The picture Marley drew in one of his letters of the strange shifting of the scene that is to be observed in the streets of a great city as darkness falls, when those that work in the prosaic day disappear and in their places appears the vast and mysterious army of the toilers by night, many of them in callings demanding the cover of the night, thrilled her strangely. But she did not know how from all the temptations of the irregular life he was leading he was saved, partly by the gentle friend he had found in James Weston, but more by the constant thought of the girl whom he had left behind at home.
CHAPTER XXX
HOME AGAIN
Marley, after a year or more in Chicago, found the excitement of his first return home growing upon him as he looked out the car window and long before the train entered the borders of Gordon County he eagerly began watching for familiar things.
In the spirit of holiday which had come in this his first vacation, he had felt justified in taking a chair in the parlor car, though from the associations he had formed in his newspaper work it was more difficult now for him to resist than to yield to extravagances. He had recalled with a smile how in those first hard days in the freight office he had joked about going home in a private car, and he had had all day a childish pleasure in pretending that the empty Pullman was a private car; he could almost realize such a distinction when he showed the conductor the pass his newspaper had got for him.
But even if he now felt glad that he was a newspaper man instead of a railroad man, he was quite willing to return to Macochee on any terms. He had tried to convince himself that he knew the very moment the train swept across the Indiana line into Ohio, and he felt a fine glow of state pride. He held his pride somewhat in check until he heard some one speak a name that he recognized as that of an Ohio town and then he boasted to the porter:
“Well, I’m back in my own state again.”
The porter, though ready to admit that Ohio was a pretty good old state, was nevertheless not very responsive, and Marley saw that he would have to enjoy his sensations all alone.
He could view with satisfaction the figure of a tolerably well-dressed city man reflected in the long mirror that swayed with the rushing of the heavy coach. He knew that his return would create a sensation in Macochee, though he was resolved to be modest about it. Even if he was not returning to Macochee in the ceremony he had dreamed of, he was returning in a way that was distinguished enough for him and for Macochee.
He was eager to see the old town; he tried to imagine his return in its proper order and sequence, first, the little depot, blistering in the hot sun of the August afternoon, the rails gleaming in front of it, and the air above them trembling in the heat; he could see the baggage trucks tilted up on the platform; from the eating-house came the odor of boiled ham compromised by the smell of the grease frying on the scorching cinders that were heaped about the ties; beyond was the grain elevator that once appeared so monstrous in his eyes; across the tracks, the weed-grown field; and the only living things in sight the two men unloading agricultural machines from a box-car abandoned on a siding, the only sound, the ticking of a telegraph instrument; the target was set, but the station officials had not yet appeared.
Thence, in thought, he went up Miami Street; he saw the Court House and, lounging along the stone base of the fence, the loafers whom no one had ever seen move, but who yet must have made some sort of imperceptible astronomical progress, for they kept always just in the shadow of the building; then the old law office across the way; then Main Street, with its crazy signs, its awnings, and the horses hitched to the racks, then the Square with its old gabled buildings, the monument and the cavalryman, the long street leading to his own home, and at last, Ward Street, arched by its cottonwoods,—and he recalled his unfinished verses which had taken Ward Street for a subject: