Hepsey Burke

Excerpt

HEPSEY BURKE

The noisy, loose-jointed train pulled out of the station, leaving behind it a solitary young man, enveloped in smoke and cinders. In the middle of the platform stood a little building with a curb roof, pointed at both ends like a Noah’s Ark; and the visitor felt that if he could only manage to lift up one side of the roof he would find the animals “two by two,” together with the cylindrical Noah and the rest of his family. There was no one in sight but the station-master, who called out from the ticket office:

“Did you want to go to the village? The ’bus won’t be down till the next train: but maybe you can ride up on the ice wagon.”

“Thanks,” the stranger replied. “I think I’ll wait for the ’bus, if it’s not too long.”

“Twenty minutes or so, if Sam don’t have to collect the passengers goin’ West, and wait for a lot o’ women that forget their handbags and have to get out and go back after ’em.”

The new arrival was good to look at—a handsome, well-built fellow of about twenty-five, dressed in a gray suit which was non-committal as to his profession, with a clean-shaven face which bore the unmistakable stamp of good breeding and unlimited good-nature. He tilted his suit-case on end and sat down on it; then he filled his briar pipe, crossed his legs, and looked about to take stock of the situation. He gazed about curiously; but there was nothing of any special interest in sight, except, painfully conspicuous on the face of a grass terrace, the name of the village picked out in large letters composed of oyster-shells and the bottoms of protruding beer bottles stuck in the ground. The stranger found himself wondering where a sufficient number of bottles could be found to complete such an elaborate pattern. The only other marked feature of the landscape in the way of artistic decoration was the corrugated base of an old stove, painted white, which served as a flower vase. From this grew a huge bunch of scarlet geraniums, staring defiantly, and seeming fairly to sizzle in the hot, vibrant atmosphere, which was as still as the calm of a moon-lit night.

As the man on the suit-case gazed about him at the general air of dilapidation and neglect characteristic of a country town on the down grade, and recalled the congenial life of the city which he had left, with all its busy competition, with all its absorbing activities, the companionship of the men he loved, and the restful, inspiring intimacy with a certain young woman, he felt, for the moment, a pang of homesickness. If the station were a sample of the village itself, then life in such a place must be deadening to every finer sensibility and ambition; it must throw a man back on himself and make him morbid.

The momentary depression was relieved by the station-master, who suddenly appeared at the door of the Ark and called out:

“Here comes Hepsey Burke. Maybe she’ll take you up; that’ll be a dum sight more comfortable than Lipkin’s ’bus.”

There was nothing to be seen but a cloud of dust, advancing with the rapidity of a whirlwind along the highway, from which there gradually emerged a team and a “democrat,” containing a woman, a boy about fourteen, and a middle-aged man....