Our homeward journey seemed nearly ended before we reached Chicago. Driving over these perfectly kept roads of the middle west furnished no new experience. We decided to shorten the remaining interval still further by taking the Detroit boat to Buffalo. When we suddenly made this decision we had less than two days to make the 340 miles,—time enough, except for the state of our tires, which resembled that mid-Victorian neurasthenic Sweet Alice Ben Bolt. They collapsed if you gave them a smile, and blew out at fear of a frown. No longer in the belt of chivalry, we toiled over obstreperous rims, warped and bent from drought and flood, while able bodied men sailed by, and the only speech we had from them was an occasional jeering, “Hello, girls!” Thus we knew we were fast returning to civilization. As we made out our bill of lading at Detroit we heard for the last time, “Well, you are a long ways from home.” After that we felt we had already completed our period of vagabondage.
But the fates were not to let us finish tamely. The last act of our drama began when our rear tire gave way, and lost us two hours while we waited for repairs, just out of Chicago. The eastern entrance to Chicago, with its unsightly, factory-pocked marshes is cheerless enough even under blue skies. But a soggy downpour only made us shiver and hurry on. Chicago was well enough, as cities go, but the middle west did not hold us, having neither the courtesy of the South, the wide beauty of the West nor the self-respecting antiquity of the East. Yet here and there in the open country of Illinois, with its broad golden wheat fields, tall elms, and its homelike blue haze softening distant woods, a bit of English Warwickshire peeped out at us.
The drizzle soon settled into a steady downpour. All day we slushed over glistening macadam and through the heavy mud of section roads. Night fell early under the gloom of the rain while we were still many miles from the end of our day’s stint. We decided to go as long as we could, or we never should reach Detroit in time. Camping was out of the question,—Illinois was too civilized for it to be safe procedure. So in deference to the solemn midwestern habit of laying out their country like a checkerboard, we paced so many miles east, so many miles south.
We left tracks in three states that day, the Yellowstone Trail dipping unexpectedly into Indiana, seen too late and briefly to leave any impression but of an excellent cafeteria at South Bend. Some time after dark, our sense of direction took a nose dive, and was permanently injured. At half-past eight we reckoned the miles, and knew there was to be no rest for the weary if we were to reach Detroit next day. Hopelessly lost by now, confused by many arguments, backings and turnings, we knocked, somewhere in Indiana, at a Hoosier door, and an old man in his stocking feet came out, calling lovingly, “That you, dear?” We almost wished we were his dear, and might rest in the yellow glow of his parlor instead of pushing on in the dark. We were several miles off our bearings in both directions it seemed. He told us off nine turns to the east and four to the north to straighten us out, and we went on into the night and the storm. We had gone out into the night and storm so often that no heroine of melodrama could tell us anything about either. But being by this time completely disorientated, instead of traveling nine east and four north, as they say in the easy vernacular of the midwest, we went instead nine west and four south, and came out at a lonely crossroads, the kind at which a murderer might appropriately be buried. Our arithmetic was quite unequal to adding and subtracting our mistakes. Seeing a house with one light burning, I reached its door to ask directions. There, unashamed, through the lighted window, a lady sat in her nightdress, braiding her hair. I backed away, not wishing to embarrass her. It was not as if I were one of the neighbors, whom she seemed not to mind. A dismal quarter of a mile away, another light gleamed. I walked to it. An old woman cautiously put her head out of the door. She too was in an honest flannel nightie, and I concluded that the mid-west wears its nightgear unabashed. My sudden appearance, and especially the fact of my inquiring for a great city like Detroit, was not reassuring to her. She asked suspiciously if I were alone and at my answer, exclaimed, “Aint you afraid?”
Her question gave me genuine amazement. I had forgotten that in the eastern section of our country people are afraid of each other, and I had grown so far away from it that I laughed and said, “Not in the least.” She seemed to think this marvelous. A motherly old soul, her sympathy struggled hard with her fear that I was bent on forcing a violent entrance into her house, but finally the baser suspicions won and she shut the door firmly on me until she could confer with “Pa.” He, being bolder, came openly to the porch in his,—was it pajamas or nightshirt?—I can hardly say, because not to embarrass him I only looked past his snowy beard and into his nice blue eyes. He directed us. We were to go seven north and thirteen west.
For half an hour the sleepy Toby and I wrestled with the problem of where we now were, how far from our starting point, from our destination, from our last checking up,—till we feared for our reason. Like a ballad refrain, we went seven miles south and thirteen west,—but instead of a town met a pine forest. So, a few miles more or less meaning nothing to us, we threw in several to the north and a couple east, with the same unpromising result. At the rate we were going, I expected to reach either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean by morning.
Once we heard the whirr of a mighty engine over our heads,—some belated airman, lost like ourselves doubtless in the rain above us. If anything could have made us feel lonelier than we had, it would have been this evidence of an unseen neighbor who shared the night and the storm with us.
We came to another house. I stopped the car. Neither of us moved. “I went last time,” I said pointedly.
“Huh-yah-yah,” protested Toby, but I did not yield, because I had fallen asleep. She wearily tottered out to the house, and brought back a Hoosier farmer with her, who fastened his suspenders as he came.
“You’re some out of your way,” he said, unnecessarily, “but five east and eight south you’ll find a small hotel where you can spend the night.”