocked
out, we each take a copy [of the typescript] and sit down together with
pencil in hand and revise. Every sentence, every word that is not
positively necessary, is eliminated. When we feel pretty well satisfied
with a chapter, each one takes a copy and goes off alone for the polishing
process. When we compare our work, we find we have made many of the same
alterations and cuts. A fresh copy is made incorporating these changes; we
go out in the car by ourselves and while Manuel drives, I read aloud and
thus the final revision is made. The chapter as it stands finished is the
chapter as we both saw it before a word was really written."
     Lorene Bailey Campbell Gibbs (later Mrs. George William Hubert Burge)
was Marcet's typist. As Marcet explained to Will Durant, who would later
collaborate significantly with his wife Ariel, "From eight until twelve,
and from one to five, I work with a competent stenographer, taking out,
writing in, transposing, knitting up thoughts, emotions and phrases. I may
do a page three, four or five times. In the end frequently my noun flanked
by [Emanuel's] adjective marches to his verb colored by my adverb. Even as
Alice [their daughter] has the coloring of her father's eyes, but in them
my expression, so the characters, the inherent style of the story, are
neither E. H-J's nor mine, but ours."
     In addition to Dust, the Haldeman-Juliuses wrote Violence! (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1929) and were in the midst of writing a novel with the
working title of "The Best People." But marital difficulties resulted in a
separate maintenance suit in 1934 and halted further collaboration. Their
third novel remained unfinished.
     During the summer of 1935 Marcet discussed with her cousin, Weber
Linn, their collaboration on a family novel. That project was stillborn,
and Marcet began on her own "The Immortal Garland," a novel based on the
life of her grandmother, Anna Hostetter Haldeman Addams. It was never
finished. Emanuel independently completed an episodic novel a few months
before his death. Entitled "Everybody: A Fable for Voyeurs," the novel
explored an editor's relationship with characters who enjoyed virtually
every known sexual practice. It was rejected by Simon and Schuster on April
10. Like Dust, it was a novel unlike any other published by a mainstream
firm; unlike the first success, however, it lacked the narrative drama sup-
plied by Marcet, who had died of cancer ten years earlier. Together they
wrote best-selling novels with a strong psychological impact, memorable
characterization, and emotional sincerity. Singly, their fiction failed.

               Gene DeGruson
               Curator of the Haldeman-Julius Collection
               Pittsburg State University
                       I
 

              THE DUST IS STIRRED
 

     Dust was piled in thick, velvety folds on the weeds and
grass of the open Kansas prairie; it lay, a thin veil on the
scrawny black horses and the sharp-boned bow picketed near a
covered wagon; it showered to the ground in little clouds as Mrs.
Wade, a tall, spare woman, moved about a camp-fire, preparing
supper in a sizzling skillet, huge iron kettle and blackened
coffee-pot.
     Her husband, pale and gaunt, the shadow of death in his
weary face and the droop of his body, sat leaning against one of
the wagon wheels trying to quiet a wailing, emaciated year-old baby
while little tow-headed Nellie, a vigorous child of seven,
frolicked undaunted by the August heat.
     "Does beat all how she kin do it," thought Wade,
listlessly.
     "Ma," she shouted suddenly, in her shrill, strident
treble, "I see Martin comin'."
     The mother made no answer until the strapping, fourteen-
year-old boy, tall and powerful for his age, had deposited his
bucket of water at her side.  As he drew the back of a tanned
muscular hand across his dripping forehead she asked shortly:
     "What kept you so long?"
     "The creek's near dry.  I had to follow it half a mile to
find anything fit to drink.  This ain't no time of year to start
farmin'," he added, glum and sullen.
     "I s'pose you know more'n your father and mother,"
suggested Wade.
     "I know who'll have to do all the work," the boy retorted,
bitterness and rebellion in his tone.
     "Oh, quit your arguin'," commanded the mother.  "We got
enough to do to move nearer that water tonight, without wastin'
time talkin'.  Supper's ready."
     Martin and Nellie sat down beside the red-and-white-
checkered cloth spread on the ground, and Wade, after passing the
still fretting baby to his wife, took his place with them.
     "Seems like he gets thinner every day," he commented,
anxiously.
     With a swift gesture of fierce tenderness, Mrs. Wade
gathered little Benny to her.  "Oh, God!" she gasped.  "I know I'm
goin' to lose him.  That cow's milk don't set right on his
stomach."
     "It won't set any better after old Brindle fills up on
this dust," observed Martin, belligerency in his brassy voice.
     "That'll do," came sharply from his father.  "I don't
think this is paradise no more'n you do, but we wouldn't be the
first who've come with nothing but a team and made a living.  You
mark what I tell you, Martin, land ain't always goin' to be had so
cheap and I won't be living this time another year.  Before I die,
I'm goin' to see your mother and you children settled.  Some day,
when you've got a fine farm here, you'll see the sense of what I'm
doin' now and thank me for it."
     The boy's cold, blue eyes became the color of ice, as he
retorted:  "If I ever make a farm out o' this dust, I'll sure 'ave
earned it."
     "I guess your mother'll be doin' her share of that, all
right.  And don't you forget it."
     As he intoned in even accents, Wade's eyes, so deep in
their somber sockets, dwelt with a strange, wistful compassion on
his faded wife.  The rays of the setting sun brought out the
drabness of her.  Already, at thirty-five, grey streaked the
scanty, dull hair, wrinkles lined the worn olive-brown face, and
the tendons of the thin neck stood out.  Chaotically, he compared
her to the happy young girl--round of cheek and laughing of eye--he
had married back in Ohio, fifteen years before.  It comforted him a
little to remember he hadn't done so badly by her until the war had
torn him from his rented farm and she had been forced to do a man's
work in field and barn.  Exposure and a lung wound from a rebel
bullet had sent Wade home an invalid and during the five years
which had followed, he had realized only too well how little help
he had been to her.
     It is not likely he would have had the iron persistency of
purpose to drag her through this new stern trial if he had not
known that in her heart, as in his, there gnawed ever an all-
devouring hunger to work land of their own, a fervent aspiration to
establish a solid basis of self-sustentation upon which their
children might build.  From the day a letter had come from Peter
Mall, an ex-comrade in Wade's old regiment, saying the quarter-
section next his own could be bought by paying annually a dollar
and twenty-five cents an acre for seven years, their hopes had
risen into determination that had become unshakable.  Before the
eyes of Jacob and Sarah Wade there hovered, like a promise, the
picture of the snug farm that could be evolved from this virgin
soil.  Strengthened by this vision and stimulated by the fact of
Wade's increasing weakness, they had sold their few possessions,
except the simplest necessities for camping, had made a canvas
cover for their wagon, stocked up with smoked meat, corn meal and
coffee, tied old Brindle behind, fastened a coop of chickens
against the wagon-box and, without faltering, had made the long
pilgrimage.  Their indomitable courage and faith, Martin's physical
strength and the pulling power of their two ring-boned horses--this
was their capital.
     It seemed pitifully meager to Wade at that despondent
moment, exhausted as he was by the long, hard journey and the
sultry heat.  Never had he been so taunted by a sense of failure,
so torn by the haunting knowledge that he must soon leave his
family.  To die--that was nothing; but the fears of what his death
might mean to this group, gripped his heart and shook his soul.
     If only Martin were more tender!  There was something so
ruthless in the boy, so overbearing and heartless.  Not that he was
ever deliberately cruel, but there was an insensibility to the
feelings of others, a capacity placidly to ignore them, that made
Wade tremble for the future.  Martin would work, and work hard; he
was no shirk, but would he ever feel any responsibility toward his
younger brother and sister?  Would he be loyal to his mother?  Wade
wondered if his wife ever felt as he did--almost afraid of this son
of theirs.  He had a way of making his father seem foolishly
inexperienced and ineffectual.
     "I reckon," Wade analysed laboriously, "it's because I'm
gettin' less able all the time and he's growing so fast--him limber
an' quick, and me all thumbs.  There ain't nothing like just plain
muscle and size to make a fellow feel as if he know'd it all."
     Martin had never seemed more competent than this evening
as, supper over, he harnessed the horses and helped his mother set
the little caravan in motion.  It was Martin who guided them to the
creek, Martin who decided just where to locate their camp, Martin
who, early the next morning, unloaded the wagon and made a
temporary tent from its cover, and Martin who set forth on a
saddleless horse in search of Peter Mall.  When he returned, the
big, kindly man came with him, and in Martin's arms there squealed
and wriggled a shoat.
     "A smart boy you've got, Jacob," chuckled Peter, jovially,
after the first heart-warming greetings.  "See that critter!  Blame
me if Martin, he, didn't speak right up and ask me to lend 'er to
you!"  And he collapsed into gargantuan laughter.
     "I promised when she'd growed up and brought pigs, we'd
give him back two for one," Martin hastily explained.
     "That's what he said," nodded Peter, carefully switching
his navy plug to the opposite cheek before settling down to reply,
"and sez I, 'Why, Martin, what d'ye want 'o that there shoat?  You
ain't got nothin' to keep her on!'  'If I can borrow the pig,' sez
he, 'I reckon I can borrow the feed somewheres.'  God knows he'll
find that ain't so plentiful, but he's got the right idea.  A new
country's a poor man's country and fellows like us have to stand
together.  It's borrow and lend out here.  I know where you can get
some seed wheat if you want to try puttin' it in this fall.
There's a man by the name of Perry--lives just across the Missouri
line--who has thrashed fifteen hundred bushel and he'll lend you
three hundred or so.  He's willing to take a chance, but if you get
a crop he wants you should given him back an extra three hundred."
     It was a hard bargain, but one that Wade could afford to
take up, for if the wheat were to freeze out, or if the
grasshoppers should eat it, or the chinch bugs ruin it, or a hail
storm beat it down into the mud, or if any of the many hatreds
Stepmother Nature holds out toward those trusting souls who would
squeeze a living from her hard hands--if any of these misfortunes
should transpire, he would be out nothing but labor, and that was
the one thing he and Martin could afford to risk.
     The seed deal was arranged, and Martin made the trip six
times back and forth, for the wagon could hold only fifty bushels.
Perry lived twenty miles from the Wades and a whole day was
consumed with each load.  It was evening when Martin, hungry and
tired, reached home with the last one; and, as he stopped beside
the tent, he noticed with surprise that there was no sign of
cooking.  Nellie was huddled against her mother, who sat, idle,
with little Benny in her arms.  The tragic yearning her whole body
expressed, as she held the baby close, arrested the boy's
attention, filled him with clamoring uneasiness.  His father came
to help him unhitch.
     "What's the matter with Benny?"
     Wade looked at Martin queerly.  "He's dead.  Died this
mornin' and your ma's been holding him just like that.  I want you
should ride over to Peter's and see if you can fetch his woman."
     "No!" came from Mrs. Wade, brokenly, "I don't want no one.
Just let me alone."
     The shattering anguish in his mother's voice startled
Martin, stirred within him tumultuous, veiled sensations.  He was
unaccustomed to seeing her show suffering, and it embarrassed him.
Restless and uncomfortable, he was glad when his father called him
to help decide where to dig the grave, and fell the timber from
which to make a rough box.  From time to time, through the long
night, he could not avoid observing his mother.  In the white
moonlight, she and Benny looked as if they had been carved from
stone.  Dawn was breaking over them when Wade, surrendering to a
surge of pity, put his arms around her with awkward gentleness.
"Ma, we got to bury 'im."
     A low, half-suppressed sob broke from Mrs. Wade's tight
lips  as she clasped the tiny figure and pressed her cheek against
the little head.
     "I can't give him up," she moaned, "I can't!  It wasn't so
hard with the others.  Their sickness was the hand of God, but
Benny just ain't had enough to eat.  Seems like it'll kill me."
     With deepened discomfort, Martin hurried to the creek to
water the horses.  It was good, he felt, to have chores to do.
This knowledge shot through him with the same thrill of discovery
that a man enjoys when he first finds what an escape from the
solidity of fact lies in liquor.  If one worked hard and fast one
could forget.  That was what work did.  It made one forget--that
moan, that note of agony in his mother's voice, that hurt look in
her eyes, that bronze group in the moonlight.  By the time he had
finished his chores, his mother was getting breakfast as usual.
With unspeakable relief, Martin noticed that though pain haunted
her face, she was not crying.
     "I heard while I was over in Missouri, yesterday," he
ventured, "of a one-room house down in the Indian Territory.  The
fellow who built it's give up and gone back East.  Maybe we could
fix a sledge and haul it up here."
     "I ain't got the strength to help," said Wade.
     Martin's eyes involuntarily sought his mother's.  He knew
the power in her lean, muscular arms, the strength in her narrow
shoulders.
     "We'd better fetch it," she agreed.
     The pair made the trip down on horseback and brought back
the shack that was to be home for many years.  Eighteen miles off a
man had some extra hand-cut shingles which he was willing to trade
for a horse-collar.  While Mrs. Wade took the long drive Martin,
under his father's guidance, chopped down enough trees to build a
little lean-to kitchen and make-shift stable.  Sixteen miles south
another neighbor had some potatoes to exchange for a hatching of
chickens.  Martin rode over with the hen and her downy brood.  The
long rides, consuming hours, were trying, for Martin was needed
every moment on a farm where everything was still to be done.
     Day by day Wade was growing weaker, and it was Mrs. Wade
who helped put in the crop, borrowing a plow, harrow, and extra
team, and repaying the loan with the use of their own horses and
wagon.  Luck was with their wheat, which soon waved green.  It
seemed one of life's harsh jests that now, when the tired, ill-
nourished baby had fretted his last, old Brindle, waxing fat and
sleek on the wheat pasture, should give more rich cream than the
Wades could use.  "He could have lived on the skimmed milk we feed
to the pigs," thought Martin.
     In the Spring he went with his father into Fallon, the
nearest trading point, to see David Robinson, the owner of the
local bank.  By giving a chattel mortgage on their growing wheat,
they borrowed enough, at twenty per cent, to buy seed corn and a
plow.  It was Wade's last effort.  Before the corn was in tassel,
he had been laid beside Benny.
     Martin, who already had been doing a man's work, now
assumed a man's responsibilities.  Mrs. Wade consulted more and
more with him, relied more and more upon his judgment.  She was
immensely proud of him, of his steadiness and dependability, but at
rare moments, remembering her own normal childhood, she would think
with compunction:  "It ain't right.  Young 'uns ought to have some
fun.  Seems like it's makin' him too old for his age."  She never
spoke of these feelings, however.  There were no expressions of
tenderness in the Wade household.  She was doing her best by her
children and they knew it.  Even Nellie, child that she was,
understood the grimness of the battle before them.
     They were able to thresh enough wheat to repay their debt
of six hundred bushels and keep an additional three hundred of seed
for the following year.  The remaining seven hundred and fifty they
sold at twenty-five cents a bushel by hauling them to Fort Scott--
thirty miles distant.  Each trip meant ten dollars, but to the
Wades, to whom this one hundred and eighty-seven dollars--the first
actual money they had seen in over a year--was a fortune, these
journeys were rides of triumph, fugitive flashes of glory in the
long, gray struggle.
     That Fall they paid the first installment of two hundred
dollars on their land and Martin persuaded his mother to give and
Robinson to take a chattel on their two horses, old Brindle, her
calf and the pigs, that other much-needed implements might be
bought.  Mrs. Wade toiled early and late, doing part of the chores
and double her share of the Spring plowing that Martin, as well as
Nellie, could attend school in Fallon.
     "I don't care about goin'," he had protested squirmingly.
     But on this matter his mother was without compromise.
"Don't say that," she had commanded, her voice shaken and her eyes
bright with the intensity of her emotion; "you're goin' to get an
education."
     And Martin, surprised and embarrassed by his mother's
unusual exhibition of feeling, had answered, roughly:  "Aw, well,
all right then.  Don't take on.  I didn't say I wouldn't, did I?"
     He was twenty-three and Nellie sixteen when, worn out and
broken down before her time, her resistance completely undermined,
Mrs. Wade died suddenly of pneumonia.  Within the year Nellie
married Bert Mall, Peter's eldest son, and Martin, at once, bought
out her half interest in the farm, stock and implements, giving a
first mortgage to Robinson in order to pay cash.
     "I'm making it thirty dollars an acre," he explained.
     "That's fair," conceded the banker, "though the time will
come when it will be cheap at a hundred and a half.  There's coal
under all this country, millions of dollars' worth waiting to be
mined."
     "Maybe," assented Martin, laconically.
     As he sat in the dingy, little backroom of the bank, while
Robinson's pen scratched busily drawing up the papers, he was
conscious of an odd thrill.  The land--it was all his own!  But
with this thrill welled a wave of resentment over what he
considered a preposterous imposition.  Who had made the land into a
farm?  What had Nellie ever put into it that it should be half
hers?  His mother--now, that was different.  She and he had toiled
side by side like real partners; her efforts had been real and
unstinted.  If he were buying her out, for instance--but Nellie!
Well, that was the way, he noticed with many women--doing little
and demanding much.  He didn't care for them; not he.  From the day
Nellie left, Martin managed alone in the shack, "baching it," and
putting his whole heart and soul into the development of his
quarter-section.
                       II
 

                OUT OF THE DUST
 

     At thirty-four, Martin was still unmarried, and though he
had not travelled far on that strange road to affluence which for
some seems a macadamized boulevard, but for so many, like himself,
a rough cow-path, he had done better than the average farmer of
Fallon County.  To be sure, this was nothing over which to gloat.
A man who received forty cents a bushel of wheat was satisfied;
corn sold at twenty-eight cents, and the hogs it fattened in
proportion.  But his hundred and sixty acres were clear from debt,
four thousand dollars were on deposit drawing three per cent in The
First State Bank--the old Bank of Fallon, now incorporated with
Robinson as its president.  In the pasture, fourteen sows with
their seventy-five spring pigs rooted beside the sleek herd of
steers fattening for market; the granary bulged with corn; two
hundred bushels of seed wheat were ready for sowing; his machinery
was in excellent condition; his four Percheron mares brought him,
each, a fine mule colt once a year; and the well never went dry,
even in August.  Martin was--if one discounted the harshness of the
life, the dirt, the endless duties and the ever-pressing chores--a
Kansas plutocrat.
     One fiery July day, David Robinson drew up before Martin's
shack.  The little old box-house was still unpainted without and
unpapered within.  Two chairs, a home-made table with a Kansas City
Star as a cloth, a sheetless bed, a rough cupboard, a stove and
floors carpeted with accumulations of untidiness completed the
furnishings.
     "Chris-to-pher Columbus!" exploded Robinson, "why don't
you fix yourself up a bit, Martin?  The Lord knows you're going to
be able to afford it.  What you need is a wife--someone to look
after you."  And as Martin, observing him calmly, made no response,
he added, "I suppose you know what I want.  You've been watching
for this day, eh, Martin?  All Fallon County's sitting on its
haunches--waiting."
     "Oh, I haven't been worrying.  A fellow situated like me,
with a hundred and sixty right in the way of a coal company, can
afford to be independent."
     "You understand our procedure, Martin," Robinson
continued.  "We are frank and aboveboard.  We set the price, and if
you can't see your way clear to take it there are no hard feelings.
We simply call it off--for good."
     Wade knew how true this was.  When the mining first began,
several rebels toward the East had tried profitlessly to buck this
irrefragable game and had found they had battered their unyielding
heads against an equally unyielding stone wall.  These men had
demanded more and Robinson's company, true to its threat, had
urbanely gone around their farms, travelled on and left them
behind, their coal untouched and certain to so remain.  Such
inelastic lessons, given time to soak in, were sobering.
     "Now," said Robinson, in his amiable matter-of-fact
manner, "as I happen to know the history of this quarter, backwards
and forwards, we can do up this deal in short order.  You sign this
contract, which is exactly like all the others we use, and I'll
hand over your check.  We get the bottom; you keep the top; I give
you the sixteen thousand, and the thing is done."
     "Well, Martin," he added, genially, as Wade signed his
name, "it's a long day since you came in with your father to make
that first loan to buy seed corn.  Wouldn't he have opened his eyes
if any one had prophesied this?  It's a pity your mother couldn't
have lived to enjoy your good fortune.  A fine, plucky woman, your
mother.  They don't make many like her."
     Long after Robinson's buggy was out of sight, Martin stood
in his doorway and stared at the five handsome figures, spelled out
the even more convincing words and admired the excellent
reproduction of The First State Bank.
     "This is a whole lot of money," his thoughts ran.  "I'm
rich.  All this land still mine--practically as much mine as ever--
all this stock and twenty thousand dollars in money--in cash.  It's
a fact.  I, Martin Wade, am rich."
     He remembered how he had exulted, how jubilant, even
intoxicated, he had felt when he had received the ten dollars for
the first load of wheat he had hauled to Fort Scott.  Now, with a
check for sixteen thousand--sixteen thousand dollars!--in his hand,
he stood dumbly, curiously unmoved.
     Slowly, the first bitter months on this land, little
Benny's death from lack of nourishment, his father's desperate
efforts to establish his family, the years of his mother's slow
crucifixion, his own long struggle--all floated before him in a fog
of reverie.  Years of deprivation, of bending toil and then,
suddenly, this had come--this miracle symbolized by this piece of
paper.  Martin moistened his lips.  Mentally, he realized all the
dramatic significance of what had happened, but it gave him none of
the elation he had expected.
     This bewildered and angered him.  Sixteen thousand dollars
and with it no thrill.  What was lacking?  As he pondered, puzzled
and disappointed, it came to him that he needed something by which
to measure his wealth, someone whose appreciation of it would make
it real to him, give him a genuine sense of its possession.  What
if he were to take Robinson's advice:  fix up a bit and--marry?
     Nellie had often urged the advantages of this, but he had
never had much to do with women; they did not belong in his world
and he had not missed them; he had never before felt a need of
marriage.  Upon the few occasions when, driven by his sister's
persistence, he had vaguely considered it, he had shrunk away
quickly from the thought of the unavoidable changes which would be
ushered in by such a step.  This shack, itself--no one whom he
would want would, in this day, consent to live in it, and, if he
should marry, his wife must be a superior woman, good looking, and
with the push and energy of his mother.  He thought of all she had
meant to his father; and there was Nellie, not to be spoken of in
the same breath, yet making Bert Mall a good wife.  What a cook she
was!  Memories of her hot, fluffy biscuits, baked chicken, apple
pies and delicious coffee, carried trailing aromas that set his
nostrils twitching.  It would be pleasant to have satisfying meals
once more, to be relieved, too, of the bother of the three hundred
chickens, to have some one about in the evenings.  True, there
would be expense, oh, such expense--the courting, the presents, the
wedding, the building, the furniture, and, later, innumerable new
kinds of bills.  But weren't all the men around him married?
Surely, if they, not nearly as well off as himself, could afford
it, so could he.
     Besides, wasn't it all different now that he held this
check in his hand?  These sixteen thousand dollars were not the
same dollars which he had extorted from close-fisted Nature.  Each
of those had come so lamely, was such a symbol of sweat and aching
muscles, that to spend one was like parting with a portion of
himself, but this new, almost incredible fortune, had come without
a turn of his hand, without an hour's labor.  To Martin, the
distinction was sharp and actual.
     He figured quickly.  Five thousand dollars would do
wonders.  With that amount, he would build so substantially that
his neighbors could no longer feel the disapprobation in which,
according to Nellie, he was beginning to be held, because of his
sordid, hermit-like life.  That five thousand could buy many cows
and additional acreage--but just now a home and a wife would be
better investments.  Yes, he would marry and a house should be his
bait.  That was settled.  He would drive into Fallon at once to see
the carpenter and deposit the check.
     He was already out of the house when a thought struck him.
Suppose he were to meet just the woman he might want?  These
soiled, once-blue overalls, shapeless straw hat, with its dozen
matches showing their red heads over the band, the good soils and
fertilizers of Kansas resting placidly in his ears and the lines of
his neck--such a Romeo might not tempt his Juliet; he must spruce
up.
     On an aged soap-box behind the house, several inches of
grey water in a battered tin-pan indicated a previous effort.  He
tossed the greasy liquid to the ground and from the well, near the
large, home-built barn, refilled the make-shift basin.  Martin's
ablutions were always a strenuous affair.  In his cupped hands he
brought the water toward his face and, at the moment he was about
to apply it, made pointless attempts to blow it away.  This blowing
and sputtering indicated the especial importance of an occasion--
the more important, the more vigorously he blew.  Today, the cold
water gave a healthy glow to his face, which, after much stropping
of his razor, he shaved a week's growth of beard, tawny as his
thick, crisp hair where the sun had not yet bleached it.  This, he
soaked thoroughly, in lieu of brushing, before using a crippled
piece of comb.  The dividing line between washed and unwashed was
one inch above his neckband and two above his wrists.  Even when
fresh from a scrubbing, his hands were not entirely clean.  They
had been so long in contact with the earth that it had become
absorbed into the very pores of his skin; but they were powerful
hands, interesting, with long palms and spatulate fingers.  The
black strips at the end of each nail, Martin pared off with his
jackknife.
     He entered the house a trifle nervously, positive that his
only clean shirt, at present spread over his precious shot-gun, had
been worn once more than he could have wished, but, after all, how
much of one's shirt showed?  It would pass.  The coat-shirt not yet
introduced, a man had to slip the old-fashioned kind over his head,
drag it down past his shoulders and poke blindly for the sleeve
openings.  Martin was thankful when he felt the collar buttons in
their holes.  His salt and pepper suit was of a stiff-unyielding
material, and the first time he had worn it the creases had
vanished never to return.  Before putting on his celluloid collar,
he spat on it and smeared it off with the tail of his shirt.  A
recalcitrant metal shaper insisted on peeking from under his
lapels, and his ready-made tie with its two grey satin-covered
cardboard wings pushed out of sight, see-sawed, necessitating
frequent adjustments.  His brown derby, the rim of which made
almost three quarters of a circle at each side, seemed to want to
get as far as possible from his ears and, at the same time, remain
perched on his head.  The yellow shoes looked as though each had
half a billiard ball in the toe, and the entire tops were
perforated with many diverging lines in an attempt for the
decorative.  Those were the days of sore feet and corns!  Hart
Schaffner and Marx had not yet become rural America's tailor.
Sartorial magicians in Chicago had not yet won over the young men
of the great corn belt, with their snappy lines and style for the
millions.  In 1890, when a suit served merely as contrast to a pair
of overalls, the Martin Wades who would clothe themselves pulled
their garments from the piles on long tables.  It was for the next
generation to patronize clothiers who kept each suit on its
separate hanger.  A moving-picture of the tall, broad-shouldered
fellow, as, with creaking steps, he walked from the house, might
bring a laugh from the young farmers of this more fastidious day,
but Martin was dressed no worse than any of his neighbors and far
better than many.  Health, vigor, sturdiness, self-reliance shone
from him, and once his make-up had ceased to obtrude its
clumsiness, he struck one as handsome.  His was a commanding
physique, hard as the grim plains from which he wrested his living.
     As Martin drove into Fallon, his attention was directed
toward the architecture and the women.  He observed that the
average homes were merely a little larger than his own--four, six,
or eight rooms instead of one, made a little trimmer with neat
porches and surrounded by well-cut lawns, instead of weeds.  He,
with his new budget, could do better.  Even Robinson's well-
constructed residence had probably cost only three thousand more
than he himself planned to spend.  Its suggestion of originality
had been all but submerged by carpenters spoiled through constant
work on commonplace buildings.  But to Martin it was a marvellous
mansion.  He told himself that with such a place moved out to his
quarter-section, he could have stood on his door-step and chosen
whomever he wished for a wife.
     It was an elemental materialism, difficult to understand,
but it was a language very clear to Martin.  Marriage with the men
and women of his world was a practical business, arranged and
conducted by practical people, who lived practical lives, and died
practical deaths.  The women who might pass his way could deny
their lust for concrete possessions, but their actions, however
concealed their motives, would give the lie to any ineffectual
glamour of romance they might attempt to fling over their carefully
measured adventures of the heart.
     Martin smiled cynically as he let his thoughts drift along
this channel.  "What a lot of bosh is talked about lovers," his
comment ran.  "As if everyone didn't really know how much like
drunken men they are--saying things which in a month they'll have
forgotten.  Folks pretend to approve of 'em and all the while
they're laughing at 'em up their sleeves.  But how they respect a
man who's got the root they're all grubbing for!  It may be the
root of all evil, but it's a fact that everything people want grows
from it.  They hate a man for having it, but they'd like to be him.
Their hearts have all got strings dangling from 'em, especially the
women's.  A house tied onto the other end ought to be hefty enough
to fetch the best of the lot."
     Who could she be, anyway?  Was she someone in Fallon?  He
drove slowly, thinking over the families in the different houses--
four to each side of the block.  The street, even yet, was little
more than a country road.  There was no indication of the six miles
of pavement which later were to be Fallon's pride.  It had rained
earlier in the week and Martin was obliged to be careful of the
chuck-holes in the sticky, heavy gumbo soon to be the bane of
pioneers venturing forth in what were to be known for a few short
years as "horseless carriages."
     Bumping along he recalled to his mind the various girls
with whom he had gone to school.  As if the sight of the building,
itself, would sharpen his memory, he turned north and drove past
it.  Like its south, east and west counterparts, it was a solid
two-story brick affair.  In time it would be demolished to make way
for what would be known as the "Emerson School," in which, to be
worthy of this high title, the huge stoves would be supplanted with
hot-water pipes, oil lamps with soft, indirect lighting, and
unsightly out-buildings with modern plumbing.  The South building
would become the "Whittier School," the East, the "Longfellow," and
the West, not to be neglected by culture's invasion, the "Oliver
Wendell Holmes."  But these changes were still to be effected.
Many a school board meeting was first to be split into stormy
factions of conservatives fighting to hold the old, and of
anarchists threatening civilization with their clamors for
experimentation.  Many a bond election was yet to rip the town in
two, with the retired farmers, whose children were grown and
through school, satisfied with things as they were and parents of
the new generation demanding gymnasiums, tennis courts, victrolas,
domestic science laboratories, a public health nurse and individual
lockers.  Yes, and the faddists were to win despite the other
side's incontrovertible evidence that Fallon was headed for
bankruptcy and that the proposed bonds and outstanding ones could
never be met.
     Martin drove, meditatively, around the schoolhouse and was
still engrossed in the problem of "Who?" when he reached the
Square.  The neat canvas drops of later years had not yet replaced
the wooden awnings which gave to the town such a decidedly western
appearance and which threw the sidewalks and sheltered windows into
deep pools of shadow.  The old brick store-building which housed
The First State Bank was like a cool cavern.  He brought out the
check quietly but with a full consciousness that with one gesture
he was shoving enough over that scratched and worn walnut counter
to buy out half the bank.
     James Osborne, the youthful cashier, feigned complete
paralysis.
     "Why don't you give a poor fellow some warning?" he beamed
good-naturedly, "or maybe you think you've strayed into Wall
Street.  This is Fallon.  Fallon, Kansas.  So you've had your merry
little session with Robinson?  Put it here!" and he extended a
cordial hand.
     "Oh, considering the wait, it isn't so wonderful.  Sixteen
thousand is an awful lot when it's coming, but it just seems about
half as big when it gets here."
     Martin was talking not so much for Osborne's benefit as to
impress a woman who had entered behind him and was awaiting her
turn.  He wondered why, in his mental quest, he had not thought of
her.  Here was the very person for whom he was looking.  Rose
Conroy, the editor of the better local weekly, a year or so younger
than himself, pleasant, capable.  Here was a real woman, one above
the average in character and brains.
     With a quick glance he took in her well-built figure.
Everything about Rose--every line, every tone of her coloring
suggested warmth, generosity, bigness.  She was as much above
medium height for a woman as Martin for a man.  About her temples
the line of her bright golden-brown hair had an oddly pleasing
irregularity.  The rosy color in her cheeks brought out the rich
creamy whiteness of her skin.  Warm, gray-blue eyes were set far
apart beneath a kind, broad forehead and her wide, generous mouth
seemed made to smile.  The impression of good temper and fun was
accented by her nose, ever so slightly up-tilted.  Some might have
thought Rose too large, her hips too rounded, the soft deep bosom
too full, but Martin's eyes were approving.  Even her hands, plump,
with broad palms, square fingers and well-kept nails, suggested
decision.  He felt the quiet distinction of her simple white dress.
She was like a full-blown, luxuriant white and gold flower--like a
rose, a full-blown white rose, Martin realized, suddenly.  One
couldn't call her pretty, but there was something about her that
gave the impression of sumptuous good looks.  He liked, too, the
spirited carriage of her head.  "Healthy, good-sense, sound all
through," was his final appraisement.
     Pocketing his bank-book, he gave her a sharp nod, a
colorless "how-de-do, Miss Rose," and a tip of the hat that might
have been a little less stiff had he been more accustomed to
greeting the ladies.  "Right well, thank you, Martin," was her
cordial response, and her friendly smile told him she had heard and
understood the remarks about the big deal.  He was curious to know
how it had impressed her.
     Hurrying out, he asked himself how he could begin
advances.  Either he must do something quickly in time to get home
for the evening chores or he must wait until another day.  He must
think out a plan, at once.  Passing the bakery, half way down the
block, he dropped in, ordered a chocolate ice-cream soda, and chose
a seat near the window.  As he had expected, it was not long before
he saw Rose go across the courthouse yard toward her office on the
north side of the square.  He liked the swift, easy way in which
she walked.  She had been walking the first time he had ever seen
her, thirteen years before, when her father had led his family
uptown from the station, the day of their arrival in Fallon.
     Patrick Conroy had come from Sharon, Illinois, to perform
the thankless task of starting a weekly newspaper in a town already
undernourishing one.  By sheer stubbornness he had at last
established it.  Twelve hundred subscribers, their little printing
jobs, advertisers who bought liberal portions of space at ten cents
an inch--all had enabled him to give his children a living that was
a shade better than an existence.  He had died less than a year
ago, and Martin, like the rest of the community, had supposed the
Fallon Independent would be sold or suspended.  Instead, as quietly
and matter-of-factly as she had filled her dead mother's place in
the home while her brothers and sisters were growing up, Rose
stepped into her father's business, took over the editorship and
with a boy to do the typesetting and presswork, continued the paper
without missing an issue.  It even paid a little better than
before, partly because it flattered Fallon's sense of Christian
helpfulness to throw whatever it could in Rose's way, but chiefly
because she made the Independent a livelier sheet with double the
usual number of "Personals."
     Yes, decidedly, Rose had force and push.  Martin's mind
was made up.  He would drop into the Independent ostensibly to
extend his subscription, but really to get on more intimate terms
with the woman whom he had now firmly determined should become his
wife.  He drew a deep breath of relaxation and finished the glass
of sweetness with that sense of self-conscious sheepishness which
most men feel when they surrender to the sticky charms of an ice-
cream soda.  A few minutes later he stood beside Rose's worn desk.
     "How-do-you-do, once more, Miss Rose of Sharon.  You're
not the Bible's Rose of Sharon, are you?" he joshed a bit
awkwardly.
     "If I were a rose of anywhere, I'd soon wilt in this
stuffy little office of inky smells," she answered pleasantly.  "A
rose would need petals of leather to get by here."
     "A rose, by rights, belongs out of doors,"--Martin
indicated the direction of his farm--"out there where the sun
shines and there's no smells except the rich, healthy smells of
nature."
     A merry twinkle appeared in Rose's eyes.  "Aren't roses
out there"--and her gesture was in the same direction--"rather apt
to be crowded down by the weeds?"
     "Not if there was a good strong man about--a man who
wanted to cultivate the soil and give the rose a pretty place in
which to bloom."
     "Why, Martin," Rose laughed lightly, "the way you're fixed
out there with that shack, the only thing that ever blooms is a
fine crop of rag-weeds."
     At this gratuitous thrust a flood of crimson surged up
Martin's magnificent, column-like throat and broke in hot waves
over his cheeks.  "Well, it's not going to be that way for long,"
he announced evenly.  "I'm going to plant a rose--a real rose there
soon and everything is going to be right--garden, house and all."
     "Is this your way of telling me you're going to be
married?"
     "Kinda.  The only trouble is, I haven't got my rose yet."
     "Well, if I can't have that item, at least I can print
something about the selling of your coal rights.  People will be
interested because it shows the operators are coming in our
direction.  Here in Fallon, we can hardly realize all that this
sudden new promotion may mean.  From that conversation I heard at
the bank I guess you got the regulation hundred an acre."
     "Yes, and a good part of it is going into a first-class
modern house with a heating plant and running hot and cold water in
a tiled-floor bath-room, and a concrete cellar for the woman's
preserved things and built-in cupboards, lots of closets, a big
garret, and hardwood floors and fancy paper on the walls, and the
prettiest polished golden oak furniture you can buy in Kansas City,
not to mention a big fireplace and wide, sunny porches.  A rose
ought to be happy in a garden like that, don't you think?  Folks'll
say I've gone crazy when they see my building spree, but I know
what I'm about.  It's time I married and the woman who decides to
be my wife is going to be glad to stay with me--"
     "See here, Martin Wade, what are you driving at?  What
does all this talk mean anyway?  Do you want me to give you a boost
with someone?"
     "You've hit it."
     "Who is she?" Rose asked, with genuine curiosity.
     "You," he said bluntly.
     "Well, of all the proposals!"
     "There's nothing to beat around the bush about.  I'm only
thirty-four, a hard worker, with a tidy sum to boot--not that I'm
boasting about it."
     "But, Martin, what makes you think I could make you
happy?"
     Martin felt embarrassed.  He was not looking for happiness
but merely for more of the physical comforts, and an escape from
loneliness.  He was practical; he fancied he knew about what could
be expected from marriage, just as he knew exactly how many steers
and hogs his farm could support.  This was a new idea--happiness.
It had never entered into his calculations.  Life as he knew it was
hard.  There was no happiness in those fields when burned by the
hot August winds, the soil breaking into cakes that left crevices
which seemed to groan for water.  That sky with its clouds that
gave no rain was a hard sky.  The people he knew were sometimes
contented, but he could not remember ever having known any to whom
the word "happy" could be applied.  His father and mother--they had
been a good husband and wife.  But happy?  They had been far too
absorbed in the bitter struggle for a livelihood to have time to
think of happiness.  This had been equally true of the elder Malls,
was true today of Nellie and her husband.  A man and a woman needed
each other's help, could make a more successful fight, go farther
together than either could alone.  To Martin that was the whole
matter in a nutshell, and Rose's gentle question threw him into
momentary confusion.
     "I don't know," he answered uneasily.  "We both like to
make a success of things and we'd have plenty to do with.  We'd
make a pretty good pulling team."
     Rose considered this thoughtfully.  "Perhaps the people
who work together best are the happiest.  But somehow I'd never
pictured myself on a farm."
     "Of course, I don't expect you to make up your mind right
away," Martin conceded.  "It's something to study over.  I'll come
around to your place tomorrow evening after I get the chores done
up and we can talk some more."
     So far as Martin was concerned, the matter was clinched.
He felt not the slightest doubt but that it was merely a question
of time before Rose would consent to his proposition.
     After he had left, she reviewed it a little sadly.  It
wasn't the kind of marriage of which she had always dreamed.  She
realized that she was capable of profound devotion, of responding
with her whole being to a deep love.  But was it probable that this
love would ever come?  She thought over the men of Fallon and its
neighborhood.  There were few as handsome as Martin--not one with
such generous plans.  She knew her own domestic talents.  She was a
born housekeeper and home-maker.  It had been a curious destiny
that had driven her into a newspaper office, and at that very
moment, there lay on her desk, like a whisper from Fate, the
written offer from the rival paper to buy her out for fifteen
hundred dollars, giving herself a position on the consolidated
staff.  She had been pondering over this proposal when Martin
interrupted her.
     It wasn't as if she were younger or likely to start
somewhere else.  She would live out her life in Fallon, that she
knew.  There was little chance of her meeting new men, and those
established enough to make marriage with them desirable were
already married.  Candidly, she admitted that if she turned Martin
Wade down now, she might never have another such opportunity.  If
only she could feel that he cared for her--loved her.  But wasn't
the fact that he was asking her to be his wife proof of that?  It
was very strange.  She had never suspected that Martin had ever
felt drawn to her.  With a sigh she pressed her large, capable
hands to her heart.  Its deep piercing ache brought tears to her
eyes.  She felt, bitterly, that she was being cheated of too much
that was sweet and precious--it was all wrong--she would be making
a mistake.  For a moment, she was overwhelmed.  Then the practical
common sense that had been instilled into her from her earliest
consciousness, even as it had been instilled into Martin,
reasserted itself.  After all, perhaps he was right--the busy
people were the happy people.  Many couples who began marriage
madly in love ended in the divorce courts.  Martin was kind and it
would be wonderful to have the home he had described.  She imagined
herself mistress of it, thrilled with the warm hospitality she
would radiate, entertained already at missionary meetings and at
club.  At least, she would be less lonely.  It would be a fuller
life than now.  What was she getting, really getting, alone, out of
this world?  She and Martin would be good partners.  Poor boy!
What a long, hard, cheerless existence he had led.  Tenderness
welled in her heart and stilled its pain.  Perhaps his emotions
were far deeper than he could express in words.  His way was to
plan for her comfort.  Wasn't there something big about his simple
cards-on-the-table wooing?  And he had called her his rose, his
Rose of Sharon.  The new house was to be the garden in which she
should blossom.  To be sure, he had said it all awkwardly, but
Rose, who was devout, knew the stately Song of Solomon and as she
recalled the magnificent outburst of passion she almost let herself
be convinced that Martin was a poet-lover in the rough.
     And all the while, giving pattern to her flying thoughts,
the contents of a letter, received the day before, echoed through
her mind.  Her sister, Norah, the youngest of the family, had told
of her first baby.  "We have named her for you, darling," she
wrote.  "Oh, Rose, she has brought me such deep happiness.  I
wonder if this ecstasy can last.  Her little hand against my
breast--it is so warm and soft--like a flower's curling petal, as
delicate and as beautiful as a butterfly's wing.  I never knew
until now what life really meant."  As Rose reread the throbbing
lines and pictured the eager-eyed young mother, her own sweet face
glowed with reflected joy and with the knowledge that this ecstasy,
this deeper understanding could come to her, too--Martin, he was
vigorous, so worthy of being the father of her children.  He would
love them, of course, and provide for them better than any other
man she knew.  Had not Norah married a plain farmer who was only a
tenant?  The new little Rose's father was not to be compared to
Martin, and yet he had brought the supreme experience to her
sister.  So Rose sat dreaming, the arid level of monotonous days
which, one short hour ago, had stretched before her, flowering into
fragrant, sun-filled fields.
     Meanwhile, Martin congratulated himself upon having found
a woman as sensible, industrious and free from foolish notions, as
even he could wish.
                       III
 

               DUST IN HER HEART
 
 

     Six weeks later Martin and Rose were married.  Martin had
let the contract for the new house and barn to Silas Fletcher,
Fallon's leading carpenter, who had the science of construction
reduced to utter simplicity.  He had listened to Martin's
description of what he wished and, after some rough figuring, had
proceeded to draw the plans on the back of a large envelope.  Both
Rose and Martin knew that those rude lines would serve unfailingly.
For three thousand dollars Fletcher would build the very house
Martin had pictured to Rose:  a two-story one with four nice rooms
and a bath upstairs, four rooms and a pantry downstairs, a floored
garret, concrete cellar, an inviting fireplace and wide porches.
For two thousand dollars he would give a substantial barn capable
of holding a hundred tons of hay and of accommodating twenty cows
and four horses.
     Rose had been deeply touched by the thoroughness of
Martin's plans, by his unfailing consideration for her comfort.
True, there had been moments when her warm, loving nature had been
chilled.  At such times, misgivings had clamored and she had,
finally, all but made up her mind to tell him that she could not go
on--that it had all been a mistake.  She would say to him, she had
decided:  "Martin, you are one of the kindest and best men, and I
could be happy with you if only you loved me, but you don't really
care for me and you never will.  I feel it.  Oh, I do! and I could
not bear it--to live with you day in and day out and know that."
     But she had reckoned without her own goodness of heart.
On the very evening on which she had quite determined to tell
Martin this decision he also had arrived at one.  As soon as he had
entered Rose's little parlor he had exclaimed with an enthusiasm
unusual with him:  "We broke the ground for your new garden, today,
Rose of Sharon, and Fletcher wants to see you.  There are some more
little things you'll have to talk over with him.  He understands
that you're the one I want suited."
     Rose had felt suddenly reassured.  Why, she had asked
herself contritely, couldn't she let Martin express his love in his
own way?  Why was she always trying to measure his feelings for her
by set standards?
     "I've been wondering," he had gone on quickly, "what you
would think of putting up with my old shack while the new house is
being built?  It wouldn't be as if you were going to live there for
long and you'd be right on hand to direct things."
     "Why, I could do that, of course," she had answered
pleasantly.  "If you've lived there all these years, I surely ought
to be able to live there a few months, but Martin--"
     "I know what you're going to say," he had interrupted
hastily.  "You think we ought to wait a while longer, but if we're
going to pull together for the rest of our lives why mightn't we
just as well begin now?  Why is one time any better than another?"
     There had been a wistfulness, so rarely in Martin's voice,
that Rose had detected it instantly.  After all, why should she
keep him waiting when he needed her so much, she had thought
tenderly, all the sweet womanliness in her astir with yearnings to
lift the cloud of loneliness from his life.
     Rose had always believed love a breath of beauty that
would hold its purity even in a hovel, but she had not been
prepared for the sordidness that seemed to envelop her as she
crossed the threshold of the first home of her married life.
Martin, held in the clutch of the strained embarrassment that
invariably laid its icy fingers around his heart whenever he found
himself confronted by emotion, had suggested that Rose go in while
he put up the horse and fed the stock.  "Don't be scared if you
find it pretty rough," he had warned, to which her light answer had
lilted back, "Oh, I shan't mind."
     And, as she stood in the doorway a moment later, her eyes
taking in one by one, the murky windows, the dirty floor, the
unwashed dishes, the tumbled bed, the rusty, grease bespattered
stove choked with cold ashes, she told herself hotly that it was
not the dirt nor even the desperate crassness that was smothering
her joy.  It was the fact that there was nowhere a touch to suggest
preparation for her home-coming.  Martin had made not even the
crudest attempt to welcome her.  It would have been as easy for
Rose to be cheerful in the midst of mere squalor as for a flower to
bloom white in a crowded tenement, but at the swift realization of
the lack of tenderness for her which this indifference to her first
impressions so clearly expressed, her faith in the man she had
married began to wither.  He had failed her in the very quality in
which she had put her trust.  Already, he had carelessly dropped
the thoughtfulness by which he had won her.  She wondered how she
could have made herself believe that Martin loved her.  "He has
tried so hard in every way to show me how much I would mean to
him," she justified herself.  "But now he has me he just doesn't
care what I think."
     As Rose forced herself to face this squarely, something
within her crumpled.  Grim truth leered at her, hurling dust on her
bright wings of illusion, poking cruel jests.  "This is your
wedding day," it taunted, "that tall figure out there near the
dilapidated barn feeding his hogs is your husband.  Oh, first,
sweet, most precious hours!  How you will always like to remember
them!  Here in this dirty shanty you will enter into love's
fulfillment.  How romantic!  Why doesn't your heart leap and your
arms ache for your new passion?"  Tears pushed against her eyelids.
Her new life was not going to be happy.  Of this she was suddenly,
irrevocably certain.
     Rose struggled against a complete break-down.  This was no
time for a scene.  What was the matter with her, anyway?  Of
course, Martin had not meant to disappoint her, nor deliberately
hurt her.  He probably thought this first home so temporary it
didn't count.  She simply would not mope.  Of that she was
positive, and a brave little smile swimming up from her troubled
heart, she set about, with much energy, to achieve order, valiantly
fighting back her insistent tears as she worked.
     Meanwhile, Martin, totally oblivious of any cause for
storm, was making trips to and from the barrel which contained
shorts mixed with water, skimmed milk and house slops, the
screaming, scrambling shoats gulping the pork-making mixture as
rapidly as he could fetch it.  He worked unconsciously, thinking,
typically, not of Rose's reaction to this new life, but of what it
held in store for himself.
     He glanced toward the shack.  Already the mere fact of a
woman's presence beneath its roof seemed, to him, to give it a
different aspect.  Through the open door he observed that Rose was
sweeping.  How he had always hated the thought of any one handling
what was his!  He dumped another bucket of slops into the home-made
trough.  Why couldn't she just let things alone and get supper
quietly?  Heaven only knew what he had gotten himself into!  But of
one thing he was miserably certain; never again would he have that
comfortable seclusion to which he had grown so accustomed.  He had
known this would be true, but the sight of Rose and her broom
brought the realization of it home to him with an all too
irritating vividness.  Yes, everything was going to be different.
There would be many changes and he would never know what to expect
next.  Why had he brought this upon himself; had he not lived alone
for years?  He had let the habit of obtaining whatever he started
after get the better of him.  Even today he could have drawn back
from this marriage.  But, he had sensed that Rose was about to do
so herself, and this knowledge had pushed his determination to the
final notch.
     Martin shook his head ruefully, "This is `The Song of
Songs,'" he smiled, "and there is my Rose of Sharon.  Guess I was
never intended for a Solomon."  Now that she was so close to him,
in the very core of his life, this woman frightened him; instead of
desire, there was dread.  He wished Rose had been a man that he
might go into that shack and eat ham and eggs with him while they
talked crops and politics and animals.  There would be no thrills
in this opening chapter and he, if not his wife, would be shaken.
     Martin was mental, an incurable individualist who found
himself sufficient unto himself.  He was different from his
neighbors in that he was always thinking, asking questions and
pondering over his conclusions.  He had convinced himself that each
demand of the body was useless except the food that nourished it,
the clothes that warmed it and the sleep that repaired it.  He
hated soft things and the twist in his mind that was Martin proved
to him their futility.  Love?  It was an empty dream, a shell that
fooled.  Its joys were fleeting.  There was but one thing worth
while and that was work.  The body was made for it--the thumb to
hold the hammer, the hand to pump the water and drive the horses,
the legs to follow the plow, herd the cattle and chase the pigs
from the cornfield, the ears to listen for strange noises from the
stock, the eyes to watch for weeds and discover the lice on the
hens, the mouth to yell the food call to the calves, the back to
carry the bran.  Work meant money, and money meant--what?  It was
merely a stick that measured the amount of work done.  Then why did
he toil so hard and save so scrupulously?  His answer was always
another question.  What was there in life that could enable one to
forget it faster?  That woman in there waiting for him--oh, she
would suffer before she realized the truth of this lesson he had
already learned, and Martin felt a little pity for her.
     When he went in for supper, Rose was just beginning to
prepare it.  With a catch of anger in his manner, he gave her a
sharp look and saw that she had been crying.  He couldn't remember
ever before having had to deal with a weeping woman; even when
Benny had died and his mother had been so shaken she had not given
way to tears; so this was to be another of the new experiences
which must trot in with marriage.  It annoyed him.
     "What's the matter, Rose?"
     "Nothing at all, Martin."
     "Nothing?  You don't cry about nothing, do you?"
     "No."  Rose felt a sudden fear; sensed a lack of pity in
Martin, an unwillingness even to try to understand her conflicting
emotions.
     "Then you're crying about something.  What is it?"  There
was a command in his question.  Martin was losing patience.  He
knew tears were used as weapons by women, but why in the world
should Rose need any sort of weapon on the first day of their
marriage?  He hadn't done anything to her, said anything unkind.
Was she going to be unreasonable?  Now he was sure it was all
wrong.
     "What's the matter?" he demanded, his voice rising.
     "Nothing's the matter.  I'm just a little nervous."  Rose
began to cry afresh.  If only Martin had come to her and put his
arms around her, she would have been able to throw off her newly-
born fear of him and this disheartening shattering of her faith in
his kindness.  But he was going to the other extreme, growing
harder as she was becoming more panicky.
     "Nervous?  What's there to be nervous about?" Rose's
answer was stifled sobbing.  "You're not sorry you married today, I
hope?"  She shook her head.  "Then what's this mean, anyway?"
     "I was wondering if we are going to be happy after all--"
     "Happy?  You don't like this place.  That's the trouble.
I was afraid of this, but I thought you knew what you were about
when you said you could stand it for a while."
     "Oh, it isn't the house itself, Martin," she hastened to
correct truthfully, sure that she had gone too far.  "I--I--know
we'll be happy."
     Again this talk about happiness.  He did not like it.  He
had never hunted for happiness, and he was contented.  Why should
she persist in this eternal search for this impossible condition?
He supposed that occasionally children found themselves in it but
surely grown-ups could not expect it.  The nearest they could
approach it was in forgetting that there was such a state by
finding solace in constant occupation.
     "Let's eat," he announced.  "I'm sick of this wrangling.
Seems to me you're not starting off just right."
     Rose hastened to prepare the meal, finding it more
difficult to be cheerful as she realized how indifferent Martin was
to her feelings, if only she presented a smooth surface.  He had
not seemed even to notice how orderly and freshened everything was.
She thought of the new experience soon to be hers.  Could it make
up for all the understanding and friendly appreciation that she saw
only too clearly would be missing in her daily life?  Resolutely,
she suppressed her doubts.
     Martin, bothered by an odd feeling of strangeness in the
midst of his own familiar surroundings, smoked his pipe in silence
and studied Rose soberly.  Why, he asked himself, was he unmoved by
a woman who was so attractive?  He liked the deftness with which
her hands worked the pie dough, the quick way she moved between
stove and table, yet mingled with this admiration was a slight but
distinct hostility.  How can one like and have an aversion to a
person at the same time? he pondered.  "I suppose," he concluded
grimly, "it's because I'm supposed to love and adore her--to
pretend to lot of extravagant feelings."
     His mind travelled to the stock in the pasture.  How
stolid they were and how matter of fact and how sensible.  They
affected no high, nonsensical sentiments.  Weren't they, after all,
to be envied, rooted as they were in their solid simplicity?  Why
should human beings everlastingly try so hard to be different?  He
and Rose would have to get down to a genuine basis, and the quicker
the better.  Meanwhile he must remember that, whether he was glad
or sorry, she was there, in his shack, because he had asked her to
come.
     As he ate his second helping of the excellent meal, he
said pleasantly:  "You do know how to cook, Rose."
     Her soft gray-blue eyes brightened.  "I love to do it,"
she answered quickly.  "You must tell me the things you like best,
Martin.  If I had a real stove with a good oven, I could do much
better."
     "Could you?  We'll get one tomorrow."
     "That'll be fine!" she smiled, eager to have all serene
between them, and as she passed him to get some coffee her hand
touched his in a swift caress.  Instantly, Martin's cordiality
vanished; his hostility toward her surged.  Even as a boy he had
hated to be "fussed over."  Well, he had married and he would go
through with it.  If only Rose would be more matter of fact; not
look at him with that expression which made him think of a
confiding child.  What business had a grown woman with such trust
in her eyes, anyway?
     It was quite gone, in the early dawn, as Rose sat on the
edge of the bed looking at her husband.  Never had she felt so far
from him, so certain that he did not love her, as when she had lain
quivering but impassive in his arms.  "I might be just any woman,"
she had told herself, astounded and stricken to find how little she
was touched by this experience which she had always believed bound
heart to heart and crowned the sweet transfusion of affection from
soul into soul.  "It doesn't make any more difference to him who I
am than who cooks for him."
     Not that Martin had been unkind, except negatively.
Intuitively, Rose understood that their first evening and night
foreshadowed their whole lives.  Not in what Martin would do, but
in what he would not do, would lie her heartaches.  Yet in her sad
reflections there was no bitterness toward him; he had disappointed
her, but perhaps it was only because she had taught herself to
expect something rare, even spiritual, from marriage.  Her idealism
had played her a trick.
     With the quiet relinquishment of this long-cherished
dream, eagerness for the realization of an even more precious one
took possession of her.  She comforted herself with the thought
that maybe life had brought Martin merely as a door to the citadel
which looms, sparkling with dancing sunlight, in the midst of
mysterious shadows.  Motherhood--she would feel as if she were in
another world.  Out of all this disappointment would come her
ultimate happiness.
     Always struggling toward happiness, she was cheered too as
the foundation for the house progressed.  Everything would be so
different, she told herself, once they were in their pretty new
home.  It was true she had given up a concrete floor for her
cellar, but she had seen at once the good sense of having the
concrete in the barn instead.  Martin was right.  While it would
have been nice in the house, of course, it would not have begun to
be the constant blessing to herself that it would now be to him.
How much easier it would make keeping the barn clean!  Why, it was
almost a duty in a dairy barn to have such a floor and really she,
herself, could manage almost as well with the dirt bottom.  But
when Martin began to discuss eliminating the whole upper story of
the house, Rose protested.
     "You won't use it," he had returned reasonably.  "I'll
keep my word, but when a body gets to figuring and sees all that
can be built with that same money, it seems mighty foolish to put
it into something that you don't really need."
     As Martin looked at her questioningly, Rose felt suddenly
unable to muster an argument for the additional sleeping-rooms.  It
was true that they were not actually necessary for their comfort;
but the house as it had been decided upon was so interwoven with
memories of her courtship and all that was lovable in Martin; it
had become so real to her, that it was as if some dear possession
were being torn to pieces before her eyes.
     "I don't know why, Martin," she had answered, with a choky
little laugh, "but it seems as if I just can't bear to give it up."
     "Why?"
     "I--I--like it all so well the way you planned it."
     "Just liking a thing isn't always good reason for having
it.  It'll make lots more for you to take care of.  What would you
say if I was to prove to you that it would build a fine chicken-
house, one for the herd boar, a concrete tank down in the pasture
that'd save the cows enough trips to the barn to make 'em give a
heap sight more milk, a cooling house for it and a good tool room?"
Rose's eyes opened wide.  "I can prove it to you."
     That was all.  But the shack filled with his disapproval
of her reluctance to free him from his promise.  She remembered one
time when she had come home from school in a pelting rain that had
changed, suddenly, to hail.  There had seemed no escape from the
hard, little balls and their cruel bruises.  Just so, it seemed to
her, from Martin, outwardly so calm as he read his paper, the
harsh, determined thoughts beat thick and fast.  Turn what way she
would, they surrounded, enveloped and pounded down upon her.  Her
resolution weakened.  Wasn't she paying too big a price for what
was, after all, only material?  The one time she and Martin had
seemed quite close had been the moment in which she had agreed so
quickly to change the location of the concrete floor.  Now she had
utterly lost him.  She could scarcely endure the aloofness with
which he had withdrawn into himself.
     "Martin," she said a bit huskily, two evenings later, at
supper, "I've decided that you are right.  It is foolish and
extravagant of me to want a second story when there are just the
two of us.  It will be better to have all those other things you
told me about."
     Martin did not respond; simply continued eating without
looking up.  This was a habit of his that nearly drove Rose
desperate.  In her father's household meals had always been
friendly, sociable affairs.  Patrick Conroy had been loquacious and
by way of a wit; sharpened on his, Rose's own had developed.  They
had dealt in delicious nonsense, these two, and had her husband
been of a different temperament she might have found it a refuge in
her life with him.  But, somehow, from the first, even before they
were married, when with Martin, such chatter had died unuttered on
Rose's tongue.  The few remarks which she did venture, nowadays,
had the effect of a disconcerting splash before they sank into the
gloomy depths of the thick silence.  Occasionally, in sheer self
defense, she carried on a light monologue, but Martin's lack of
interest gave her such an odd, lonely, stage-struck sensation that
she, too, became untalkative, keeping to herself the ideas which
chased through her ever-active mind.  Innately just, she attributed
this peculiarity of his to the fact that he had lived so long
alone, and while it fretted her, she usually forgave him.  But
tonight, as no answer came, it seemed to her that if Martin did not
at least raise his eyes, she must scream or throw something.
     "It would be a godsend to be the sort who permits oneself
to do such things," she told herself, a suggestion of a smile
touching her lips, and mentally she sent dish after dish at him,
watching them fall shattered to the floor.  Dismay at the relief
this gave her brought the dimples into her cheeks.  Her voice was
pleasant as she asked:  "Martin, did you hear your spouse just
now?"
     Annoyance flitted across his face and crept into his tone
as he answered tersely:  "Of course, I heard you."  Presently he
finished his meal, pushed back his chair and went out.
     Nothing further was said between them on the subject, but
when the scaffolding went up she saw that it was for only one
story.  It might have comforted her a little, had she known what
uneasy moments Martin was having.  In spite of himself, he could
not shake off the consciousness that he had broken his word.  That
was something which, heretofore, he had never done.  But,
heretofore, his promises had been of a strictly business nature.
He would deliver so many bushels of wheat at such and such a time;
he would lend such and such a piece of machinery; he would supply
so many men and so many teams at a neighbor's threshing; he would
pay so much per pound for hogs; he would guarantee so many eggs out
of a setting or so many pounds of butter in so many months from a
cow he was selling.  A few such guarantees made good at a loss to
himself, a few such loads delivered in adverse weather, a few such
pledges to help kept when he was obliged actually to hire men, had
established for him an enviable reputation, which Martin was of no
mind to lose.  Had Rose not released him from his promise he would
have kept it.  Even now he was disturbed as to what Fletcher and
Fallon might think.  But already he had lived long enough with his
wife to understand something of the quality of her pride.  Once
having agreed to the change, she would carry it off with a dash.
     Had Rose stood her ground on this matter, undoubtedly all
her after life might have been different, but she was of those
women whose charm and whose folly lie in their sensitiveness to the
moods and contentment of the people most closely associated with
them.  They can rise above their own discomfort or depression, but
they are utterly unable to disregard that of those near them.  This
gave Martin, who by temperament and habit considered only his own
feelings, an incalculable advantage.  His was the old supremacy of
the selfish over the self sacrificing, the hard over the tender,
the mental over the emotional.  Add to this, the fact that with all
his faults, perhaps largely because of them, perhaps chiefly
because she cooked, washed, ironed, mended, and baked for him, kept
his home and planned so continually for his pleasure, Martin was
dear to Rose, and it is not difficult to understand how unequal the
contest in which she was matched when her wishes clashed with her
husband's.  It was predestined that he, invariably, should win out.
     Rose told her friends she and her husband had decided that
the second story would make her too much work, and Martin noticed
with surprise how easily her convincing statement was accepted.  He
decided, for his own peace of mind, that he had nothing with which
to reproach himself.  He had put it up to her and she had agreed.
This principal concession obtained, other smaller ones followed
logically and rapidly.  The running water and bath in the house
were given up for piping to the barn, and stanchions--then
novelties in southeastern Kansas.  The money for the hardwood
floors went into lightning rods.  Built-in cupboards were dismissed
as luxuries, and the saving paid for an implement shed which
delighted Martin, who had figured how much expensive machinery
would be saved from rust.  When it came to papering the walls he
decided that the white plaster was attractive enough and could
serve for years.  Instead, he bought a patented litter-carrier that
made the job of removing manure from the barn an easy task.  The
porches purchased everything from a brace and a bit to a lathe for
the new tool-room and put the finishing touches to the dairy.  The
result was a four-room house that was the old one born again, and
such well-equipped farm buildings that they were the pride of the
township.
     Rose, who had surrendered long since, let the promises go
to naught without much protest.  Martin was so quietly domineering,
so stubbornly persistent--and always so plausible--oh, so
plausible!--that there was no resisting him.  Only when it came to
the fireplace did she make a last stand.  She felt that it would be
such a friendly spirit in the house.  She pictured Martin and
herself sitting beside it in the winter evenings.
     "A house without one is like a place without flowers," she
explained to him.
     "It's a mighty dirty business," he answered tersely.  "You
would have to track the coal through the rest of the house and
you'd have all those extra ashes to clean out."
     "But you would never see any of the dirt," she argued with
more than her usual courage, "and if I wouldn't mind the ashes I
don't see why you should."
     "We can't afford it."
     "Martin, I've given in to you on everything else," she
asserted firmly.  "I'm not going to give this up.  I'll pay for it
out of my own money."
     "What do you mean 'out of my own money'?" he asked
sternly.  "I told Osborne we'd run one account.  If what is mine is
going to be yours, what is yours is going to be mine.  I'd think
your own sense of fairness would tell you that."
      As a matter of fact, Martin had no intention of ever
touching Rose's little capital, but he had made up his mind to
direct the spending of its income.  He would keep her from putting
it into just such foolishness as this fireplace.  But Rose,
listening, saw the last of her independence going.  She felt
tricked, outraged.  During the years she had been at the head of
her father's household, she had regulated the family budget and, no
matter how small it had happened to be, she always had contrived to
have a surplus.  This notion of Martin's that he, and he alone,
should decide upon expenditures was ridiculous.  She told him so
and in spite of himself, he was impressed.
     "All right," he said calmly.  "You can do all the buying
for the house.  Write a check with my name and sign your own
initials.  Get what you think we need.  But there isn't going to be
any fireplace.  You can just set that down."
     Voice, eyes, the line of his chin, all told Rose that he
would not yield.  Nothing could be gained from a quarrel except
deeper ill feeling.  With a supreme effort of will she obeyed the
dictates of common sense and ended the argument abruptly.
     But, for months after she was settled in the new little
house, her eye never fell on the space where the fireplace should
have been without a bitter feeling of revolt sweeping over her.
She never carried a heavy bucket in from the pump without thinking
cynically of Martin's promises of running water.  As she swept the
dust out of her front and back doors to narrow steps, she
remembered the spacious porches that were to have been; and as she
wiped the floors she had painted herself, and polished her pine
furniture, she was taunted by memories of the smooth boards and the
golden oak to which she had once looked forward so happily.  This
resentment was seldom expressed, but its flame scorched her soul.
     Her work increased steadily.  She did not object to this;
it kept her from thinking and brooding; it helped her to forget all
that might have been, all that was.  She milked half the cows,
separated the cream, took charge of the dairy house and washed all
the cans.  Three times a week she churned, and her butter became
locally famous.  She took over completely both the chickens and the
garden.  Often, because her feet ached from being on them such long
hours, she worked barefoot in the soft dirt.  According to the
season, she canned vegetables, preserved fruit, rendered lard and
put down pork.  When she sat at meals now, like Martin she was too
tired for conversation.  From the time she arose in the morning
until she dropped off to sleep at night, her thoughts, like his,
were chiefly of immediate duties to be performed.  One concept
dominated their  household, work.  It seemed to offer the only way
out of life's perplexities.
                       IV
 

             A ROSE-BUD IN THE DUST
 
 

     Under this rigid regime Martin's prosperity increased.
Although he would not have admitted it, Rose's good cooking and the
sweet fresh cleanliness with which he was surrounded had their
effect, giving him a new sense of physical well-being, making his
mind more alert.  Always, he had been a hard worker, but now he
began for the first time to take an interest in the scientific
aspects of farming.  He subscribed for farm journals and put real
thought into all he did, with results that were gratifying.  He
grew the finest crop of wheat for miles around; in the season which
brought others a yield of fifteen or twenty bushels to the acre,
Martin averaged thirty-three, without buying a ton of commercial
fertilizer.  His corn was higher than anybody's else; the ears
longer, the stalks juicier, because of his careful, intelligent
cultivating.  In the driest season, it resisted the hot winds;
this, he explained, was the result of his knowing how to prepare
his seed bed and when to plant--moisture could be retained if the
soil was handled scientifically.  He bought the spoiled acreage of
his neighbors, which he cut up for the silo--as yet the only one in
the county--adding water to help fermentation.  His imported hogs
seemed to justify the prices he paid for them, growing faster and
rounder and fatter than any in the surrounding county.  The chinch
bugs might bother everyone else, but Martin seemed to be able to
guard against them with fair success.  He took correspondence
courses in soils and fertilizers, animal husbandry and every
related subject; kept a steady stream of letters flowing to and
from both Washington and the State Agricultural College.
     Now and then it crossed his mind that with the farm
developing into such an institution it would be more than desirable
to pass it on to one of his own blood, and secretly he was pleased
when Rose told him a baby was coming.  A child, a son, might bring
with him a little of what was missing in his marriage with her.
She irritated him more and more, not by what she did but by what
she was.  Her whole temperament, in so much as he permitted himself
to be aware of it, her whole nature, jarred on his.
     "When is it due?"
     "October."
     "It's lucky harvest will be over; silo filling, too," was
his only comment.
     In spite of Rose's three long years with Martin his lack
of enthusiasm was like a sharp stab.  What had she expected, she
asked herself sternly.  To be taken in his arms and rejoiced over
as others were at such a moment?  What did he care so long as he
wouldn't have to hire extra help for her in the busy season!  It
was incredible--his hardness.
     Why couldn't she hate him?  He was mean enough to her,
surely.  "I'm as foolish as old Rover," she thought bitterly.  The
faithful dog lived for his master and yet Rose could not remember
ever having seen Martin give him a pat.  "When I once hold my own
little baby in my arms, I won't care like this.  I'll have someone
else to fill my heart," she consoled herself, thrilling anew with
the conviction that then she would be more than recompensed for
everything.  The love she had missed, the house that had been
stolen from her--what were they in comparison to this growing bit
of life?  Meanwhile, she longed as never before to feel near to
Martin.  She could not help recalling how gallantly her father had
watched over her mother when she carried her last child and how
eagerly they all had waited upon her.  At times, the contrast was
scarcely to be borne.
     Rose was troubled with nausea, but Martin pooh-poohed, as
childish, the notion of dropping some of her responsibilities.
Didn't his mares work almost to the day of foaling?  It was good
for them, keeping them in shape.  And the cows--didn't they go
about placidly until within a few hours of bringing their calves?
Even the sows--did they droop as they neared farrowing?  Why should
a woman be so different?  Her child would be healthier and she able
to bring it into the world with less discomfort to herself if she
went about her ordinary duties in her usual way.  Thus Martin,
impersonally, logically.
     "That would be true," Rose agreed, "if the work weren't so
heavy and if I were younger."
     "It's the work you're used to doing all the time, isn't
it?  Because you aren't young is all the more reason you need the
exercise.  You're not going to hire extra help, so you might just
as well get any to-do out of your mind," he retorted, the dreaded
note in his voice.
     She considered leaving him.  If she had earned her living
before, she could again.  More than once she had thought of doing
this, but always the hope of a child had shone like a tiny bright
star through the midnight of her trials.  Since she had endured so
much, why not endure a little longer and reap a dear reward?  Then,
too, she could never quite bring herself to face the pictures her
imagination conjured of Martin, struggling along uncared for.  Now,
as her heart hardened against him, an inner voice whispered that
everyone had a right to a father as well as a mother, and Martin
might be greatly softened by daily contact with a little son or
daughter.  In fairness, she must wait.
     Yet, she knew these were not her real reasons.  They lay
far deeper, in the very warp and woof of her nature.  She did not
leave Martin because she could not.  She was incapable of making
drastic changes, of tearing herself from anyone to whom she was
tied by habit and affection--no matter how bitterly the mood of the
moment might demand it.  Always she would be bound by
circumstances.  True, however hard and adverse they might prove,
she could adapt herself to them with rare patience and dignity, but
never would she be able to compel them to her will, rise superbly
above them, toss them aside.  Her life had been, and would be,
shaped largely by others.  Her mother's death, the particular
enterprise in which her father's little capital had been invested,
Martin's peculiar temperament--these had moulded and were moulding
Rose Wade.  At the time she came to Martin's shack, she was
potentially any one of a half dozen women.  It was inevitable that
the particular one into which she would evolve should be determined
by the type of man she might happen to marry, inevitable that she
would become, to a large degree, what he wished and expected, that
her thoughts would take on the complexion of his.  Lacking in
strength of character?  In power of resistance, certainly.  Time
out of mind, such malleability has been the cross of the
Magdalenes.  Yet in what else lies the secret of the harmony
achieved by successful wives?
     And as, her nausea passing, Rose began to feel a glorious
sensation of vigor, she decided that perhaps, after all, Martin had
been right.  Child-bearing was a natural function.  People probably
made far too much fuss about it.  Nellie came to help her cook for
the threshers and, for the rest, she managed very well, even
milking her usual eight cows and carrying her share of the foaming
buckets.
     All might have gone smoothly if only she had not overslept
one morning in late September.  When she reached the barn, Martin
was irritable.  She did not answer him but sat down quietly by her
first cow, a fine-blooded animal which soon showed signs of
restlessness under her tense hands.
     "There!  There!  So Bossy," soothed Rose gently.
     "You never will learn how to manage good stock," Martin
criticized bitingly.
     "Nor you how to treat a wife."
     "Oh, shut up."
     "Don't talk to me that way."
     As she started to rise, a kick from the cow caught her
square on the stomach with such force that it sent her staggering
backward, still clutching the handle of the pail from which a snowy
stream cascaded.
     "Now what have you done?" demanded Martin sternly.
"Haven't I warned you time and again that milk cows are sensitive,
nervous?  Fidgety people drive them crazy.  Why can't you behave
simply and directly with them!  Why is it I always get more milk
from mine!  It's your own fault this happened--fussing around,
taking out your ill temper at me on her.  Shouting at me.  What
could you expect?"
     For the first time in their life together, Rose was
frankly unnerved.  It seemed to her that she would go mad.  "You
devil!" she burst out, wildly.  "That's what you are, Martin Wade!
You're not human.  Your child may be lost and you talk about cows
letting down more milk.  Oh God!  I didn't know there was any one
living who could be so cruel, so cold, so diabolical.  You'll be
punished for this some day--you will--you will.  You don't love me-
-never did, oh, don't I know it.  But some time you will love some
one.  Then you'll understand what it is to be treated like this
when your whole soul is in need of tenderness.  You'll see then
what--"
     "Oh, shut up," growled Martin, somewhat abashed by the
violence of her broken words and gasping sobs.  "You're hysterical.
You're doing yourself as much harm right now as that kick did you."
     "Oh, Martin, please be kind," pleaded Rose more quietly.
"Please!  It's your baby as much as mine.  Be just half as kind as
you are to these cows."
     "They have more sense," he retorted angrily.  And when
Rose woke him, the following night, to go for the doctor, his quick
exclamation was:  "So now you've done it, have you?"
     As the sound of his horse's hoofs died away, it seemed to
her that he had taken the very heart out of her courage.  She
thought with anguished envy of the women whose husbands loved them,
for whom the heights and depths of this ordeal were as real as for
their wives.  It seemed to her that even the severest of pain could
be wholly bearable if, in the midst of it, one felt cherished.
Well, she would go through it alone as she had gone through
everything else since their marriage.  She would try to forget
Martin.  She would forget him.  She must.  She would keep her mind
fixed on the deep joy so soon to be hers.  Had she not chosen to
suffer of her own free will, because the little creature that could
be won only through it was worth so much more than anything else
the world had to offer?  She imagined the baby already arrived and
visualized him as she hoped her child might be at two years.
Suppose he were in a burning house, would she have the courage to
rescue him?  What would be the limit of her endurance in the
flames?  She laughed to herself at the absurdity of the question.
How well she knew its answer!  She wished with passionate intensity
that she could look into the magic depths of some fairy mirror and
see, for just the flash of one instant, exactly how her boy or girl
really would look.  How much easier that would make it to hold fast
to the consciousness that she was not merely in pain, but was
laboring to bring forth a warm flesh-and-blood child.  There was
the rub--in spite of her eagerness, the little one, so priceless,
wasn't as yet quite definite, real.  She recalled the rosy-cheeked,
curly-haired youngster her fancy had created a moment ago.  She
would cling to that picture; yes, even if her pain mounted to
agony, it should be of the body only; she would not let it get into
her mind, not into her soul, not into the welcoming mother-heart of
her.
     Meanwhile, as she armored her spirit, she built a fire,
put on water to heat, attended capably to innumerable details.
Rose was a woman of sound experience.  She had been with others at
such times.  It held no goblin terrors for her.  Had it not been
for Martin's heartlessness, she would have felt wholly equal to the
occasion.  As it was, she made little commotion.  Dr. Bradley,
gentle and direct, had been the Conroys' family physician for
years.  Nellie, who arrived in an hour, had been through the
experience often herself, and was friendly and helpful.
     She liked Rose, admired her tremendously and the thought--
an odd one for Nellie--crossed her mind that tonight she was
downright beautiful.  When at dawn, Dr. Bradley whispered:  "She
has been so brave, Mrs. Mall, I can't bear to tell her the child is
not alive.  Wouldn't it be better for you to do so?"  She shrank
from the task.  "I can't; I simply can't," she protested, honest
tears pouring down her thin face.
     "Could you, Mr. Wade?"
     Martin strode into Rose's room, all his own disappointment
adding bitterness to his words:  "Well, I knew you'd done it and
you have.  It's a fine boy, but he came dead."
     Out of the dreariness and the toil, out of the hope, the
suffering and the high courage had come--nothing.  As Rose lay, the
little still form clasped against her, she was too broken for
tears.  Life had played her another trick.  Indignation toward
Martin gathered volume with her returning strength.
     "You don't deserve a child," she told him bitterly.  "You
might treat him when he grew up as you treat me."
     "I've never laid hand to you," said Martin gruffly,
certain stinging words of Nellie's still smarting.  When she chose,
his sister's tongue could be waspish.  She had tormented him with
it all the way to her home.  He had been goaded into flaring back
and both had been thoroughly angry when they separated, yet he was
conscious that he came nearer a feeling of affection for her than
for any living person.  Well, not affection, precisely, he
corrected.  It was rather that he relished, with a quizzical
amusement, the completeness of their mutual comprehension.  She was
growing to be more like their mother, too.  Decidedly, this was the
type of woman he should have married, not someone soft and eager
and full of silly sentiment like Rose.  Why didn't she hold her own
as Nellie did?  Have more snap and stamina?  It was exasperating--
the way she frequently made him feel as if he actually were
trampling on something defenseless.
     He now frankly hated her.  There was not dislike merely;
there was acute antipathy.  He took a delight in having her work
harder and harder.  It used to be "Rose," but now it was always
"say" or "you" or "hey."  Once she asked cynically if he had ever
heard of a "Rose of Sharon" to which he maliciously replied:  "She
turned out to be a Rag-weed."
     Yet such a leveller of emotions and an adjuster of
disparate dispositions is Time that when they rounded their fourth
year, Martin viewed his life, with a few reservations, as fairly
satisfactory.  He turned the matter over judicially in his mind and
concluded that even though he cared not a jot for Rose, at least he
could think of no other woman who could carry a larger share of the
drudgery in their dusty lives, help save more and, on the whole,
bother him less.  He, like his rag-weed, had settled down to an
apathetic jog.
     Rose was convinced that Martin would make too unkind a
father; he had no wish for another taste of the general confusion
and disorganized routine her confinement had entailed.  Besides, it
would be inconvenient if she were to die, as Dr. Bradley quite
solemnly had warned him she might only too probably.  Without any
exchange of words, it was settled there should not be another
child--settled, he dismissed it.  In a way, he had come to
appreciate Rose, but it was absurd to compliment anyone, let alone
a wife whom he saw constantly.  Physically, she did not interest
him; in fact, the whole business bored him.  It was tiresome and
got one nowhere.  He decided this state of mind must be rather
general among married people, and reasoned his way to the
conclusion that marriage was a good thing in that it drove out
passion and placed human animals on a more practicable foundation.
If there had been the likelihood of children, he undoubtedly would
have sought her from time to time, but with that hope out of their
lives the attraction died completely.
     When he was through with his work, it was late and he was
sleepy.  When he woke early in the morning, he had to hurry to his
stock.  So that which always had been less than secondary, now
became completely quiescent, and he was satisfied that it should.
It never occurred to him to consider what Rose might be thinking
and feeling.  She wondered about it, and would have liked to ask
advice