Unleavened Bread | Page 5

uncritical
optimism was the ruling characteristic of his temperament. With health,
business fortune, and love all on his side, it was natural to him to regard
his lot with complacency. Especially as to all appearances, this was the
sort of thing Selma liked, also. Presently, perhaps, there would be a
baby, and then their cup of domestic happiness would be overflowing.
Babcock's long ungratified yearning for the things of the spirit were
fully met by these cosey evenings, which he would have been glad to
continue to the crack of doom. To smoke and sprawl and read a little,
and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was
he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling -- he
possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both -- a proceeding
which commonly culminated in his causing Selma to sit beside him on
the sofa and be made much of, to the detriment of her toilette.
As for the bride, so dazing were the circumstances incident to the
double change of matrimony and adaptation to city life, that her
judgment was in suspension. Yet though she smiled and sewed
demurely, she was thinking. The yellow clapboarded house and metal
stag, and a maid-of-all-work at her beck and call, were gratifying at the
outset and made demands upon her energies. Selma's position in her
father's house had been chiefly ornamental and social. She had been his
companion and nurse, had read to him and argued with him, but the
mere household work had been performed by an elderly female relative
who recognized that her mind was bent on higher things. Nevertheless,
she had never doubted that when the time arrived to show her capacity
as a housewife, she would be more than equal to the emergency.
Assuredly she would, for one of the distinguishing traits of American
womanhood was the ability to perform admirably with one's own hand
many menial duties and yet be prepared to shine socially with the best.
Still the experience was not quite so easy as she expected; even
harassing and mortifying. Fortunately, Lewis was more particular about
quantity than quality where the table was concerned; and, after all, food
and domestic details were secondary considerations in a noble outlook.
It would have suited her never to be obliged to eat, and to be able to
leave the care of the house to the hired girl; but that being out of the

question, it became incumbent on her to make those obligations as
simple as possible. However, the possession of a new house and gay
fittings was an agreeable realization. At home everything had been
upholstered in black horse-hair, and regard for material appearances
had been obscured for her by the tension of her introspective tendencies.
Lewis was very kind, and she had no reason to reproach herself as yet
for her choice. He had insisted that she should provide herself with an
ample and more stylish wardrobe, and though the invitation had
interested her but mildly, the effect of shrewdly-made and neatly fitting
garments on her figure had been a revelation. Like the touch of a man's
hand, fine raiment had seemed to her hitherto almost repellant, but it
was obvious now that anything which enhanced her effectiveness could
not be dismissed as valueless. To arrive at definite conclusions in
regard to her social surroundings was less easy for Selma. Benham, in
its rapid growth, had got beyond the level simplicity of Westfield and
Wilton, and was already confronted by the stern realities which baffle
the original ideal in every American city. We like as a nation to cherish
the illusion that extremes of social condition do not exist even in our
large communities, and that the plutocrat and the saleslady, the learned
professions and the proletariat associate on a common basis of equal
virtue, intelligence, and culture. And yet, although Benham was a
comparatively young and an essentially American city, there were very
marked differences in all these respects in its community.
Topographically speaking the starting point of Benham was its
water-course. Twenty years before the war Benham was merely a
cluster of frame houses in the valley of the limpid, peaceful river Nye.
At that time the inhabitants drank of the Nye taken at a point below the
town, for there was a high fall which would have made the drawing of
water above less convenient. This they were doing when Selma came to
Benham, although every man's hand had been raised against the Nye,
which was the nearest, and hence for a community in hot haste, the
most natural receptacle for dyestuffs, ashes and all the outflow from
woollen mills, pork factories and oil yards, and it ran the color of
glistening bean soup. From time to time,