Unleavened Bread

Unleavened Bread Robert Grant
Author of The Bachelor's Christmas, etc.
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
1900
I. THE EMANCIPATION
II. THE STRUGGLE
III. THE SUCCESS
* * *
BOOK I. THE EMANCIPATION

Chapter I.
Babcock and Selma White were among the last of the wedding guests
to take their departure. It was a brilliant September night with a touch
of autumn vigor in the atmosphere, which had not been without its
effect on the company, who had driven off in gay spirits, most of them
in hay-carts or other vehicles capable of carrying a party. Their songs
and laughter floated back along the winding country road. Selma,
comfortable in her wraps and well tucked about with a rug, leaned back
contentedly in the chaise, after the goodbyes had been said, to enjoy the
glamour of the full moon. They were seven miles from home and she
was in no hurry to get there. Neither festivities nor the undisguised
devotion of a city young man were common in her life. Consideration
she had been used to from a child, and she knew herself to be tacitly

acknowledged the smartest girl in Westfield, but perhaps for that very
reason she had held aloof from manhood until now. At least no youth in
her neighborhood had ever impressed her as her equal. Neither did
Babcock so impress her; but he was different from the rest. He was not
shy and unexpressive; he was buoyant and self-reliant, and yet he
seemed to appreciate her quality none the less.
They had met about a dozen times, and on the last six of these
occasions he had come from Benham, ten miles to her uncle's farm,
obviously to visit her. The last two times her Aunt Farley had made
him spend the night, and it had been arranged that he would drive her
in the Farley chaise to Clara Morse's wedding. A seven-mile drive is
apt to promote or kill the germs of intimacy, and on the way over she
had been conscious of enjoying herself. Scrutiny of Clara's choice had
been to the advantage of her own cavalier. The bridegroom had seemed
to her what her Aunt Farley would call a mouse-in-the-cheese young
man. Whereas Babcock had been the life of the affair.
She had been teaching now in Wilton for more than a year. When,
shortly after her father's death, she had obtained the position of school
teacher, it seemed to her that at last the opportunity had come to display
her capabilities, and at the same time to fulfil her aspirations. But the
task of grounding a class of small children in the rudiments of simple
knowledge had already begun to pall and to seem unsatisfying. Was she
to spend her life in this? And if not, the next step, unless it were
marriage, was not obvious. Not that she mistrusted her ability to shine
in any educational capacity, but neither Wilton nor the neighboring
Westfield offered better, and she was conscious of a lack of influential
friends in the greater world, which was embodied for her in Benham.
Benham was a western city of these United States, with an eastern
exposure; a growing, bustling city according to rumor, with an eager
population restless with new ideas and stimulating ambitions. So at
least Selma thought of it, and though Boston and New York and a few
other places were accepted by her as authoritative, she accepted them,
as she accepted Shakespeare, as a matter of course and so far removed
from her immediate outlook as almost not to count. But Benham with
its seventy-five thousand inhabitants and independent ways was a

fascinating possibility. Once established there the world seemed within
her grasp, including Boston. Might it not be that Benham, in that it was
newer, was nearer to truth and more truly American than that famous
city? She was not prepared to believe this an absurdity.
At least the mental atmosphere of Westfield and even of the somewhat
less solemn Wilton suggested this apotheosis of the adjacent city to be
reasonable. Westfield had stood for Selma as a society of serious
though simple souls since she could first remember and had been one
of them. Not that she arrogated to her small native town any unusual
qualities of soul or mind in distinction from most other American
communities, but she regarded it as inferior in point of view to none,
and typical of the best national characteristics. She had probably never
put into words the reasons of her confidence, but her daily
consciousness was permeated with them. To be an American meant to
be more keenly alive to the responsibility of life than any other citizen
of civilization, and to be an American woman meant to be something
finer, cleverer, stronger, and purer than