第43章

That year the spring burst over Chicago in a prolonged scintillation of pallid green.For weeks continually the sun shone.The Lake, after persistently cherishing the greys and bitter greens of the winter months, and the rugged white-caps of the northeast gales, mellowed at length, turned to a softened azure blue, and lapsed by degrees to an unrumed calmness, incrusted with innumerable coruscations.

In the parks, first of all, the buds and earliest shoots asserted themselves.The horse-chestnut bourgeons burst their sheaths to spread into trefoils and flame-shaped leaves.The elms, maples, and cottonwoods followed.The sooty, blackened snow upon the grass plats, in the residence quarters, had long since subsided, softening the turf, filling the gutters with rivulets.On all sides one saw men at work laying down the new sod in rectangular patches.

There was a delicious smell of ripening in the air, a smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and slender branches stretching themselves under the returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their bark.

On the North Side, in Washington Square, along the Lake-shore Drive, all up and down the Lincoln Park Boulevard, and all through Erie, Huron, and Superior streets, through North State Street, North Clarke Street, and La Salle Avenue, the minute sparkling of green flashed from tree top to tree top, like the first kindling of dry twigs.One could almost fancy that the click of igniting branch tips was audible as whole beds of yellow-green sparks defined themselves within certain elms and cottonwoods.

Every morning the sun invaded earlier the east windows of Laura Dearborn's bedroom.Every day at noon it stood more nearly overhead above her home.Every afternoon the checkered shadows of the leaves thickened upon the drawn curtains of the library.Within doors the bottle-green flies came out of their lethargy and droned and bumped on the panes.The double windows were removed, screens and awnings took their places;the summer pieces were put into the fireplaces.

All of a sudden vans invaded the streets, piled high with mattresses, rocking-chairs, and bird cages; the inevitable "spring moving" took place.And these furniture vans alternated with great trucks laden with huge elm trees on their way from nursery to lawn.

Families and trees alike submitted to the impulse of transplanting, abandoning the winter quarters, migrating with the spring to newer environments, taking root in other soils.Sparrows wrangled on the sidewalks and built ragged nests in the interstices of cornice and coping.In the parks one heard the liquid modulations of robins.The florists' wagons appeared, and from house to house, from lawn to lawn, iron urns and window boxes filled up with pansies, geraniums, fuchsias, and trailing vines.The flower beds, stripped of straw and manure, bloomed again, and at length the great cottonwoods shed their berries, like clusters of tiny grapes, over street and sidewalk.

At length came three days of steady rain, followed by cloudless sunshine and full-bodied, vigorous winds straight from out the south.

Instantly the living embers in tree top and grass plat were fanned to flame.Like veritable fire, the leaves blazed up.Branch after branch caught and crackled;even the dryest, the deadest, were enfolded in the resistless swirl of green.Tree top ignited tree top;the parks and boulevards were one smother of radiance.

From end to end and from side to side of the city, fed by the rains, urged by the south winds, spread billowing and surging the superb conflagration of the coming summer.

Then, abruptly, everything hung poised; the leaves, the flowers, the grass, all at fullest stretch, stood motionless, arrested, while the heat, distilled, as it were, from all this seething green, rose like a vast pillar over the city, and stood balanced there in the iridescence of the sky, moveless and immeasurable.

From time to time it appeared as if this pillar broke in the guise of summer storms, and came toppling down upon the city in tremendous detonations of thunder and weltering avalanches of rain.But it broke only to reform, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one received the vague impression of the swift rebuilding of the vast, invisible column that smothered the city under its bases, towering higher and higher into the rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.

Then the aroma of wet dust, of drenched pavements, musty, acute--the unforgettable exhalation of the city's streets after a shower--pervaded all the air, and the little out-door activities resumed again under the dripping elms and upon the steaming sidewalks.

The evenings were delicious.It was yet too early for the exodus northward to the Wisconsin lakes, but to stay indoors after nightfall was not to be thought of.

After six o'clock, all through the streets in the neighbourhood of the Dearborns' home, one could see the family groups "sitting out" upon the front "stoop."Chairs were brought forth, carpets and rugs unrolled upon the steps.From within, through the opened windows of drawing-room and parlour, came the brisk gaiety of pianos.The sidewalks were filled with children clamouring at "tag," "I-spy," or "run-sheep-run." Girls in shirt-waists and young men in flannel suits promenaded to and fro.Visits were exchanged from "stoop" to "stoop," lemonade was served, and claret punch.In their armchairs on the top step, elderly men, householders, capitalists, well-to-do, their large stomachs covered with white waistcoats, their straw hats upon their knees, smoked very fragrant cigars in silent enjoyment, digesting their dinners, taking the air after the grime and hurry of the business districts.