The Way of the Wind | Page 3

all things sufficient
for a simple life.
As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro shuffled
by. He hummed the refrain of "Old Kentucky Home," "Fare you well,
my lady!" It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within her
to fly back to the old town she loved so well; but the train, roaring in
just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil and she allowed
herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed in the car.
Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The
smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her
strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering into
her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in
the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was too
abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and began
silently to weep.
A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car. Celia crouched into
her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring eyes of the
porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black of the night that
gloomed portentously through the window.
Then came the dawn and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab
and sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and more
and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces through which she must
pass.
After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired to
think, too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a little
town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and physically,
she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a bed.
And the next day the wind!
A little way out from the town she could see it beginning, bending the

pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, crushing
them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, whistling, whistling!
The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved
faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains of
sand under the sill to sting Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in its
mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies.
She looked out in dismay.
Back of her, on either side of her and beyond, stretched this vast prairie
country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren waste,
different from the beautiful, still, green garden spot that she called
home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the odor of new-mown
grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different as night is
from day.
Her heart sank within her as she looked.
It was late in the afternoon when she came to her station, a collection of
frame shanties dignified by that name, and Seth, tall, tanned and radiant,
clasped her in his arms, and man though he was, shed tears of pure
rapture.
His joy served to thrill her momentarily to the extent of forgetting the
wind, but with his departure for the vehicle which was to convey her to
their home, the discomfort of it returned to her.
The madness of it! The fury of it! Its fiendish joy! It tore at her skirts. It
wrapped them about her. It snatched them away again, flapping them
flaglike.
It was with difficulty that she kept her hat on her head. She held it with
both hands.
The wind seemed to make sport of her, to laugh at her. It treated her as
it would a tenderfoot. It tried to frighten her. It blew the shutters of the
shanties open and slammed them to with a noise like guns. It shrieked

maniacally as if rejoicing in her discomfort. At times it seemed to hoot
at her.
Added to this, when Seth returned for her with the vehicle, it proved to
be a common two-wheeled cart drawn by a mule, a tall, ungainly cart of
dull and faded blue.
She kept back the tears as Seth helped her in.
Then she sat silently by him throughout their jolting journey over the
prairie country into what seemed to her to be the Nowhere, listening to
the wind chant, now requiems, now dirges, listening to its shriek and
whistle, listening to it cry aloud and moan, die down to a whisper, then
rise once more and wail like a living thing in unendurable pain.
Seth, too, by and by fell into silence, but from a different cause. The
wind failed to distress him. He had become accustomed to it in the
months spent in preparing her home. It was like an old friend that
sometimes whispered in his