“But I’ll miss my connections!”
204“Too bad, Miss.” The porter looked at her with lazy curiosity. The train had already been at a standstill for ten minutes, and every other woman on the car had put him through a catechism long ago. This girl looked awake and practical. How could a porter understand that the mere beauty of words and ideas could render one unconscious to delays in transportation?
Alice rose and walked up and down the aisle. Three women, rather overdressed, were playing cards in a remote section. A man slept in a corner. She went to the door, and seeing groups of passengers standing outside along the track, jumped down from the high step and walked a little, tasting the fresh air with pleasure. The country offered nothing to her gaze. Her eye, accustomed to mountains, found endless level stretches harrowing rather than soothing. She recalled a Dakota girl at Dexter who was always telling of the beauty of the prairie, and longing for it. “I suppose it’s a matter of habit,” she thought to herself. “There is certainly something that kindles your imagination in such a sight. It would be dreary if it weren’t cultivated, but it must be wonderful to see a whole country reclaimed from wildness and made productive. ‘Beauty for ashes’ O!” and with a little shiver of pleasure, she repeated the lines that had so charmed her a few minutes before. “‘The spirit of heaviness.’ What a strange thing to include in the 205 same message with the vengeance of the Lord! It makes blues and dullness seem so important. It doesn’t say anything here about Christ’s coming to heal bodily suffering or sin, and it does explicitly say he is to cure the blues. Isn’t that interesting?”
Her walk had brought her to the first of the line of day-coaches by this time, and she glanced up at the listless faces leaned against the dirty window-panes. As she passed, each pair of eyes rested wearily on her figure. Suddenly a thought struck her. Blues and dullness! Where were they ever more to the fore than here? She entered the car impulsively and stood looking people over. She spoke to the nearest woman.
“It’s a nuisance having to wait so, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to come out for a little walk?”
“No,” snapped the woman, “I wouldn’t.” Alice flushed, then smiled and went on down the aisle. Evidently her mission of good fairy was not going to be successful at the start. “Some people want to be ‘heavy,’” she thought. “I’ll take some one who looks as though she wanted to be lightened up. Here’s one.”
The red-eyed cindery young woman who was curled up in her seat, dabbing her cheeks with a smeary handkerchief, looked as though any change would be a welcome one. Alice stopped resolutely. “Can I do anything for you?” she asked, not at all sure of her reception.
206The girl lifted her eyes and swallowed a sob. “Nobud-d-dy can,” she wailed; “I’m going to be m-m-married!”
Alice’s face twitched. “Won’t you tell me about it?” she asked. “Cheering folks up” was proving an intricate business. “If the garment of praise doesn’t fit any one,” she thought, “I’ll just have to carry it back and wear it myself.”
The bride gulped and spoke again: