Seed on the Wind

“This is the way to travel,” he declared. “This or walk. Communal vehicles are abominable. Here’s an experiment: look at the faces you see on the street, preferably a street not too crowded, so that there’s no bumping at least. Examine them and note them; they’re not beautiful, god knows, but in many there is still a gleam of spirit, you suspect the presence of life. Then look at them on a street-car or elevated train; even that tiny gleam is gone, they’re beyond hope, you imagine you’re in a catacombs where they bury them sitting or standing to save space. Why? They’ve lost the last vestige of their freedom of movement. Walking, even on a crowded street, you’re more or less your own man, you can stop and turn as you please and the worst that can happen is that you knock somebody down, not of necessity a calamity. This taxicab will go wherever we tell it to, we can change our minds at any instant; it would even turn directly around if we said so and dash off in the opposite direction. Whereas a street-car is an inhuman and uncontrollable juggernaut, a blind senseless force of nature, yes nature, created originally by man and now in obscene disdain thumbing its nose at him. There goes a car bound for the Stanton Avenue terminal; it is beyond any human power to turn it from its course or halt it in its obstinate career; it’s as inevitable as an avalanche.”

“The motorman—”

“Bah, I was speaking of passengers, but let even the motor-man try it. Jail or the insane asylum; the mere fact that he thought of such a thing would prove that he was crazy. The division superintendent? They’d fire him. The general manager? The same; there’d be a meeting of outraged and horrified directors at midnight. Even the owner himself couldn’t do it; they’d take his franchise away from him. No, by god, in spite of anything living man can do that street-car is going to the Stanton Avenue terminal. That’s why it makes me ill to ride on them; I get a headache, I grow dizzy, and I can’t breathe.”

“Not really?”

“No. Of course not. As a matter of fact I’ve never been on one; but I’ve reached my conclusions. You will pay for this taxi, but I couldn’t very well expect you to pay for one to take me home, so I shall walk. It’s no hardship, I’ve nothing else to do.”

So there was no talk of eyes after all; apparently he had forgotten all about it. He rambled on about communal vehicles and their share in the destruction of the human spirit — airplanes and airships would, he thought, in time prove to be the most loathsome of all — until the taxi pulled up at the curb in front of her address. He got out and helped her out, and Lora paid the driver. She was a little embarrassed, which was most unusual, indeed unprecedented, for her. She wasn’t accustomed to paying for a man. Should she invite him up? Should she offer him money to ride home? How far had he to go? Without a hat, he stood there with the March wind blowing long strands of his hair across his forehead and over his eyes, stooped a little, peering at her in the dim light.

“I can walk six miles an hour,” he announced. “That is prodigious, but it’s true. I’m going to come and see you some time and make sure about the eyes.”

“Yes. Do. I’d be glad.”

“Fine! Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

He turned and was gone, in great strides, but before she had had time to enter the vestibule he stopped abruptly, ten paces off, and called to her:

“I shall be damned uncomfortable the next day or two, thinking of you at the telephone switchboard of a candy factory! Preposterous!”

He turned again and was off for good.

A strange roaring sort of young man, Lora thought, as she got ready for bed. Overpowering and confusing, like a waterfall when you stand too close to it. If she had invited him up and he had come what would have happened? Would he have been like Stubby Mallinson, trying to paw you like a bear before you had time to get your hat off, or like Mr. Graham — who owned the candy factory — sitting up straight with his hands folded in his lap, constantly wetting his lips under his little grey moustache so that the bright red tip of his tongue went in and out until, fascinated, you dragged your eyes away? Neither one; none of them. He would have been different. What made his face so white? She decided to stay awake until Cece came and ask her if she knew anything about him, but when the door softly opened an hour later she was sound asleep.