THE SUNLIGHT dripped over the
house like golden paint over an
art jar, and the freckling
shadows here and there only intensified
the rigor of the bath of light.
The Butterworth and Larkin houses
flanking were intrenched behind
great stodgy trees ; only the Happer
house took the full sun, and all
day long faced the dusty road-street
with a tolerant kindly patience.
This was the city of Tarleton in
southernmost Georgia, September
afternoon.
Up in her bedroom window Sally
Carrol Happer rested her nine-
teen-year-old chin on a
fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark
Darrow's ancient Ford turn the
corner. The car was hot being
partly metallic it retained all
the heat it absorbed or evolved and
Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright
at the wheel wore a pained,
strained expression as though he
considered himself a spare part, and
rather likely to break. He
laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the
wheels squeaking indignantly at
the encounter, and then with a
terrifying expression he gave the
steering-gear a final wrench and
deposited self and car
approximately in front of the Happer steps.
There was a plaintive heaving
sound, a death-rattle, followed by a
short silence ; and then the air
was rent by a startling whistle.
Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily.
She started to yawn, but finding
this quite impossible unless she
raised her chin from the window-sill,
changed her mind and continued
silently to regard the car, whose
owner sat brilliantly if
perfunctorily at attention as he waited for
an answer to his signal. After a
moment the whistle once more split
the dusty air.
"Good mawnin ."
With difficulty Clark twisted his
tall body round and bent a dis-
torted glance on the window.
" Tain't mawnin', Sally
Carrol."
"Isn't it, sure
enough?"
"What you doin'?"
"Eatin' 'n apple."
"Come on go swimmin' want
to?"
"Reckon so."
"How 'bout hurryin'
up?"
"Sure enough."
Sally Carrol sighed voluminously
and raised herself with profound
inertia from the floor, where she
had been occupied in alternately
destroying parts of a green apple
and painting paper dolls for her
younger sister. She approached a
mirror, regarded her expression
with a pleased and pleasant
languor, dabbed two spots of rouge on
her lips and a grain of powder on
her nose, and covered her bobbed
corn-colored hair with a
rose-littered sunbonnet. Then she kicked
over the painting water, said,
"Oh, damn!" but let it lay and
left the room.
"How you, Clark?" she
inquired a minute later as she slipped
nimbly over the side of the car.
"Mighty fine, Sally
Carrol."
"Where we go swimmin'?"
"Out to Walley's Pool. Told
Marylyn we'd call by an' get her an'
Joe Ewing."
Clark was dark and lean, and when
on foot was rather inclined
to stoop. His eyes were ominous
and his expression somewhat petu-
lant except when startlingly
illuminated by one of his frequent
smiles. Clark had "a
income" just enough to keep himself in ease
and his car in gasoline and he
had spent the two years since he
graduated from Georgia Tech in
dozing round the lazy streets of his
home town, discussing how he
could best invest his capital for an
immediate fortune.
Hanging round he found not at all
difficult ; a crowd of little girls
had grown up beautifully, the
amazing Sally Carroll foremost among
them ; and they enjoyed being
swum with and danced with and made
love to in the flower-filled
summery evenings and they all liked
Clark immensely. When feminine
company palled there were half
a dozen other youths who were
always just about to do something,
and meanwhile were quite willing
to join him in a few holes of golf,
or a game of billiards, or the
consumption of a quart of "hard yella
licker." Every once in a
while one of these contemporaries made a
farewell round of calls before
going up to New York or Philadelphia
or Pittsburgh to go into
business, but mostly they just stayed round
in this languid paradise of
dreamy skies and firefly evenings and
noisy niggery street fairs and
especially of gracious, soft-voiced
girls, who were brought up on
memories instead of money.
The Ford having been excited into
a sort of restless resentful life
Clark and Sally Carrol rolled and
rattled down Valley Avenue into
Jefferson Street, where the dust
road became a pavement; along
opiate Millicent Place, where
there were half a dozen prosperous,
substantial mansions; and on into
the down-town section. Driving
was perilous here, for it was
shopping time; the population idled
casually across the streets and a
drove of low-moaning oxen were
being urged along in front of a
placid street-car; even the shops
seemed only yawning their doors
and blinking their windows in the
sunshine before retiring into a
state of utter and finite coma.
"Sally Carrol," said
Clark suddenly, "it a fact that you're en-
gaged?"
She looked at him quickly.
"Where'd you hear
that?"
"Sure enough, you
engaged?"
" 'At's a nice question !
"
"Girl told me you were
engaged to a Yankee you met up in Ashe-
ville last summer."
Sally Carrol sighed.
"Never saw such an old town
for rumors."
"Don't marry a Yankee, Sally
Carrol. We need you round here."
Sally Carrol was silent a moment.
"Clark," she demanded
suddenly, "who on earth shall I marry?"
"I offer my services."
"Honey, you couldn't support
a wife," she answered cheerfully.
"Anyway, I know you too well
to fall in love with you."
" 'At doesn't mean you ought
to marry a Yankee," he persisted.
"S'pose I love him?"
He shook his head.
"You couldn't. He'd be a lot
different from us, every way."
He broke off as he halted the car
in front of a rambling, dilapidated
house. Marylyn Wade and Joe Ewing
appeared in the doorway.
" 'Lo, Sally Carrol."
"Hi!"
"Howyou-all?"
"Sally Carrol,"
demanded Marylyn as they started off again, "you
engaged?"
"Lawdy, where'd all this
start? Can't I look at a man 'thout every-
body in town engagin' me to
him?"
Clark stared straight in front of
him at a bolt on the clattering
wind-shield.
"Sally Carrol," he said
with a curious intensity, "don't you like
us?"
"what?"
"Us down here?"
"Why, Clark, you know I do.
I adore all you boys."
"Then why you gettin'
engaged to a Yankee?"
"Clark, I don't know. I'm
not sure what I'll do, but well, I want
to go places and see people. I
want my mind to grow. I want to live
where things happen on a big
scale."
"What you mean ?"
"Oh, Clark, I love you, and
I love Joe here, and Ben Arrot, and
you-all, but you'll you'll "
"We'll all be failures?"
"Yes. I don't mean only
money failures, but just sort of of in-
effectual and sad, and oh, how
can I tell you?"
"You mean because we stay
here in Tarleton?"
"Yes, Clark; and because you
like it and never want to change
things or think or go
ahead."
He nodded and she reached over
and pressed his hand.
"Clark," she said
softly, "I wouldn't change you for the world.
You're sweet the way you are. The
things that'll make you fail I'll
love always the living in the
past, the lazy days and nights you
have, and all your carelessness
and generosity."
"But you're goin'
away?"
"Yes because I couldn't ever
marry you. You've a place in my
heart no one else ever could
have, but tied down here I'd get restless.
I'd feel I was wastin' myself.
There's two sides to me, you see.
There's the sleepy old side you
love ; an' there's a sort of energy
the feelin' that makes me do wild
things. That's the part of me that
may be useful somewhere, that'll
last when I'm not beautiful any
more."
She broke off with characteristic
suddenness and sighed, "Oh,
sweet cooky I " as her mood
changed.
Half closing her eyes and tipping
back her head till it rested on the
seat-back she let the savory
breeze fan her eyes and ripple the fluffy
curls of her bobbed hair. They
were in the country now, hurrying
between tangled growths of
bright-green coppice and grass and tall
trees that sent sprays of foliage
to hang a cool welcome over the
road. Here and there they passed
a battered Negro cabin, its oldest
white-haired inhabitant smoking a
corncob pipe beside the door, and
half a dozen scantily clothed
pickaninnies parading tattered dolls
on the wild-grown grass in front.
Farther out were lazy cotton-fields,
where even the workers seemed
intangible shadows lent by the sun
to the earth, not for toil, but
to while away some age-old tradition
in the golden September fields.
And round the drowsy picturesque-
ness, over the trees and shacks
and muddy rivers, flowed the heat,
never hostile, only comforting,
like a great warm nourishing bosom
for the infant earth.
"Sally Carrol, we're
here!"
"Poor chile's soun' asleep."
"Honey, you dead at last
outa sheer laziness ?"
"Water, Sally Carrol ! Cool
water waitin' for you ! "
Her eyes opened sleepily.
"Hi ! she murmured, smiling.
II
In November Harry Bellamy, tall,
broad, and brisk, came down
from his Northern city to spend
four days. His intention was to settle
a matter that had been hanging
fire since he and Sally Carrol had
met in Asheville, North Carolina,
in midsummer. The settlement
took only a quiet afternoon and
an evening in front of a glowing open
fire, for Harry Bellamy had
everything she wanted ; and, besides, she
loved him loved him with that
side of her she kept especially for
loving. Sally Carrol had several
rather clearly defined sides.
On his last afternoon they
walked, and she found their steps tend-
ing half-unconsciously toward one
of her favorite haunts, the ceme-
tery. When it came in sight,
gray-white and golden-green under the
cheerful late sun, she paused,
irresolute, by the iron gate.
"Are you mournful by nature,
Harry?" she asked with a faint
smile.
"Mournful? Not I."
"Then let's go in here. It
depresses some folks, but I like it."
They passed through the gateway
and followed a path that led
through a wavy valley of graves
dusty-gray and mouldy for the
fifties ; quaintly carved with
flowers and jars for the seventies ; ornate
and hideous for the nineties,
with fat marble cherubs lying in sodden
sleep on stone pillows, and great
impossible growths of nameless
granite flowers. Occasionally
they saw a kneeling figure with trib-
utary flowers, but over most of
the graves lay silence and withered
leaves with only the fragrance
that their own shadowy memories
could waken in living minds.
They reached the top of a hill
where they were fronted by a tall,
round head-stone, freckled with
dark spots of damp and half grown
over with vines.
"Margery Lee," she
read; "1844-1873. Wasn't she nice? She died
when she was twenty-nine. Dear
Margery Lee," she added softly.
"Can't you see her,
Harry?"
"Yes, Sally Carrol."
He felt a little hand insert
itself into his.
"She was dark, I think ; and
she always wore her hair with a rib-
bon in it, and gorgeous
hoop-skirts of alice blue and old rose."
"Yes."
"Oh, she was sweet, Harry !
And she was the sort of girl born to
stand on a wide, pillared porch
and welcome folks in. I think perhaps
a lot of men went away to war
meanin' to come back to her ; but
maybe none of 'em ever did."
He stooped down close to the
stone, hunting for any record of
marriage.
"There's nothing here to
show."
"Of course not. How could there
be anything there better than
just 'Margery Lee/ and that
eloquent date?"
She drew close to him and an
unexpected lump came into his
throat as her yellow hair brushed
his cheek.
"You see how she was, don't
you, Harry?"
"I see," he agreed
gently. "I see through your precious eyes. You're
beautiful now, so I know she must
have been."
Silent and close they stood, and
he could feel her shoulders trem-
bling a little. An ambling breeze
swept up the hill and stirred the
brim of her floppidy hat.
' Let's go down there!"
She was pointing to a flat
stretch on the other side of the hill where
along the green turf were a
thousand grayish-white crosses stretch-
ing in endless, ordered rows like
the stacked arms of a bat-
talion.
"Those are the Confederate
dead," said Sally Carrol simply.
They walked along and read the
inscriptions, always only a name
and a date, sometimes quite
indecipherable.
"The last row is the saddest
see, 'way over there. Every cross
has just a date on it, and the
word 'Unknown.' "
She looked at him and her eyes
brimmed with tears.
"I can't tell you how real
it is to me, darling if you don't know."
"How you feel about it is
beautiful to me."
"No, no, it's not me, it's
them that old time that I've tried to
have live in me. These were just
men, unimportant evidently or they
wouldn't have been 'unknown' ;
but they died for the most beautiful
thing in the world the dead
South. You see," she continued, her
voice still husky, her eyes
glistening with tears, "people have these
dreams they fasten onto things,
and I've always grown up with that
dream. It was so easy because it
was all dead and there weren't any
disillusions comin' to me. I've
tried in a way to live up to those past
standards of noblesse oblige
there's just the last remnants of it,
you know, like the roses of an
old garden dying all round us streaks
of strange courtliness and
chivalry in some of these boys an' stories
I used to hear from a Confederate
soldier who lived next door, and a
few old darkies. Oh, Harry, there
was something, there was some-
thing! I couldn't ever make you
understand, but it was there."
"I understand," he
assured her again quietly.
Sally Carrol smiled and dried her
eyes on the tip of a handker-
chief protruding from his breast
pocket.
"You don't feel depressed,
do you, lover? Even when I cry I'm
happy here, and I get a sort of
strength from it."
Hand in hand they turned and
walked slowly away. Finding soft
grass she drew him down to a seat
beside her with their backs against
the remnants of a low broken
wall. *
"Wish those three old women
would clear out," he complained. "I
want to kiss you, Sally Carrol."
"Me, too."
They waited impatiently for the
three bent figures to move off,
and then she kissed him until the
sky seemed to fade out and all her
smiles and tears to vanish in an
ecstasy of eternal seconds.
Afterward they walked slowly back
together, while on the corners
twilight played at somnolent
black-and-white checkers with the end
of day.
"You'll be up about mid-
January," he said, "and youVe got to stay
a month at least. It'll be slick.
There's a winter carnival on, and if
you've never really seen snow
it'll be like fairy-land to you. There'll
be skating and skiing and
tobogganing and sleigh-riding, and all
sorts of torchlight parades on
snow-shoes. They haven't had one for
years, so they're going to make
it a knock-out."
"Will I be cold,
Harry?" she asked suddenly.
"You certainly won't. You
may freeze your nose, but you won't
be shivery cold. It's hard and
dry, you know."
"I guess I'm a summer child.
I don't like any cold I've ever seen."
She broke off and they were both
silent for a minute.
"Sally Carrol," he said
very slowly, "what do you say to
March?"
"I say I love you."
"March?"
"March, Harry."
Ill
All night in the Pullman it was
very cold. She rang for the porter
to ask for another blanket, and
when he couldn't give her one she
tried vainly, by squeezing down
into the bottom of her berth and
doubling back the bedclothes, to
snatch a few hours' sleep. She
wanted to look her best in the
morning.
She rose at six and sliding
uncomfortably into her clothes stumbled
up to the diner for a cup of coffee.
The snow had filtered into the
vestibules and covered the floor
with a slippery coating. It was in-
triguing, this cold, it crept in
everywhere. Her breath was quite visible
and she blew into the air with a
nai've enjoyment. Seated in the
diner she stared out the window
at white hills and valleys and
scattered pines whose every
branch was a green platter for a cold
feast of snow. Sometimes a
solitary farmhouse would fly by, ugly
and bleak and lone on the white
waste ; and with each one she had
an instant of chill compassion
for the souls shut in there waiting
for spring.
As she left the diner and swayed
back into the Pullman she experi-
enced a surging rush of energy
and wondered if she was feeling the
bracing air of which Harry had
spoken. This was the North, the
North her land now!
"Then blow, ye winds,
heigho!
A-roving I will go,"
she chanted exultantly to
herself.
"What's 'at?" inquired
the porter politely.
"I said: 'Brush me
off.'"
The long wires of the
telegraph-poles doubled ; two tracks ran up
beside the train three four; came
a succession of white-roofed
houses, a glimpse of a
trolley-car with frosted windows, streets
more streets the city.
She stood for a dazed moment in
the frosty station before she saw
three fur-bundled figures
descending upon her.
"There she is!"
"Oh, Sally Carrol!"
Sally Carrol dropped her bag.
"Hi!"
A faintly familiar icy-cold face
kissed her, and then she was in a
group of faces all apparently
emitting great clouds of heavy smoke ;
she was shaking hands. There were
Gordon, a short, eager man of
thirty who looked like an amateur
knocked-about model for Harry,
and his wife, Myra, a listless
lady with flaxen hair under a fur auto-
mobile cap. Almost immediately
Sally Carrol thought of her as
vaguely Scandinavian. A cheerful
chauffeur adopted her bag, and
amid ricochets of half-phrases,
exclamations, and perfunctory list-
less "my dears" from
Myra, they swept each other from the
station.
Then they were in a sedan bound
through a crooked succession of
snowy streets where dozens of
little boys were hitching sleds behind
grocery wagons and automobiles.
"Oh," cried Sally
Carrol, "I want to do that! Can we, Harry?"
"That's for kids. But we
might "
"It looks like such a circus!"
she said regretfully.
Home was a rambling frame house
set on a white lap of snow, and
there she met a big, gray-haired
man of whom she approved, and a
lady who was like an egg, and who
kissed her these were Harry's
parents. There was a breathless indescribable
hour crammed full of
half-sentences, hot water, bacon
and eggs and confusion ; and after
that she was alone with Harry in
the library, asking him if she dared
smoke.
It was a large room with a
Madonna over the fireplace and rows
upon rows of books in covers of
light gold and dark gold and shiny
red. All the chairs had little
lace squares where one's head should
rest, the couch was just
comfortable, the books looked as if they
had been read some and Sally
Carrol had an instantaneous vision
of the battered old library at
home, with her father's huge medical
books, and the oil-paintings of
her three great-uncles, and the old
couch that had been mended up for
forty-five years and was still
luxurious to dream in. This room
struck her as being neither attrac-
tive nor particularly otherwise.
It was simply a room with a lot of
fairly expensive things in it
that all looked about fifteen years old.
"What do you think of it up
here?" demanded Harry eagerly.
"Does it surprise you? Is it
what you expected, I mean?"
"You are, Harry," she
said quietly, and reached out her arms to
him.
But after a brief kiss he seemed
anxious to extort enthusiasm from
her.
"The town, I mean. Do you
like it? Can you feel the pep in the
air?"
"Oh, Harry," she
laughed, "you'll have to give me time. You can't
just fling questions at me."
She puffed at her cigarette with
a sigh of contentment.
"One thing I want to ask
you," he began rather apologetically;
"you Southerners put quite
an emphasis on family, and all that
not that it isn't quite all
right, but you'll find it a little different
here. I mean you'll notice a lot
of things that'll seem to you sort of
vulgar display at first, Sally
Carrol ; but just remember that this is
a three-generation town.
Everybody has a father, and about half
of us have grandfathers. Back of
that we don't go."
"Of course," she
murmured.
"Our grandfathers, you see,
founded the place, and a lot of them
had to take some pretty queer
jobs while they were doing the found-
ing. For instance, there's one
woman who at present is about the
social model for the town ; well,
her father was the first public ash
man things like that."
"Why," said Sally
Carrol, puzzled, "did you s'pose I was goin' to
make remarks about people?"
"Not at all,"
interrupted Harry; "and I'm not apologizing for any
one either. It's just that well,
a Southern girl came up here last
summer and said some unfortunate
things, and oh, I just thbught
I'd tell you."
Sally Carrol felt suddenly
indignant as though she had been unjustly spanked but Harry evidently
considered the subject closed,
for he went on with a great surge
of enthusiasm.
"It's carnival time, you
know. First in ten years. And there's an
ice palace they're building now
that's the first they've had since
eighty-five. Built out of blocks
of the clearest ice they could find on
a tremendous scale."
She rose and walking to the
window pushed aside the heavy
Turkish portieres and looked out.
"Oh ! " she cried
suddenly. "There's two little boys makin' a snow
man! Harry, do you reckon I can
go out an' help 'em?"
"You dream ! Come here and
kiss me."
She left the window rather
reluctantly.
"I don't guess this is a
very kissable climate, is it? I mean, it
makes you so you don't want to
sit round, doesn't it?"
"We're not going to. I've
got a vacation for the first week you're
here, and there's a dinner-dance
to-night."
"Oh, Harry," she
confessed, subsiding in a heap, half in his lap,
half in the pillows, "I sure
do feel confused. I haven't got an idea
whether I'll like it or not, an'
I don't know what people expect, or
anythin'. You'll have to tell me,
honey."
"I'll tell you," he
said softly, "if you'll just tell me you're glad to
be here."
"Glad just awful glad !
" she whispered, insinuating herself into
his arms in her own peculiar way.
"Where you are is home for me,
Harry."
And as she said this she had the feeling
for almost the first time in
her life that she was acting a
part.
That night, amid the gleaming
candles of a dinner-party, where
the men seemed to do most of the
talking while the girls sat in a
haughty and expensive aloofness,
even Harry's presence on her left
failed to make her feel at home.
"They're a good-looking
crowd, don't you think?" he demanded.
"Just look round. There's
Spud Hubbard, tackle at Princeton last
year, and Junie Morton he and the
red-haired fellow next to him
were both Yale hockey captains ;
Junie was in my class. Why, the
best athletes in the world come
from these States round here. This is
a man's country, I tell you. Look
at John J. Fishburn ! "
"Who's he?" asked Sally
Carrol innocently.
"Don't you know?"
"I've heard the name."
"Greatest wheat man in the
Northwest, and one of the greatest
financiers in the country."
She turned suddenly to a voice on
her right.
"I guess they forgot to introduce
us. My name's Roger Patton."
"My name is Sally Carrol
Happer," she said graciously.
"Yes, I know. Harry told me
you were coming."
"You a relative?"
"No, I'm a professor."
"Oh," she laughed.
"At the university. You're
from the South, aren't you?"
"Yes ; Tarleton,
Georgia."
She liked him immediately a
reddish-brown mustache under
watery blue eyes that had
something in them that these other eyes
lacked, some quality of
appreciation. They exchanged stray sen-
tences through dinner, and she
made up her mind to see him again.
After coffee she was introduced
to numerous good-looking young
men who danced with conscious
precision and seemed to take it for
granted that she wanted to talk
about nothing except Harry.
"Heavens," she thought,
"they talk as if my being engaged made
me older than they are as if I'd
tell their mothers on them!"
In the South an engaged girl,
even a young married woman, ex-
pected the same amount of
half-affectionate badinage and flattery
that would be accorded a
debutante, but here all that seemed banned.
One young man, after getting well
started on the subject of Sally
Carrol's eyes, and how they had
allured him ever since she entered
the room, went into a violent
confusion when he found she was visit-
ing the Bellamys was Harry's
fiancee. He seemed to feel as though
he had made some risque and inexcusable
blunder, became imme-
diately formal, and left her at
the first opportunity.
She was rather glad when Roger
Patton cut in on her and suggested
that they sit out a while.
"Well," he inquired,
blinking cheerily, "how's Carmen from the
South?"
"Mighty fine. How's how's
Dangerous Dan McGrew? Sorry, but
he's the only Northerner I know
much about."
He seemed to enjoy that.
"Of course," he
confessed, "as a professor of literature I'm not
supposed to have read Dangerous
Dan McGrew."
"Are you a native?"
“No, I'm a Philadelphian.
Imported from Harvard to teach French.
But I've been here ten
years."
"Nine years, three hundred
an' sixty-four days longer than me."
"Like it here?"
"Uh-huh. Sure do!"
"Really?"
"Well, why not? Don't I look
as if I were bavin' a good time?"
"I saw you look out the
window a minute ago and shiver."
"Just my imagination,"
laughed Sally Carrol. "I'm used to havin'
everythin' quiet outside, an'
sometimes I look out an' see a flurry of
snow, an' it's just as if
somethin' dead was movin'."
He nodded appreciatively.
"Ever been North
before?"
"Spent two Julys in
Asheville, North Carolina."
"Nice-looking crowd, aren't
they?" suggested Patton, indicating
the swirling floor.
Sally Carrol started. This had
been Harry's remark.
"Sure are ! They're
canine."
"What?"
She flushed.
"I'm sorry; that sounded
worse than I meant it. You see I always
think of people as feline or
canine, irrespective of sex."
"Which are you?"
"I'm feline. So are you. So
are most Southern men an' most of
these girls here."
"What's Harry?"
"Harry's canine distinctly.
All the men I've met to-night seem to be
canine."
"What does 'canine' imply? A
certain conscious masculinity as
opposed to subtlety?"
"Reckon so. I never analyzed
it only I just look at people an'
say 'canine' or 'feline' right
off. It's right absurd, I guess."
"Not at all. I'm interested.
I used to have a theory about these
people. I think they're freezing
up."
"What?"
"I think they're growing
like Swedes Ibsenesque, you know. Very
gradually getting gloomy and
melancholy. It's these long winters.
Ever read any Ibsen?"
She shook her head.
"Well, you find in his
characters a certain brooding rigidity.
They're righteous, narrow, and
cheerless, without infinite possibilities
for great sorrow or joy."
"Without smiles or
tears?"
"Exactly. That's my theory.
You see there are thousands of Swedes
up here. They come, I imagine,
because the climate is very much like
their own, and there's been a
gradual mingling. There're probably
not half a dozen here to-night,
but we've had four Swedish gover-
nors. Am I boring you?"
"I'm mighty
interested."
"Your future sister-in-law
is half Swedish. Personally I like her,
but my theory is that Swedes
react rather badly on us as a whole.
Scandinavians, you know, have the
largest suicide rate in the world."
"Why do you live here if
it's so depressing?"
"Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm
pretty well cloistered, and I suppose
books mean more than people to me
anyway."
"But writers all speak about
the South being tragic. You know
Spanish seiioritas, black hair
and daggers an' haunting music."
He shook his head.
"No, the Northern races are
the tragic races they don't indulge
in the cheering luxury of
tears."
Sally Carrol thought of her
graveyard. She supposed that that was
vaguely what she had meant when
she said it didn't depress her.
"The Italians are about the
gayest people in the world but it's a
dull subject," he broke off.
"Anyway, I want to tell you you're mar-
rying a pretty fine man."
Sally Carrol was moved by an
impulse of confidence.
"I know. I'm the sort of
person who wants to be taken care of
after a certain point, and I feel
sure I will be."
"Shall we dance? You
know," he continued as they rose, "it's
encouraging to find a girl who
knows what she's marrying for. Nine-
tenths of them think of it as a
sort of walking into a moving-picture
sunset."
She laughed, and liked him
immensely.
Two hours later on the way home
she nestled near Harry in the
back seat.
"Oh, Harry," she
whispered, "it's so co-old!"
"But it's warm in here,
darling girl."
"But outside it's cold ; and
oh, that howling wind ! "
She buried her face deep in his
fur coat and trembled involuntarily
as his cold lips kissed the tip
of her ear.
IV
The first week of her visit
passed in a whirl. She had her promised
toboggan-ride at the back of an
automobile through a chill January
twilight. Swathed in furs she put
in a morning tobogganing on the
country-club hill; even tried
skiing, to sail through the air for a
glorious moment and then land in
a tangled laughing bundle on a soft
snowdrift. She liked all the
winter sports, except an afternoon spent
snow-shoeing over a glaring plain
under pale yellow sunshine, but she
soon realized that these things
were for children that she was being
humored and that the enjoyment
round her was only a reflection of
her own.
At first the Bellamy family
puzzled her. The men were reliable
and she liked them; to Mr.
Bellamy especially, with his iron-gray
hair and energetic dignity, she
took an immediate fancy, once she
found that he was born in
Kentucky ; this made of him a link between
the old life and the new. But
toward the women she felt a definite
hostility. Myra, her future
sister-in-law, seemed the essence of spirit-
less conventionality. Her
conversation was so utterly devoid of per-
sonality that Sally Carrol, who
came from a country where a certain
amount of charm and assurance
could be taken for granted in the
women, was inclined to despise
her.
"If those women aren't
beautiful," she thought, "they're nothing.
They just fade out when you look
at them. They're glorified domes-
tics. Men are the centre of every
mixed group."
Lastly there was Mrs. Bellamy,
whom Sally Carrol detested. The
first day's impression of an egg
had been confirmed an egg with a
cracked, veiny voice and such an
ungracious dumpiness of carriage
that Sally Carrol felt that if
she once fell she would surely scramble.
In addition, Mrs. Bellamy seemed
to typify the town in being in-
nately hostile to strangers. She
called Sally Carrol "Sally," and
could not be persuaded that the
double name was anything more
than a tedious ridiculous
nickname. To Sally Carrol this shortening
of her name was like presenting
her to the public half clothed. She
loved "Sally Carrol";
she loathed "Sally." She knew also that
Harry's mother disapproved of her
bobbed hair ; and she had never
dared smoke down-stairs after
that first day when Mrs. Bellamy had
come into the library sniffing
violently.
Of all the men she met she
preferred Roger Patton, who was a
frequent visitor at the house. He
never again alluded to the Ibsen-
esque tendency of the populace,
but when he came in one day and
found her curled upon the sofa
bent over "Peer Gynt" he laughed
and told her to forget what he'd
said that it was all rot.
And then one afternoon in her
second week she and Harry hovered
on the edge of a dangerously
steep quarrel. She considered that he
precipitated it entirely, though
the Serbia in the case was an un-
known man who had not had his
trousers pressed.
They had been walking homeward
between mounds of high-piled
snow and under a sun which Sally
Carrol scarcely recognized. They
passed a little girl done up in
gray wool until she resembled a small
Teddy bear, and Sally Carrol
could not resist a gasp of maternal
appreciation.
"Look! Harry!"
"What?"
"That little girl did you
see her face?"
"Yes, why?"
"It was red as a little
strawberry. Oh, she was cute ! "
"Why, your own face is
almost as red as that already! Every-
body^ healthy here. We're out in
the cold as soon as we're old
enough to walk. Wonderful climate
! "
She looked at him and had to
agree. He was mighty healthy-look-
ing ; so was his brother. And she
had noticed the new red in her own
cheeks that very morning.
Suddenly their glances were
caught and held, and they stared for
a moment at the street-corner
ahead of them. A man was standing
there, his knees bent, his eyes
gazing upward with a tense expression
as though he were about to make a
leap toward the chilly sky. And
then they both exploded into a
shout of laughter, for coming closer
they discovered it had been a
ludicrous momentary illusion produced
by the extreme bagginess of the
man's trousers.
"Reckon that's one on
us," she laughed.
"He must be a Southerner,
judging by those trousers," suggested
Harry mischievously.
"Why, Harry!"
Her surprised look must have
irritated him.
"Those damn Southerners !
"
Sally Carrol's eyes flashed.
"Don't call 'em that!"
"I'm sorry, dear," said
Harry, malignantly apologetic, "but you
know what I think of them.
They're sort of sort of degenerates
not at all like the old
Southerners. They've lived so long down
there with all the colored people
that they've gotten lazy and shift-
less."
"Hush your mouth, Harry I
" she cried angrily. "They're not ! They
may be lazy anybody would be in
that climate but they're my
best friends, an' I don't want to
hear 'em criticised in any such
aweepin' way. Some of J em are
the finest men in the world."
"Oh, I know. They're all
right when they come North to college,
but of all the hangdog,
ill-dressed, slovenly lot I ever saw, a bunch
of small-town Southerners are the
worst ! "
Sally Carrol was clinching her
gloved hands and biting her lip
furiously.
"Why," continued Harry,
"there was one in my class at New
Haven, and we all thought that at
last we'd found the true type of
Southern aristocrat, but it
turned out that he wasn't an aristocrat
at all just the son of a Northern
carpetbagger, who owned about
all the cotton round
Mobile."
"A Southerner wouldn't talk
the way you're talking now," she said
evenly.
"They haven't the energy I
"
"Or the somethin'
else."
"I'm sorry, Sally Carrol,
but I've heard you say yourself that
you'd never marry "
"That's quite different. I
told you I wouldn't want to tie my life
to any of the boys that are round
Tarleton now, but I never made
any sweepin' generalities."
They walked along in silence.
"I probably spread it on a
bit thick, Sally Carrol. I'm sorry."
She nodded but made no answer.
Five minutes later as they stood
in the hallway she suddenly threw
her arms round him.
"Oh, Harry," she cried,
her eyes brimming with tears, "let's get
married next week. I'm afraid of
having fusses like that. I'm afraid,
Harry. It wouldn't be that way if
we were married."
But Harry, being in the wrong,
was still irritated.
"That'd be idiotic. We
decided on March."
The tears in Sally Carrol's eyes faded
; her expression hardened
slightly.
"Very well I suppose I
shouldn't have said that."
Harry melted.
"Dear little nut!" he
cried. "Come and kiss me and let's forget."
That very night at the end of a
vaudeville performance the orches-
tra played "Dixie" and
Sally Carrol felt something stronger and
more enduring than her tears and
smiles of the day brim up inside
her. She leaned forward gripping
the arms of her chair until her
face grew crimson.
"Sort of get you,
dear?" whispered Harry.
But she did not hear him. To the
spirited throb of the violins and
the inspiring beat of the kettledrums
her own old ghosts were march-
ing by and on into the darkness,
and as fifes whistled and sighed
in the low encore they seemed so
nearly out of sight that she could
have waved good-by.
"Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie !
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie ! "
It was a particularly cold night.
A sudden thaw had nearly cleared
the streets the day before, but
now they were traversed again with a
powdery wraith of loose snow that
travelled in wavy lines before the
feet of the wind, and filled the
lower air with a fine-particled mist.
There was no sky only a dark,
ominous tent that draped in the
tops of the streets and was in
reality a vast approaching army of
snowflakes while over it all,
chilling away the comfort from the
brown-and-green glow of lighted
windows and muffling the steady
trot of the horse pulling their
sleigh, interminably washed the north
wind. It was a dismal town after
all, she thought dismal.
Sometimes at night it had seemed
to her as though no one lived
here they had all gone long ago
leaving lighted houses to be cov-
ered in time by tombing heaps of
sleet. Oh, if there should be snow
on her grave ! To be beneath
great piles of it all winter long, where
even her headstone would be a
light shadow against light shadows.
Her gravea grave that should be
flower-strewn and washed with
sun and rain.
She thought again of those
isolated country houses that her train
had passed, and of the life there
the long winter through the cease-
less glare through the windows,
the crust forming on the soft drifts
of snow, finally the slow,
cheerless melting, and the harsh spring of
which Roger Patton had told her.
Her spring to lose it forever
with its lilacs and the lazy
sweetness it stirred in her heart. She was
laying away that spring afterward
she would lay away that sweet-
ness.
With a gradual insistence the
storm broke. Sally Carrol felt a film
of flakes melt quickly on her
eyelashes, and Harry reached over a
furry arm and drew down her
complicated flannel cap. Then the
small flakes came in
skirmish-line, and the horse bent his neck
patiently as a transparency of
white appeared momentarily on his
coat.
"Oh, he's cold, Harry,"
she said quickly.
"Who? The horse? Oh, no, he
isn't. He likes it!"
After another ten minutes they
turned a corner and came in sight
of their destination. On a tall
hill outlined in vivid glaring green
against the wintry sky stood the
ice palace. It was three stories in
the air, with battlements and
embrasures and narrow icicled windows,
and the innumerable electric
lights inside made a gorgeous trans-
parency of the great central
hall. Sally Carrol clutched Harry's hand
under the fur robe.
"It's beautiful!" he
cried excitedly. "My golly, it's beautiful,
isn't it ! They haven't had one
here since eighty-five ! "
Somehow the notion of there not
having been one since eighty-five
oppressed her. Ice was a ghost,
and this mansion of it was surely peo-
pled by those shades of the
eighties, with pale faces and blurred
snow-filled hair.
"Come on, dear," said
Harry.
She followed him out of the
sleigh and waited while he hitched the
horse. A party of four Gordon,
Myra, Roger Patton, and another
girl drew up beside them with a
mighty jingle of bells. There were
quite a crowd already, bundled in
fur or sheepskin, shouting and
calling to each other as they
moved through the snow, which was
now so thick that people could
scarcely be distinguished a few yards
away.
"It's a hundred and seventy
feet tall," Harry was saying to a
muffled figure beside him as they
trudged toward the entrance;
"covers six thousand square
yards."
She caught snatches of
conversation: "One main hall" "walls
twenty to forty inches
thick" "and the ice cave has almost a mile
of ""this Canuck who
built it "
They found their way inside, and
dazed by the magic of the great
crystal walls Sally Carrol found
herself repeating over and over
two lines from "Kubla
Khan":
"It was a miracle of rare
device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves
of ice ! "
In the great glittering cavern
with the dark shut out she took a
seat on a wooden bench, and the
evening's oppression lifted. Harry
was right it was beautiful ; and
her gaze travelled the smooth sur-
face of the walls, the blocks for
which had been selected for their
purity and clearness to obtain
this opalescent, translucent effect.
"Look ! Here we go oh, boy 1
" cried Harry.
A band in
a far corner struck up "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here ! "
which echoed over to them in wild
muddled acoustics, and then the
lights suddenly went out ;
silence seemed to flow down the icy sides
and sweep over them. Sally Carrol
could still see her white breath
in the darkness, and a dim row of
pale faces over on the other side.
The music eased to a sighing
complaint, and from outside drifted
in the full-throated resonant
chant of the marching clubs. It grew
louder like some paean of a
viking tribe traversing an ancient wild ; it
swelled they were coming nearer ;
then a row of torches appeared,
and another and another, and
keeping time with their moccasined
feet a long column of gray-mackinawed
figures swept in, snowshoes
slung at their shoulders, torches
soaring and flickering as their voices
rose along the great walls.
The gray column ended and another
followed, the light streaming
luridly this time over red
toboggan caps and flaming crimson
mackinaws, and as they entered
they took up the refrain ; then came
a long platoon of blue and white,
of green, of white, of brown and
yellow.
"Those white ones are the
Wacouta Club," whispered Harry
eagerly. "Those are the men
youVe met round at dances."
The volume of the voices grew ;
the great cavern was a phantas-
magoria of torches waving in
great banks of fire, of colors and the
rhythm of soft-leather steps. The
leading column turned and halted,
platoon deployed in front of
platoon until the whole procession
made a solid flag of flame, and
then from thousands of voices burst
a mighty shout that filled the
air like a crash of thunder, and sent
the torches wavering. It was magnificent,
it was tremendous! To
Sally Carrol it was the North
offering sacrifice on some mighty altar
to the gray pagan God of Snow. As
the shout died the band struck up
again and there came more
singing, and then long reverberating
cheers by each club. She sat very
quiet listening while the staccato
cries rent the stillness ; and
then she started, for there was a volley
of explosion, and great clouds of
smoke went up here and there
through the cavern the
flash-light photographers at work and the
council was over. With the band
at their head the clubs formed
in column once more, took up
their chant, and began to march
out.
"Come on ! " shouted
Harry. "We want to see the labyrinths down-
stairs before they turn the
lights off ! "
They all rose and started toward
the chute Harry and Sally
Carrol in the lead, her little
mitten buried in his big fur gantlet. At
the bottom of the chute was a
long empty room of ice, with the ceil-
ing so low that they had to stoop
and their hands were parted. Be-
fore she realized what he
intended Harry had darted down one of
the half-dozen glittering
passages that opened into the room and was
only a vague receding blot
against the green shimmer.
"Harry! "she called.
"Come on ! " he cried
back.
She looked round the empty
chamber ; the rest of the party had
evidently decided to go home,
were already outside somewhere in the
blundering snow. She hesitated
and then darted in after Harry.
"Harry!" she shouted.
She had reached a turning-point
thirty feet down; she heard a
faint muffled answer far to the
left, and with a touch of panic fled
toward it. She passed another
turning, two more yawning alleys.
"Harry!"
No answer. She started to run
straight forward, and then turned
like lightning and sped back the
way she had come, enveloped in a
sudden icy terror.
She reached a turn was it here ?
took the left and came to what
should have been the outlet into
the long, low room, but it was only
another glittering passage with
darkness at the end. She called again
but the walls gave back a flat,
lifeless echo with no reverberations.
Retracing her steps she turned
another corner, this time following
a wide passage. It was like the
green lane between the parted waters
of the Red Sea, like a damp vault
connecting empty tombs.
She slipped a little now as she
walked, for ice had formed ou tif
bottom of her overshoes ; she had
to run her gloves along the half-
slippery, half-sticky walls to
keep her balance.
"Harry!"
Still no answer. The sound she
made bounced mockingly down to
the end of the passage.
Then on an instant the lights
went out, and she was in complete
darkness. She gave a small,
frightened cry, and sank down into a
cold little heap on the ice. She
felt her left knee do something as she
fell, but she scarcely noticed it
as some deep terror far greater than
any fear of being lost settled
upon her. She was alone with this
presence that came out of the
North, the dreary loneliness that rose
from ice-bound whalers in the
Arctic seas, from smokeless, trackless
wastes where were strewn the
whitened bones of adventure. It was
an icy breath of death ; it was
rolling down low across the land to
clutch at her.
With a furious, despairing energy
she rose again and started
blindly down the darkness. She
must get out. She might be lost in
here for days, freeze to death
and lie embedded in the ice like corpses
she had read of, kept perfectly
preserved until the melting of a
glacier. Harry probably thought
she had left with the others he had
gone by now ; no one would know
until late next day. She reached
pitifully for the wall. Forty
inches thick, they had said forty inches
thick !
"Oh!"
On both sides of her along the
walls she felt things creeping, damp
souls that haunted this palace,
this town, this North.
"Oh, send somebody send
somebody ! " she cried aloud.
Clark Darrow he would understand
; or Joe Ewing ; she couldn't
be left here to wander forever to
be frozen, heart, body, and soul.
This her this Sally Carrol ! Why,
she was a happy thing. She was
a happy little girl. She liked
warmth and summer and Dixie. These
things were foreign foreign.
"You're not crying,"
something said aloud. "You'll never cry any
more. Your tears would just
freeze ; all tears freeze up here ! "
She sprawled full length on the
ice.
"Oh, God .'"she
faltered.
A long single file of minutes
went by, and with a great weariness
she felt her eyes closing. Then
some one seemed to sit down near her
and take her face in warm, soft
hands. She looked up gratefully.
"Why, it's Margery
Lee," she crooned softly to herself. "I knew
you'd come." It really was
Margery Lee, and she was just as Sally
Carrol had known she would be,
with a young, white brow, and
wide, welcoming eyes, and a
hoop-skirt of some soft material that
was quite comforting to rest on.
"Margery Lee."
It was getting darker now and
darker all those tombstones ought
to be repainted, sure enough,
only that would spoil 'em, of course.
Still, you ought to be able to
see 'em.
Then after a succession of
moments that went fast and then slow,
but seemed to be ultimately
resolving themselves into a multitude
of blurred rays converging toward
a pale-yellow sun, she heard a
great cracking noise break her
new-found stillness.
It was the sun, it was a light ;
a torch, and a torch beyond that,
and another one, and voices ; a
face took flesh below the torch, heavy
-arms raised her, and she felt
something on her cheek it felt wet.
Some one had seized her and was
rubbing her face with snow. How
ridiculous with snow 1
"Sally Carrol ! Sally Carrol
! "
It was Dangerous Dan McGrew ; and
two other faces she didn't
know.
"Child, child ! We've been
looking for you two hours ! Harry's half-
trazy ! "
Things came rushing back into
place the singing, the torches, the
great shout of the marching
clubs. She squirmed in Patton's arms
and gave a long low cry.
"Oh, I want to get out of
here! I'm going back home. Take me
home" her voice rose to a
scream that sent a chill to Harry's heart
as he came racing down the next
passage "to-morrow ! " she cried
with delirious, unrestrained
passion "To-morrow ! To-morrow !
To-morrow ! "
VI
The wealth of golden sunlight
poured a quite enervating yet
oddly comforting heat over the
house where day long it faced the
dusty stretch of road. Two birds
were making a great to-do in a cool
spot found among the branches of
a tree next door, and down the
street a colored woman was
announcing herself melodiously as a pur-
veyor of strawberries. It was
April afternoon.
Sally Carrol Happer, resting her
chin on her arm, and her arm on
an old window-seat gazed sleepily
down over the spangled dust
whence the heat waves were rising
for the first time this spring. She
was watching a very ancient Ford
turn a perilous corner .and rattle
and groan to a jolting stop at
the end of the walk. She made no
sound, and in a minute a strident
familiar whistle rent the air. Sally
Carrol smiled and blinked.
"Good mawninV
A head appeared tortuously from
under the car-top below.
"Tain't mawnin', Sally
Carrol."
"Sure enough!" she said
in affected surprise. "I guess maybe not."
"What you doin'?"
"Eatin' green peach. 'Spect
to die any minute."
Clark twisted himself a last
impossible notch to get a view of her
face.
"Water's warm as a kettla
steam, Sally Carrol. Wanta go swim-
min'?"
'Hate to move," sighed Sally
Carrol lazily, "but I reckon so."