So Big (34 page)

“Partly,” Dallas had replied, amiably. “It's a nice pose though, don't you think?”

What are you going to do with a girl like that!

Here was the woman who could hold him entirely, and who never held out a finger to hold him. He tore at the smooth wall of her indifference, though he only cut and bruised his own hands in doing it.

“Is it because I'm a successful business man that you don't like me?”

“But I do like you.”

“That you don't find me attractive, then.”

“But I think you're an awfully attractive man. Dangerous, that's wot.”

“Oh, don't be the wide-eyed ingênue. You know damned well what I mean. You've got me and you don't want me. If I had been a successful architect instead of a successful business man would that have made any difference?” He was thinking of what his mother had said just a few years back, that night when they had talked at her bedside. “Is that it? He's got to be an artist, I suppose, to interest you.”

“Good Lord, no! Some day I'll probably marry a horny-handed son of toil, and if I do it'll be the horny hands that will win me. If you want to know, I like 'em with their scars on them. There's something about a man who has fought for it—I don't know what it is—a look in his eye—the feel of his hand. He needn't have been successful—though he probably would be. I don't know. I'm not very good at this analysis stuff. I only know he—well, you haven't a mark on you. Not a mark. You quit being an architect, or whatever it was, because architecture was an uphill disheartening job at the time. I don't say that you should have kept on. For all I know you were a bum architect. But if you had kept on—if you had loved it enough to keep on—fighting, and struggling, and sticking it out—why, that fight would show in your face today—in your eyes and your jaw and your hands and in your way of standing and walking and sitting and talking. Listen. I'm not criticizing you. But you're all smooth. I like 'em bumpy. That sounds terrible. It isn't what I mean at all. It isn't——”

“Oh, never mind,” Dirk said, wearily. “I think I know what you mean.” He sat looking down at his hands—his fine strong unscarred hands. Suddenly and unreasonably he thought of another pair of hands—his mother's—with the knuckles enlarged, the skin broken—expressive—her life written on them. Scars. She had them. “Listen, Dallas. If I thought—I'd go back to Hollis & Sprague's and begin all over again at forty a week if I thought you'd——”

“Don't.”

General Goguet and Roelf Pool had been in Chicago one night and part
of a day. Dirk had not met them—was to meet them at Paula's dinner that evening. He was curious about Pool but not particularly interested in the warrior. Restless, unhappy, wanting to see Dallas (he admitted it, bitterly), he dropped into her studio at an unaccustomed hour almost immediately after lunch and heard gay voices and laughter. Why couldn't she work alone once in a while without that rabble around her!

Dallas in a grimy smock and the scuffed kid slippers was entertaining two truants from Chicago society—General Emile Goguet and Roelf Pool. They seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. She introduced Dirk as casually as though their presence were a natural and expected thing—which it was. She had never mentioned them to him. Yet now: “This is Dirk DeJong—General Emile Goguet. We were campaigners together in France. Roelf Pool. So were we, weren't we, Roelf?”

General Emile Goguet bowed formally, but his eyes were twinkling. He appeared to be having a very good time. Roelf Pool's dark face had lighted up with such a glow of surprise and pleasure as to transform it. He strode over to Dirk, clasped his hand. “Dirk DeJong! Not—why, say, don't you know me? I'm Roelf Pool!”

“I ought to know you,” said Dirk.

“Oh, but I mean I'm—I knew you when you were a kid. You're Selina's Dirk. Aren't you? My Selina. I'm driving out to see her this afternoon. She's one of my reasons for being here. Why, I'm——” He was laughing, talking excitedly, like a boy. Dallas, all agrin, was enjoying it immensely.

“They've run away,” she explained to Dirk, “from the elaborate programme that was arranged for them this afternoon. I don't know where the French got their reputation for being polite. The General is a perfect boor, aren't you? And scared to death of women. He's the only French general in captivity who ever took the trouble to learn English.”

General Goguet nodded violently and roared. “And you?” he said to Dirk in his careful and perfect English. “You, too, are an artist?”

“No,” Dirk said, “not an artist.”

“What, then?”

“Why—uh—bonds. That is, the banking business. Bonds.”

“Ah, yes,” said General Goguet, politely. “Bonds. A very good thing, bonds. We French are very fond of them. We have great respect for American bonds, we French.” He nodded and twinkled and turned away to Dallas.

“We're all going” announced Dallas, and made a dash for the stuffy little bedroom off the studio.

Well, this was a bit too informal. “Going where?” inquired Dirk. The General, too, appeared bewildered.

Roelf explained, delightedly. “It's a plot. We're all going to drive out to your mother's. You'll go, won't you? You simply must.”

“Go?” now put in General Goguet. “Where is it that we go? I thought we stayed here, quietly. It is quiet here, and no reception committees.” His tone was wistful.

Roelf attempted to make it clear. “Mr. DeJong's mother is a farmer. You remember I told you all about her in the ship coming over. She was wonderful to me when I was a kid. She was the first person to tell me what beauty was—is. She's magnificent. She raises vegetables.”

“Ah! A farm! But yes! I, too, am a farmer. Well!” He shook Dirk's hand again. He appeared now for the first time to find him interesting.

“Of course I'll go. Does Mother know you're coming? She has been hoping she'd see you but she thought you'd grown so grand——”

“Wait until I tell her about the day I landed in Paris with five francs in my pocket. No, she doesn't know we're coming, but she'll be there, won't she? I've a feeling she'll be there, exactly the same. She will, won't she?”

“She'll be there.” It was early spring; the busiest of seasons on the farm.

Dallas emerged in greatcoat and a new spring hat. She waved a hand to the faithful Gilda Hanan. “Tell any one who inquires for me that I've felt the call of spring. And if the boy comes for that clay pack picture tell him to-morrow was the day.”

They were down the stairs and off in the powerful car that seemed to be at the visitors' disposal. Through the Loop, up Michigan Avenue, into the south side. Chicago, often lowering and gray in April, was wearing gold and blue to-day. The air was sharp but beneath the brusqueness of it was a gentle promise. Dallas and Pool were very much absorbed in Paris plans, Paris reminiscences. “And do you remember the time we . . . only seven francs among the lot of us and the dinner was . . . you're surely coming over in June, then . . . oils . . . you've got the thing, I tell you . . . you'll be great, Dallas . . . remember what Vibray said . . . study . . . work . . .”

Dirk was wretched. He pointed out objects of interest to General Goguet. Sixty miles of boulevard. Park system. Finest in the country. Grand Boulevard. Drexel Boulevard. Jackson Park. Illinois Central trains. Terrible, yes, but they were electrifying. Going to make 'em run by electricity, you know. Things wouldn't look so dirty, after that. Halsted Street. Longest street in the world.

And, “Ah, yes,” said the General, politely. “Ah, yes. Quite so. Most interesting.”

The rich black loam of High Prairie. A hint of fresh green things just peeping out of the earth. Hot-houses. Coldframes. The farm.

It looked very trim and neat. The house, white with green shutters (Selina's dream realized), smiled at them from among the willows that were already burgeoning hazily under the wooing of a mild and early spring.

“But I thought you said it was a small farm!” said General Goguet, as they descended from the car. He looked about at the acreage.

“It is small,” Dirk assured him. “Only about forty acres.”

“Ah, well, you Americans. In France we farm on a very small scale, you understand. We have not the land. The great vast country.” He waved his right arm. You felt that if the left sleeve had not been empty he would have made a large and sweeping gesture with both arms.

Selina was not in the neat quiet house. She was not on the porch, or in the yard. Meena Bras, phlegmatic and unflustered, came in from the kitchen. Mis' DeJong was in the fields. She would call her. This she proceeded to do by blowing three powerful blasts and again three on a horn which she took from a hook on the wall. She stood in the kitchen doorway facing the fields, blowing, her red cheeks puffed outrageously. “That brings her,” Meena assured them; and went back to her work. They came out on the porch to await Selina. She was out on the west sixteen—the west sixteen that used to be unprolific, half-drowned muckland. Dirk felt a little uneasy, and ashamed that he should feel so.

Then they saw her coming, a small dark figure against the background of sun and sky and fields. She came swiftly yet ploddingly, for the ground was heavy. They stood facing her, the four of them. As she came nearer they saw that she was wearing a dark skirt pinned up about her ankles to protect it from the wet spring earth and yet it was spattered with a border of mud spots. A rough heavy gray sweater was buttoned closely about the straight slim body. On her head was a battered soft black hat. Her feet, in broad-toed sensible boots, she lifted high out of the soft clinging soil. As she came nearer she took off her hat and holding it a little to one side against the sun, shaded her eyes with it. Her hair blew a little in the gentle spring breeze. Her cheeks were faintly pink. She was coming up the path now. She could distinguish their faces. She saw Dirk; smiled, waved. Her glance went inquiringly to the others—the bearded man in uniform, the tall girl, the man with the dark vivid face. Then she stopped, suddenly, and her hand went to her heart as though she had felt a great pang, and her lips were parted, and her eyes enormous. As Roelf came forward swiftly she took a few quick running steps toward him like a young girl. He took the slight figure in the mud-spattered skirt, the rough gray sweater, and the battered old hat into his arms.

They had had tea in the farm sitting room and Dallas had made a little
moaning over the beauty of the Dutch lustre set. Selina had entertained them with the shining air of one who is robed in silk and fine linen. She and General Goguet had got on famously from the start, meeting on the common ground of asparagus culture.

“But how thick?” he had demanded, for he, too, had his pet asparagus beds on the farm in Brittany. “How thick at the base?”

Selina made a circle with thumb and forefinger. The General groaned with envy and despair. He was very comfortable, the General. He partook largely of tea and cakes. He flattered Selina with his eyes. She actually dimpled, flushed, laughed like a girl. But it was to Roelf she turned; it was on Roelf that her eyes dwelt and rested. It was with him she walked when she was silent and the others talked. It was as though he were her one son, and had come home. Her face was radiant, beautiful.

Seated next to Dirk, Dallas said, in a low voice: “There, that's what I mean. That's what I mean when I say I want to do portraits. Not portraits of ladies with a string of pearls and one lily hand half hidden in the folds of a satin skirt. I mean character portraits of men and women who are really distinguished looking—distinguishedly American, for example—like your mother.”

Dirk looked up at her quickly, half smiling, as though expecting to find her smiling, too. But she was not smiling. “My mother!”

“Yes, if she'd let me. With that fine splendid face all lit up with the light that comes from inside; and the jaw-line like that of the women who came over in the
Mayflower;
or crossed the continent in a covered wagon; and her eyes! And that battered funny gorgeous bum old hat and the white shirtwaist—and her hands! She's beautiful. She'd make me famous at one leap. You'd see!”

Dirk stared at her. It was as though he could not comprehend. Then he turned in his chair to stare at his mother. Selina was talking to Roelf.

“And you've done all the famous men of Europe, haven't you, Roelf! To think of it! You've seen the world, and you've got it in your hand. Little Roelf Pool. And you did it all alone. In spite of everything.”

Roelf leaned toward her. He put his hand over her rough one. “Cabbages are beautiful,” he said. Then they both laughed as at some exquisite joke. Then, seriously: “What a fine life you've had, too, Selina. A full life, and a rich one and successful.”

“I!” exclaimed Selina. “Why, Roelf, I've been here all these years, just where you left me when you were a boy. I think the very hat and dress I'm wearing might be the same I wore then. I've been nowhere, done nothing, seen nothing. When I think of all the places I was going to see! All the things I was going to do!”

“You've been everywhere in the world,” said Roelf. “You've seen all the places of great beauty and light. You remember you told me that your father had once said, when you were a little girl, that there were only two kinds of people who really mattered in the world. One kind was wheat and the other kind emeralds. You're wheat, Selina.”

“And you're emerald,” said Selina, quickly.

The General was interested but uncomprehending. He glanced now at the watch on his wrist and gave a little exclamation. “But the dinner! Our hostess, Madame Storm! It is very fine to run away but one must come back. Our so beautiful hostess.” He had sprung to his feet.