CHAPTER XXI.
FAREWELL TO WALLENCAMP.
Yet another week passed in Wallencamp before I was able to complete the preparations for my departure.
One day, I set myself with a sort of listless fidelity to the summing up of my accounts. I found, on deducting the amount of my actual expenses from the sum total of my earnings in Wallencamp, that I had sixty-two cents left!
The revelation caused me some surprise; strangely little perturbation of spirit. I thought what tragic tales might sometimes lie hidden beneath a seemingly dry and senseless combination of figures, while, in my own case, I was merely struck with the justice of those figures.
For such eccentric and distracted services as I had rendered in Wallencamp, the superintendent of schools had paid me in full at the price stipulated, eight dollars per week.
On the other hand, the column of insolvency, I considered that the West Wallen Doctor's bill was an expression of modesty itself. The sum due my Dear Madeline for "board," at two dollars and a half per week, though I trusted it was some compensation for the merely temporal advantages to be enjoyed in Wallencamp, did not appear as an astounding aggregate. The list of "minor details" was well portrayed, and presented an aspect of clear use and value.
My once fond dream of a "private bank account" had gradually faded from my memory. I saw the last spar in that fair wreck go down, now, without a sigh. And the "loans solicited," in labored phrase, as "mere temporary conveniences," from the friends at home—these, I was satisfied, must remain only as the sweet continuation of a life-long debt. But how was I to get home?
The combined fares on that route, I remembered, had amounted to something over nine dollars! So the question haunted me, not restlessly, but with a vague, tranquil, melancholy interest, as pertaining to the history of some one who had lived and died a few years before; so long indeed, it seemed to me, since I had performed the journey to Wallencamp.
I had not written home as to the day of my probable arrival, in this yielding passively to the force of habit, which had ever constrained me to plan my returns as "surprises" to my family and friends.