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Ashwin Pajankar

Practical Linux with Raspberry Pi OS

Quick Start
1st ed.
Ashwin Pajankar
Nashik, Maharashtra, India

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.​apress.​com/​978-1-4842-6509-3. For
more detailed information, please visit http://​www.​apress.​com/​
source-code.

ISBN 978-1-4842-6509-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-6510-9

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6510-9

Apress Standard
© Ashwin Pajankar 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks,

service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the
relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general
use.

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the
advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate
at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business

Media New York, 1 NY Plaza, New York, NY 10014. Phone 1-800-
SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-sbm.com,
or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC
and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media
Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware
corporation.
I dedicate this book to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a great Indian-
American astrophysicist.
Introduction
I have been working with Raspberry Pi since 2014. I was introduced to
it while volunteering as an organizer at a hackathon at my former
workplace. And as I have mentioned in my author biography, I have
decent experience with assembly programming, microcontrollers, and
digital electronics since my time as an undergraduate student of
computer science. Raspberry Pi and Arduino are great choices for
someone who wants the best of both of the worlds of computer science
and electronics. Additionally, if you wish to use Linux, C, Python, and
shell programming to drive your motors, LEDs, and other peripherals,
then Raspberry Pi and similar single-board computers are the best fit
for your applications.
While this is an introductory book for beginners who are new to the
world of SBCs and hardware hacking, once you follow the book in
detail, you will be very much comfortable exploring the world of SBCs
and Raspberry Pi on your own.
This entire book is based on the challenges and struggles I faced
while working the very first time with Raspberry Pi (abbreviated as RPi
hereafter). I have listed all the tips and tricks I learned while exploring
the RPi in the first few months. At that time, I really wished that I could
get a book that would make my journey easier and so decided to write
one myself. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I compiled all my
experiences in this book so that anyone looking for help to get started
with Raspberry Pi can benefit from this.
While this book primarily covers the RPi OS flavor of Linux, I have
made sure that I also introduce the readers to other important topics,
such as programming with high-level languages like C, C++, and Python.
I also introduce readers to GPIO (General-Purpose Input/Output)
programming and various buses. Finally, I cover installation of a few
popular Linux desktop environments such as XFCE, LXDE, and KDE
Plasma. The appendix covers a few additional tips and tricks.
I hope that the book serves the readers well and they will enjoy the
book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Acknowledgments
I am thankful to Mr. Massimo Nardone, the technical reviewer of the
book. I want to express my gratitude toward him for helping me make
this book better. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Apress
team. Aaron Black helped with the coordination of the entire book
process, and Jessica Vakili guided the editorial process. James Markham
helped me with the editorial review. I am also thankful to Celestin
Suresh and Aditee Mirashi for giving me an opportunity to write this
book.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​Introduction to Raspberry Pi
Single-Board Computers
Raspberry Pi
Linux and Distributions
Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS Setup
Preparing the SD Card Manually
Booting Up the Pi Board for the First Time
Configuring the RPi Board
Connecting Various RPi Board Models to the Internet
Summary
Chapter 2:​Getting Ready
Operating System Shell
Raspberry Pi OS GUI
The Command Prompt
Updating the RPi OS
Linux Filesystem
Remotely Accessing the RPi
Summary
Chapter 3:​Directory Commands and Text Editors
Absolute and Relative Paths
Commands:​pwd, tree, and cd
Command:​ls
Command:​touch
Various Text Editors
 Create and Delete Directories
Case-Sensitive Names of Directories and Files
Summary
Chapter 4:​More Commands
Configuring the RPi Board
What Is sudo?​
Getting Help on Commands
Network-Related Commands
Commands:​File Operations
Printing a String
Control Operators
Filename Globbing
Command:​History
Pipes
Summary
Chapter 5:​Useful Unix Commands and Tools
Shell and Environment Variables
Useful Linux Commands
Useful Unix Tools
Summary
Chapter 6:​Shell Scripting
Unix File Permissions
Command:​nohup
Beginning Shell Scripting
User Input
Expressions in the Shell
 If Statement
Switch Case
Length of a Shell Variable
Command-Line Arguments
Function
Loops in the Shell
Comparing Strings
File Operations
Summary
Chapter 7:​I/​O Redirection and Cron
I/​O Redirection
stdin
stdout
Stderr
Crontab
Summary
Chapter 8:​Introduction to High-Level Programming Languages
C and C++ Programming
Python Programming Language
History of the Python Programming Language
Python Enhancement Proposals
Applications of Python
Python 3 on Debian Derivatives
Python Modes
Interactive Mode
Script Mode
 Summary
Chapter 9:​Programming with RPi GPIO
General-Purpose Input/​Output Pins
Programming with GPIO
Summary
Chapter 10:​Explore the RPi OS GUI
GUI Utilities on the RPi OS
Other Desktop Environments
XFCE
KDE Plasma
Summary
Appendix:​Additional Tools
Raspberry Pi Imager
Additional Utilities
Manjaro Linux
FreeBSD
Additional OSs
Index
About the Author
Ashwin Pajankar
holds a Master of Technology from IIIT Hyderabad. He started
programming and tinkering with electronics at the tender age of 7.
BASIC (Beginners’ All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was the first
programming language he worked with. He was gradually exposed to C
programming, 8085, and x86 assembly programming during his higher
secondary schooling. He is proficient in x86 assembly, C, C++, Java,
Python, and Linux shell programming. He is also proficient with
Raspberry Pi, Arduino, BBC Micro Bit, and other single-board
computers (SBCs) and microcontrollers. Ashwin is passionate about
training and mentoring. He has trained more than 100,000 trainees and
professionals through live training sessions and online training courses.
He has published more than a dozen books with both international and
Indian publishers. He has also reviewed numerous books and
educational video courses. This is his sixth book with Apress, and he is
working on more books. He regularly conducts programming boot
camps and hands-on training for software companies in Nashik, India.
He is also an avid YouTuber with more than 10,000 subscribers to
his channel. You can find him on LinkedIn.
About the Technical Reviewer
Massimo Nardone
has more than 22 years of experiences in security, web/mobile
development, the cloud, and IT architecture. His true IT passions are
security and Android.
He has been programming and teaching how to program with
Android, Perl, PHP, Java, VB, Python, C/C++, and MySQL for more than
20 years.
He holds a Master of Science in Computing Science from the
University of Salerno, Italy.
He has worked as a project manager, software engineer, research
engineer, chief security architect, information security manager,
PCI/SCADA auditor, and senior lead IT security/cloud/SCADA architect
for many years.
© Ashwin Pajankar 2021
A. Pajankar, Practical Linux with Raspberry Pi OS
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6510-9_1

1. Introduction to Raspberry Pi
Ashwin Pajankar1
(1) Nashik, Maharashtra, India

I hope you have gone through the Table of Contents and Introduction. If
not, I highly recommend you go through them. This is the very first
chapter of the book, and I welcome you all to the exciting journey of
learning Linux with the Raspberry Pi Operating System.
In this chapter, we will learn the details about the most popular
platform and single-board computer family of our times, the Raspberry Pi.
Then we will learn a bit about Linux and the distribution of Linux that is
popularly used with the Raspberry Pi family (hereafter, I will use the
abbreviation RPi), the Raspberry Pi Operating System. We will learn how
to install it on a RPi board. The following is the list of the topics that we
will learn in this chapter:
Single-board computers
Raspberry Pi
Linux and distributions
Raspberry Pi OS setup
Configuring the RPi board
Connecting various RPi board models to the Internet
After completing this chapter, we will be comfortable with the
installation and the basic usage of the RPi board and the RPi OS.

Single-Board Computers
Single-board computers (also known as SBCs) have all the components of
a fully functioning computer like the processor, GPU, RAM, and I/O on a
single printed circuit board. This is in contrast with desktop or laptop
computers that have a motherboard which has various slots for RAM, the
processor, and the graphics card. Desktop or laptop computers can be
upgraded by replacing processors and graphics cards. We can also add
more RAM chips in the RAM slots. However, SBCs cannot be upgraded like
that. This is one of the major differences between traditional
desktops/laptops that are totally modular and SBCs. The key benefit of
the lack of modularity of SBCs is that the size of an entire computer is
very small. Most of the SBCs are a little bigger than a regular credit/debit
card, and they are very compact.
SBCs are used as technology demonstrators (prototypes), educational
computers, and embedded systems. There is a recent surge in the
popularity of SBCs due to advances in the fabrication process and
manufacturing technologies. We are living in an era where a new SBC or a
new version of an existing one is announced almost on a monthly basis.
The market is full of various SBCs and SBC families. A few prominent SBC
families are Raspberry Pi, Banana Pro, BeagleBoards, and Orange Pi.
Raspberry Pi is the most popular family of single-board computers
available in the market, and it is one of the best-selling computers in the
world. In the next section, we will have an overview of the Raspberry Pi
family of computers.

Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi is a family of SBCs developed by the Raspberry Pi
Foundation (www.raspberrypi.org/). It consists of many board
models, and all the current models under production are listed on the
foundation’s products page (www.raspberrypi.org/products/).
Throughout the book, I will be using a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (the latest
board model in the family) with 4 GB RAM.
Table 1-1 lists the specifications of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.
Table 1-1 Technical Specifications of Raspberry Pi 4 B

Component Specification
Processor Broadcom BCM2711, quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit
SoC at 1.5 GHz
RAM LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM (2 GB or 4 GB or 8 GB)
Other documents randomly have
different content
 CHAPTER XV

R OSE HUBBELL was spending the hottest of the hot weeks at

Christmas Lake. Christmas Lake was a summer resort—a hotel and its
satellites, plunged in a forest of pines and then made extremely
accessible to motorists by assiduous care of the roads. It was beautiful and
gay—entirely protected from any rough contacts with weather, and an
excellent golf course and tennis courts gave those who wanted exercise
opportunity, while no stigma fell upon those who preferred to dress for
tennis or golf without running any risk of soiling their clothes. A great
many unattached, wealthy people moved lazily about the lawns, eating,
drinking, watching, talking and finding the place entirely to their liking. So
did Rose Hubbell. Just enough of her story was known to make her
interesting and her prettiness and clever clothes added to the interest in her.
She was skillful enough to be docile before the elder women and wise
enough not to attempt to compete with the very young ones. And by
choosing her rôle carefully she drew around her both young and old, the old
pitying her and the younger ones admiring romance, as she incarnated it for
them.
She kept up, as always, her desultory correspondence with Langley. Her
letters to him were idle, half-caressing, half-mocking, and with an
occasional plaintive note. In late July she became rather unusually plaintive.
Why didn’t Jim come and rest a week at the Lake? She was bored and
alone. He must be tired. She had a motor at her disposal and he knew what
lovely drives there were around Christmas Lake. She wrote on, saying that
if he wanted to come and bring Horatia or if Horatia wanted to come alone,
she would play duenna gladly. And urged Horatia’s coming further.
Jim usually pigeonholed Rose’s letters until she had written three or four
demanding an answer. Then he wrote very briefly. But he re-read this letter
and laid it down beside him, and several times in the day he referred to it
and sat thinking. Late in the afternoon he began an answer.
“Dear Rose—It would be very pleasant to bring Horatia to Christmas
Lake and you have a way of making the place sound very cool and alluring.
She undoubtedly needs a rest and there are some shadows under those pines
that induce rest.” He stopped and from his smile he must have been
visioning Horatia in those blue shadows—with him, away from all her
relatives and friends and the subtle hostilities to her lover—— He did no
more work, but early in the evening went up the steps of the Williams house
looking young and jubilant.
There were guests and it was half an hour before he could get Horatia by
herself. They went out through Maud’s tiny formal garden to a deep
hammock and sat there. A million stars swung above them.
“I have a plan,” said Jim. “Will you let me kidnap you for a couple of
weeks? Bob can run the office for a little while and we could vacation
together.”
“You have only to throw me on your horse,” said Horatia. “I’ll be the
most willing lady you ever kidnapped. But where shall we go?”
“Just to a very large, conventional resort—do you see? But one that all
the money and nonsense and stupidity in the world hasn’t spoiled—where
there are lovely places to tell you how much I love you. To Christmas
Lake.”
“I’ve never been there. Everyone says that it’s heavenly. But, Jim, isn’t
that where Rose Hubbell is?”
“That’s one of the advantages,” said Jim, eagerly, and yet there was a
little damper on his eagerness even as he spoke. “She would be a sort of
chaperon—only we wouldn’t have to bother about her too much.”
“I see—did she suggest it?”
Jim began to fumble a little.
“She sort of—gave me the idea.”
Horatia was silent for a minute. She felt on dangerous ground and full of
a kind of protective pity for this lover of hers who seemed so oddly unable
to see the ridiculousness of what he proposed.
“Jim, do you remember telling me once that Rose Hubbell was
dangerous?”
“I remember that I did, but I don’t feel quite that way about it now. Rose
likes you very much, you see—and she knows how I feel.”
This time there was real hurt in Horatia’s tone.
“You told her—that?”
He tried to recoup. “Only as much as your sister knows and your aunt.”
 Horatia remained cruelly silent. When she spoke again her words
reverted to the subject in hand, but her tone was far more distant than they
justified.
“I don’t think Christmas Lake is quite practicable.”
Jim showed his hurt as his plans crashed to the ground.
“Just as you say, dear. I only suggested it because I was silly enough to
think we might play around together there a lot and have a real rest.”
“But surely you don’t expect me to go under Rose Hubbell’s
chaperonage, Jim. Why, think, Jim—dozens of people know her whole
history and—— Think how impossible it would be for me.”
“I didn’t count on seeing much of her, you see,” said poor Jim, trying to
defend not Rose Hubbell, but his own care and protection of Horatia. “And
she would have been just a nominal chaperon. But I see that I was a fool.
Just consider the suggestion cancelled, will you, darling? Put it out of your
head absolutely.”
He drew her close to him and may have been simple enough to fancy his
request had been granted. But thoughts were spinning madly around in
Horatia’s head. This outrageously silly plan of Jim’s seemed to clinch the
whole matter of Rose Hubbell. If Rose could make him believe that such an
arrangement was all right—that it was all right to take the girl he was going
to marry away under the chaperonage of a woman about whom he had been
the co-respondent in a divorce suit, she could make him believe black was
white. She felt older than Jim for once—responsible for him. With an
instinctive feminine reaction she refused to blame the man. It was a matter
between her and Mrs. Hubbell.
“Jim,” she said softly, “don’t you think the time has come for you to give
up Rose Hubbell?”
Jim started. “How on earth could I give her up? She’s nothing to me,
Horatia. Child, you surely don’t dream——”
The word “child” offended Horatia.
“No—of course I don’t think you are in love with her—or anything like
that. But I think she thinks she has a hold on you and that she intends to
play it for what it’s worth. She has a little proprietary air—and I think she
has an influence over you which you don’t realize and that for your good
you shouldn’t see her any more at all.”
 The youth of Horatia, hurling such statements at any man and worst of
all at the man who wished to be especially fine and strong in her eyes! She
went on, a little flurried and feeling her way.
“Truly, I’m not jealous. I know you love me and I know that you’re not
flirting. But I don’t like to see that woman hang around you because she has
absolutely nothing to give you. From your own admission you see her
because you feel you have a duty towards her and that is no reason at all.
She is well able to look out for herself.”
“So am I, sweetheart.” That was the man in him.
Horatia did not agree.
“Let’s not quarrel about Rose Hubbell, please, darling,” he went on. “I
don’t give a copper what becomes of her. But she is an old acquaintance
and a perfectly harmless one. If you don’t like her you’ll never have to see
her again.”
“And would you go on seeing her?”
“Why, no, darling—not unless I couldn’t help it. I can’t go around the
block to avoid her—or cut her on the street.”
The slight impatience in his tone found immediate reflection in Horatia’s
answer.
“Don’t be silly, Jim. I’m not unreasonable or going to be unreasonable.
But I want to know where you stand with her and then we will drop it.” She
was pressing the point now partly because her pride wouldn’t let her admit
that she was being unreasonable or foolish and partly from sheer womanly
desire to break down the resistance in her lover. And because she felt very
near to tears her voice was hard and her figure tightened. Jim took it as a
repulse, but he became more serious.
“What is it you want, Horatia?”
“I want you to drop Rose Hubbell. Not go to see her. Tell her if
necessary that you are dropping her. It wouldn’t hurt her very much. Of
course I don’t mean that you’re not to speak to her, but don’t ask her to
dance when you are out places—don’t let her write to you. I want you to
promise me.”
The tears showed in her voice now and who knows what Jim would not
have been ready to promise if the word had not called out the memory of a
promise given just a few weeks before to Rose. She had pleaded just not to
be dropped. He had a clear memory of the whole conversation with her.
“Will you?” asked Horatia. “Truly it’s awfully hard to ask you. Won’t
you promise just that?”
She felt like a child begging for a favor and like a woman to whom
refusal would be outrage.
“Will it satisfy you, dear, if I promise to bear all this in mind and never
to offend you again?”
The reservation puzzled Horatia and piqued her.
“Why won’t you promise outright?”
“Frankly, dear, I can’t. I can’t give a promise like that. It might be
impossible to keep it without wounding Rose terribly.”
Horatia felt that she was wounded terribly. She turned her head away.
“Please,” begged Langley, “this is dreadful, Horatia. Can’t you trust my
love for you and forget it?”
Horatia was weeping frankly now. He tried to take her in his arms but
she drew away.
“Go away, Jim. Go home now. I want to think.”
“Let me sit here quietly while you think.”
“Please go—please.”
He took her hands and buried his face in them for a moment, his lips
against the soft palms. Then he went down the path and through the garden
gate.
 CHAPTER XVI

T O Horatia the affair was immensely serious, but, Langley’s attitude in

The Journal office the next morning, though anxious, was not yet
gravely troubled. According to reason he should have been right, what
had jarred between him and Horatia was nothing after all, but in fact it was
Horatia who gauged the dangers of the situation correctly. What she herself
did not realize was that the episode about Mrs. Hubbell was one which only
added another fear and another doubt to the fears and doubts which already
had invaded her mind, unacknowledged. And these fears and doubts were in
the air of her generation. Her discovery about Grace had perhaps begun the
uncertainty. Tricked once into belief in a person and deceived, she herself
had learned to feel suspicion and fear. She had learned that the men about
her were not necessarily faithful to their wives and try as she would to put
the thought out of her mind it crept back sometimes while she was talking
to this man or that. Langley had reassured her—had made her smile again—
events had driven the memory of Grace out of her mind—but the stain
remained, corroding the faith and beauty of her feeling for Jim more than
she guessed. There had been the doubts created by her fears about money
matters and as to whether she and Jim would be able to keep themselves
orderly and happy on their income. There had been the fear of the pain of
marriage as she hovered at the door of the little sick child in her sister’s
house. These things once accepted as the lot of woman became a problem
now that they were a choice and not a lot. Subtly too, the temptations of the
luxury of the life of the married women whom she met around Mrs. Clapp
had dulled the edge of her own desire to work after she married. And
Horatia had found no anchor philosophical or sociological. She was one of
those who drifted with people rather than with causes and it was a hard age
into which she had come to maturity. She could not like so many
contemporary women fling herself into a cause and put the cause (or
pretend to put it) before all personal life, and yet she could not, like her
grandmother, fling herself into the institution of matrimony and expect the
institution to solve her problems. Her faith in marriage with Jim was a
structure subtly undermined by the conditions surrounding her and upheld
only by one great and mighty prop—the prop of faith in Jim. Jim would
adjust the problem of how they should live—Jim would keep them from
stupidity and shabbiness—against the furtiveness of the married scoundrel
who sought illicit relations, Jim stood, magnificent in his love for her.
Everywhere he supported her, held her up, made her strong. And then this
had come, this little thing which had curiously grown into a big thing. It
was not that she feared Rose Hubbell as a rival. In that she was quite
honest. But she feared Jim. She feared herself if Jim should seem weak, if
he should appear to be the tool of a woman, if he could be the prey of a
conscienceless woman. What sort of weakness was it to which she was
looking for strength? The more she thought about it the more reasonable her
position seemed to her. There that dangerous touch of feminine dogmatism
absorbed at Maud’s came into play. She was asking him to give up a
meaningless relationship, to trust in her judgment, to fulfill her desire. If he
would not sacrifice a thing which was worthless, if he would not trust her
judgment, if he would not fulfill her desire, either he had not been honest in
telling of the whole relationship between him and Rose Hubbell or he was a
lover whose love was only skin deep. To such a preposterous pitch of
unconscious arrogance had her feelings brought her. Those were sad days
for Horatia. She struggled for a week, while it grew steadily more hot in the
city. Frantically her mind circled on itself, seeking rest and peace. There
were times when it seemed that to turn to Jim and bury her head on his
shoulder would solve everything. But when she did that, as she sometimes
did, she found that it solved nothing—that she always began again on her
endless round of argument.
There came a day when she and Jim, sitting opposite each other in his
office after the rest had gone home, faced decision.
“You’ll wear out, Horatia. I can’t bear this. Won’t you please let the
matter drop?”
“It doesn’t drop me,” said poor Horatia. “It goes on to mount up to the
big question of whether you love me at all when you can let me suffer so.”
“It’s bigger than this affair,” said Jim, “you’re right. If it were a question
of that promise only, perhaps I could find a way to make it even if it
involved abandoning a trust. But the thing is bigger. You ask me to promise
you something for which you’d despise me if I agreed.” She began to
protest, but he shook his head. “Not now, but ultimately. You ask me to
promise because you don’t trust me. If I gave that promise I’d be less a man
and you less a woman for forcing it. You see, dear, I don’t quite satisfy you
or make you confident. This promise would help things for a bit. Then
you’d find another difficulty in my nature—another flaw to make you doubt
and perhaps you’d want to bind that too with promises. Rose Hubbell is no
more to me than that blotter. But I am something to myself in my relation to
Rose Hubbell as well as to the newsboy on the corner. And I must decide
those relationships myself because I am a man. If you want this promise it’s
because you fear the strength of my manhood—and that’s basic.”
He was so much older, so much wiser than the Horatia who, tired and
pale, hardly heeded his talk.
“Oh, I’m frightened,” she cried, “all this arguing! If this happened
afterwards——”
“I’d become a brute or you a shrew,” said Langley.
But what she had wanted was his denial that it would ever happen again.
“I’m afraid of you. You are hard and unyielding. You don’t bring me
——”
“I don’t bring you rest or comfort,” he said bitterly. “But, my God, how I
long to, Horatia. Only I love you too much to bring you false rest or
comfort or to drug you with words. I too have come to fear myself. What
have I to give you——”
They sat drearily fatigued, the paper-strewn table between them.
Horatia made no protest; she was or thought she was full of questioning
herself. Yet what came next brought about in three breaths a vast surprise;
one moment what Langley was saying sounded like a natural sequence, and
the next all the values of life shifted, and they faced each other in a new,
strange, graceless world.
“I want you to go away for a rest,” said Jim. “Go away and forget all
this. Then if you never want to come back to me, it’s all right. But if you
should, Horatia, I’ll be here—I’ll always be here—always waiting, always
thankful for what you’ve done for me—what you’ve given me, and always
knowing that it was far, far more than I deserved.”
It was youth, inexperienced girlhood that disregarded the magnificence
of that appeal. Horatia was primitive, green enough to want to be overcome
—to want to be forced into surrender. That he did not force her but left her
path open seemed weakness—and something like coldness. An older
woman would have known that it was strength and rare devotion.
 She was silent and in a turmoil within.
“Then you’ll give me up?” she asked at last, evenly enough.
“I’ll never give you up, but I’ll never imprison you.”
“It all is the same.” Horatia spoke out of a weary effort to keep dignity,
not to break down before the indifference of her lover.
The languor that was all he could have heard in her voice was hard on
him. Langley put his head on his hands and hid the agony in his face.
“I told you once that you loved the romance you found in me,” he said
without resentment. “Well, I’ve destroyed the romance. I’m just ordinary,
cheap, uninspiring. But I’m not going to make you ordinary or cheap.
There’s so much romance left for you to find.”
She stood up and struck her hands together angrily.
“Don’t mock at me.”
“For God’s sake, Horatia, I wasn’t mocking.”
“Let me go—I will go now. I’ll go—on my vacation.”
“Your vacation?”
“We’ll call it that. I’ll go for a month—two months. And if I can come
back, I’ll come. But I’m afraid.”
“My darling—my darling—if you can’t, you are to find happiness more
worthily.”
He took her in his arms hungrily, sacrificially. That should have told her.
But she was hungering for prohibitions, for demands upon her. There was
no warmth in her, and he let her go.
At the door she lingered.
“Can you get someone to fill my place?”
“Yes—don’t worry about that. Just rest.”
“I’ve been happy here.”
“You’ve brought life with you.”
The door closed after her. She went down the staircase slowly, miserably.
Langley’s face was grey and old.
 CHAPTER XVII

T HE blue of the lake had faded into grey—a grey that looked thick and
heavy and that lay impassive under the blasting sunlight. Its coolness
was gone and its vigor. Above, in The Journal office, where the shades
were drawn down to keep out the heat, the vigor seemed gone too. The
machinery went on smoothly enough. At Horatia’s desk a young woman,
fresh from a New York school of journalism, was typing an excellent article
on what suffrage had done in the recent campaign. At the surrounding desks
the reporters struck off brief histories of automobile accidents, police raids,
city happenings. In Langley’s room, the pale little stenographer took
dictation as he walked up and down and worked out his editorials. There
were editorials on the street car franchise, that hardy perennial in city
problems, on the new appointment of the city planning commission, on the
latest foreign tangle, on the eternal disentangling of the knot of political
complications at Washington. Clearcut and well-phrased, his words came
on each subject, so that the stenographer hurried to keep up with the flow of
his thought, and yet something intangible had gone out of his thinking as
out of the office atmosphere. The office was no longer a place of romance
—an adventure—a laboratory in which to solve world problems—a crusade
against corruption as it had been for the past six months. It was a work-
shop, a clean, orderly work-shop—and that was all. They all missed
Horatia. During the first week of her absence Bob Brotherton had a
maddening way of calling constant attention to it and bewailing it. He
needed her for this and for that and he said facetiously that there was no use
in sprucing himself up any more. No one cared for him and he would wear
old clothes until she came back.
Jim had not realized how much Horatia meant to the staff. His own
devotion to her had been so absorbing that he had not noticed the relations
of the others. Now a stream of comments about her seemed to be floating
about the office all day long. To excuse her outrageously long and indefinite
vacation he had been compelled to say that she was not well and the staff
felt a shadow over them. They were forever finding things in the day’s work
which would have amused Horatia, forever recalling this or that incident
which had amused her, forever wishing she were back. Langley alone did
not comment on her, but Bob would say wisely when a particularly caustic
comment came out of the inner office, “He’s not himself. He misses the
young lady. He’s a different man when she’s around.”
With a great deal of wisdom he did not make that remark openly to
Langley.
The Journal was prospering more and more. It was no longer a paper to
apologize for or worry about. It was getting a very substantial circulation
and more and more advertisers. Jim realized that this success was due not
only to the paper itself, but also to the fact that there was coming to be a
place for a clean paper in the city—that more and more people liked their
news straight and unadulterated and wanted to read comment on the news
with which they did not necessarily a priori agree. He was stopped more
and more often by old friends and urged to come to the “house”; more and
more often he found himself deferred to in political discussions at the club
as the judgment of last appeal. He liked it all and he improved under it. He
kept up scrupulously after Horatia had gone as if to show her that he would
not let her work be wasted. Yet there was a change in him and in the quality
of his vigor. He was a man working for a principle and not an object,
whereas before he had been working for a principle and Horatia. The
eagerness had gone out of his eyes. Sometimes after the office was empty
he would go into the outer office and sitting at Horatia’s desk write her
letters—letters which left him sometimes pale and exhausted and
sometimes set and stern. But he had one invariable habit. He tore the
completed ink-written papers into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the
wastebasket before he left the office and went home. There was also often a
curious look on his face as he looked over his mail, and sometimes he
would lay an envelope carefully aside until everything else had been
attended to and then fall upon it as if he were famished. The envelopes were
rather more frequently present at first than later after Horatia had left town.
In the hurt anger of her vacation’s first twelve hours she had quite
decided not to write to him at all. During the second twenty-four hours she
wrote ten letters and mailed one brief little note saying that she was sorry if
she had hurt him and that she wanted above all things not to hurt his work
or affect The Journal, stated where several of her copy sheets had been left
and urged him to take a vacation himself and get a genuine rest. She ended
by saying that Maud wanted her to go with them to a country place near
Lake Habitat and that she thought she probably would go. Jim looked a
little grim at that because Lake Habitat was where the Wentworth cottage
was and he knew Maud. But he read on to her conclusion, a conclusion so
honest, so sweet and so suffering that the tears came into his eyes.
“It’s so hard, Jim. I feel empty and faint and I try to move about but I
seem like waxwork. Everything seems awfully mixed up in me. Nothing in
the world matters except you and yet we mustn’t fling ourselves blindly into
sentimental fervors if we really don’t belong together in every way. I can’t
write. Good-night—and God bless you.”
That was the last letter of such a kind that Jim received. The next one
was merely a note telling him that she was surely going with her sister and
giving her address in case her successor on The Journal or Jim, himself,
should need her. It was a much more controlled note and of course Jim did
not know that it, like its predecessor, had been written after much vain
effort and tearing up of letter paper. There had been a day when Horatia,
who had been shopping in town alone, had almost gone to The Journal
office. She hesitated and trying to gather resolution went into a tea room
and ordered some iced drink. The room was crowded and another woman
coming in sat down opposite her before they looked at each other. It was
Grace Walsh. With no change of color Grace rose, but Horatia put out a
detaining hand.
“Don’t move—please.”
“I’d like to stay if you don’t mind,” said Grace sincerely. “There are one
or two things I didn’t write you. My new companion in the flat is quite
anxious to stay on there. I suggested that you’d be undoubtedly willing to
sublet.”
“Gladly.”
“Are you still with your sister?”
“Yes—I’m going to the country with her tomorrow.”
“It’s your vacation, I suppose?”
It was very hard to dissemble before those calm, disillusioning, serious
eyes of Grace.
“A kind of vacation,” said Horatia, a little heavily.
A strange look came over Grace’s face—a look of anger, the look which
a mother has when her child is ill-treated.
 “You’ve been suffering.” Without any ado of conscious readjustments
they passed from an attitude of armed neutrality to a disarmed, a benevolent
neutrality.
“Yes.”
“Some man—some damned man—no, don’t tell me—poor little Horatia
—won’t you believe me when I tell you none of them is worth it? I wish to
heaven that women would stop letting themselves suffer. They’ve borne the
emotional burdens long enough. Why shouldn’t we take men as they take us
—as part of the day’s work? Look here, Horatia, you’re worth any ten men
I ever saw. Don’t let them wear you down.”
“I’m not.”
“You look frazzled.”
“I thought you liked men,” said Horatia, irrelevantly, “and disliked
women.”
“I like men and I like women when they are individuals—but women in
relation to men are usually unspeakable—and men in relation to women are
vile. We need to stand alone, Horatia—to shake things off. To feel—and to
know when to stop feeling.”
“To stop feeling,” repeated Horatia.
Grace leaned over and put her hand on the other girl’s.
“It’s hard—but it can be done,” she said and there was almost a
mesmeric quality in her sure, slow voice.
“I think we do need to learn that,” agreed Horatia.
She rose to go.
“Some time when I’m a lot bigger and better and more controlled and
not so cheap, I want to talk with you, Grace,” she said; “I know you’re right
in lots of things but the addition of your ideas is wrong. The grand total of
your philosophy is wrong. It’s got to be wrong. I won’t have it right. But we
do need to learn to stop feeling.”
Grace’s look followed her with a queer yearning in it—her eyes seemed
to say that she had not finished all she wanted to say.
Horatia went out to the street. The incoherent conversation had checked
her desire to see Langley. It had given her a cue. She would stop feeling.
Instead of to The Journal office she went to a large shop and tried on hats
before a many-sided mirror and was surprised to find herself succeeding in
her deliberate mental effort to get her mind away from its pain. The hats
interested her. Each one appeared to change her character and she began to
speculate on how she would like to change her type during the summer with
Maud and the Clapps and Wentworths. The saleswoman brought her the
kind of hats she usually ordered—large sailors—plain wing-trimmed
shapes, but Horatia laid them aside.
“That is the girl I am escaping from,” she said to herself, removing a
straight-brimmed gray sailor, and she pointed to one on a model. It was of
plain soft yellow chiffon and drooped a little about her face. Under it she
looked provocative, as if deliberately intending to charm.
She had never tried on such a hat before and she lingered before her
image in the mirror while the saleswoman poured out tributes.
“I’ll take it,” she said, and proceeded with unparalleled extravagance to
choose two more, one of black with soft waving feathers and one of rose
felt that crushed itself into different shapes on her head. Then, urged by the
saleswoman, who was gathering momentum, she bought a rose sweater to
wear with the rose hat, drew a check that half appalled and half amused her
and went home to Maud. Maud, receiving three hat boxes next morning,
was amazed and delighted. Evidently Horatia intended to play the game.
She pressed a yellow frock on Horatia which she insisted was necessary to
the well being of the yellow hat and mourned because she herself could not
wear yellow. Horatia was very gay. She pirouetted in her hats before Harvey
and to her amazement found that she was shaking off her worries and her
unhappiness. She wanted to go to the country place and be still more happy.
She insisted that unless they made it decently gay there she wasn’t going to
stay. And while Harvey chuckled and Maud opened her eyes she danced
upstairs to her room, closed the door, flung the yellow hat in the corner and
wept into Maud’s Madeira counterpane, suddenly intolerably homesick for
nothing in the world so much as her typewriter in The Journal office, the
twinkle of the lake under her window and the sound of Jim’s voice in the
next room, giving orders, telephoning, dictating.
 CHAPTER XVIII

A NTHONY’S sister stood in her cool country living room, arranging her
flowers. There were a mass of them that she had brought in from the
rough-and-tumble garden by the cottage wall—hollyhocks, tall and
pink and already in their place in a green vase against the wall—cerise
cinnamon phlox, filling the air with their vivid fragrance, a riot of
nasturtiums of all colors, sweet peas whose pastel lavenders and pinks were
spoiled until Marjorie put them in a glass basket before a little mirror,
poppies, and deep orange African marigolds. Marjorie separated them from
each other and then reassembled them, mixing in now bachelors’ buttons
with marigolds, and baby’s breath with poppies. She was quite absorbed
and her brother, lying on a cushion-piled settle, watched her admiringly and
for a few moments silently. When he spoke he seemed to be taking up an
interrupted conversation.
“You’re sure she is coming then?”
“Mrs. Williams told me so in town yesterday.”
“And you think that the skillful Maud was trying to hint that it was off
between Horatia and Jim Langley?”
“She had a saddened and romantic air about Horatia. I don’t know
exactly what she was trying to imply. But from a rather steady stream of
inquiries as to your whereabouts I was inclined to have vulgar suspicions
that she was really interested in you and your movements. And then she
said, ‘I suppose you know how it is, Mrs. Clapp, when these young things
turn to you with their romantic difficulties.’ And then she giggled. How that
remarkable young woman can giggle!” finished Marjorie.
Anthony sat puzzling.
“Of course Horatia doesn’t tell her a thing,” he said, “but that sort of
woman is astute as the devil in some ways. Well, if she comes down here,
Langley or no Langley, I’m going to go after her. If she wanted to marry
Langley badly enough she has had time enough to make sure by this time.
But it’s ridiculous to think of her wasting her time on one of these awfully
complicated intellectual emotional affairs if it’s not going to come to
anything. If she doesn’t want me she can tell me again—stronger—to get to
hell out—and I’ll get. But I’m going to get the thing settled. I thought
maybe I’d get over it when I got West. I didn’t see a girl while I was out
there who seemed real at all. And I’d catch myself mooning. It’s unhealthy.
It’s got to be stopped.”
“You want to remember,” said Marjorie, “that Horatia has had a hard
summer and that she will be tired. Don’t rush her too hard or she’ll go to
pieces or send you packing from sheer weariness.”
“I don’t mean to tire her. I want to rest her.” There was a strange mixture
of protectiveness and sullenness in Anthony’s tone.
“It’s all nonsense anyway,” he went on, “to think of her wearing herself
out in that miserable office. Girls oughtn’t to be allowed to knock
themselves to pieces that way. Where it’s necessary it’s bad enough but
when a girl——”
“Has only to sit back and let you support her,” laughed Marjorie.
“When a girl is like Horatia she’s altogether too valuable to throw
herself away for some fetish like earning a living. You know exactly what I
mean and you agree with me too, Marge.”
“It all depends on how much you can make her care for you.”
“I could make her care from sheer force of imitation if I could get this
Langley stuff out of her head.”
“Granted. But if she does happen to be in love with Langley?”
“He’s no person for her to marry.”
“You can’t do it by dogma, my dear.”
Anthony shook himself like an impatient puppy.
“Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t find some way to do it.”
“Love is queer,” reflected Marjorie, “in its effect on people. Now you
show it principally by a marked increase in profanity.”
Anthony grinned and left her.
The cottage stood well back from a road which wound itself around a
series of lakes and up steep hills into a district which was almost
mountainous. Anthony knew every foot of the country and loved it as well
as his cottage which had been the scene of so many pleasant parties, both
his own and Marjorie’s. It was the place above all which he would have
chosen for this biggest adventure of his life. The place which Maud had
taken was a few miles farther up the road but within easy distance. There
was every reason for Anthony’s contemplative smile as he swung down the
wooded road.
The Williams party arrived a few days later with some bustle. It was
Maud’s first venture into country residences and though it was on a small
scale it appealed to her immensely. Only her sudden acquaintance with
Marjorie Clapp had given her courage for the move, for the district in the
hills was a refuge for a society somewhat older and better acquainted than
Maud’s town crowd. She and Harvey had taken the children away for the
summer once before, but going to a summer hotel was a different and
incomparably insignificant thing beside the pride of belonging to a genuine
summer colony. She had asked Mrs. Clapp a little diffidently about places
in the hills and Mrs. Clapp had been unexpectedly helpful—even giving her
the name of a special cottage which could probably be rented. An
unpretentious little cottage enough but pleasant to Maud because the
Hilltons, the Straights, the Clapps and the Morrises wore their ginghams
and sun hats within a radius of ten miles, pleasant to Jackie because he had
been promised a rabbit, pleasant to Harvey on account of a neighboring
trout stream, and pleasant to Horatia because the woods around it offered
refuges and solace.
Harvey took them up in the new stream line touring car which was the
outward sign of his increasing prosperity, and while Maud watched a road
map to be sure that Harvey would not miss the road which went by the
Country Club which the summer-people had built, Horatia sat with her arm
around a weary little Jack, breathing in the freshness of the woods with
their summer scents and thinking. She felt very old and disappointed and
disillusioned, and she thought with envy of the first time she had driven
over this road with Anthony in the winter, feeling so happy and full of love
for Jim. Maud poured out a steady stream of comment and conjecture—and
Horatia hardly listened, knowing that expression and not attention was what
Maud sought. She had never liked her sister so well as she had during these
past days. Maud had let her alone and asked no questions. She seemed to be
waking into a kind of appreciation of Horatia’s feelings and Horatia was
very grateful, entirely ignorant as she was of Maud’s unrelinquished plans
about Anthony. Horatia had just thought of Anthony for the first time in
weeks. She had thought of him as the man who had driven the car when she
had gone through these places thinking of Jim, and first rejoicing in the
happiness of love.
 They reached their cottage and Maud was soon unpacking and opening
the house while the cook, imported lest life in the country become too
strenuous, began to prepare dinner. Horatia, bravely attired in her rose
sweater and hat, started out for a walk. She wanted to adjust her thoughts
and get perfectly calm, for she meant to be a gay companion and not a
doleful one.
Little leaf-covered paths wandered into the woods here and there. She
turned at random into them and went along, anxious to lose her loneliness
in the greater loneliness and friendliness of the forest. And here, for the first
time, she succeeded. The trees were motionless in the still afternoon. Their
branches curved and interlocked and made great, cool, dark green shadows.
The ferns stirred as she passed and she heard the lazy chirping of some
birds. It was deep and still and calm and sure, so that in the midst of it
Horatia became calm and sure for a moment. She felt her ache for Jim’s
presence pass, and for the first time since she had gone from him there
came a feeling that she was back where she belonged. For the first time she
felt awakened pleasure and she stood very still, almost afraid to stir lest the
peace that was filling her should change to misery again. After a little she
went on. She did not want to go back to the cottage yet. Later she would be
ready for them but as yet she was ready only for herself.
And so Anthony came upon her—a bright bit of color in the midst of the
woods with her eyes shining with peace. At the sight of her he felt the flush
of his own face. It was all very well to be full of bravado before Marjorie
but in the presence of Horatia his confidence waned. Yet she was clearly
glad to see him.
“I heard you were West.”
“I came back last week and heard that your sister had taken the Warner
cottage. I was hoping you’d come out with her. Every month seems the best
out here but this one is especially nice. And there are wonderful places to
walk and ride. We have a swimming place and a very poor tennis court
——”
“I don’t think I shall like the tennis court half as well as just this. I like
your woods.”
“So do I,” answered Anthony with happy sympathy. “Let me show you a
finer place than this though. Deeper in.”
 They went on until they came to a little clearing like a great room with
the trees interlocked above it. Along one side ran a tiny clear stream.
“But this is too perfect. This isn’t natural.”
“This is my room. I made it myself and furnished it by opening up the
stream. The bed was there for it but the water had been choked by a dam of
leaves. I cleared it out and now you see I have running water in my room.
That’s all I need.”
“It’s the most beautiful interior decoration I ever saw.”
“You shall have a key for that.”
He did not keep her. But he walked towards his sister’s cottage and they
came out in her garden. Horatia went into the house to see Marjorie and the
children. She felt curiously at home there, and Marjorie was so very glad to
see her that Horatia felt even more happy. She thought suddenly that she
could tell Marjorie a little about Jim, and that Marjorie was the only person
in the world to whom she could tell even a little. But there was little time to
think. Everyone wanted to plan things to do and to arrange for many things.
Then Anthony insisted that he had walked her unconscionably far and to
save her stiffness he must take her home. She got into the car with
delightful familiarity. Anthony said never a personal word and if he thought
them, Horatia did not guess. She found him very handsome in his country
khaki and even more wholesome than ever. She was in a mood to yearn for
wholesomeness.
Maud would have Anthony stay for dinner. Horatia found herself urging
him too and to her greater surprise found herself thoroughly anticipating
dinner. She had not been hungry for some time but tonight——
“I’ve never seen Horatia eat so much,” said Anthony, “except on a
memorable evening at the Redtop Hotel.”
Banter and nonsense—healthy nonsense. How restful they were after
introspection and worry. How friendly and cheerful everyone was, and how
quiet and peaceful it was about them. Maud watched Anthony as she
crocheted a sweater for herself—Anthony watched Horatia—Harvey with a
secret amusement watched his wife and his sister-in-law, but Horatia
watched no one. She was revelling in peace. Jim was in her mind but no
longer torturing her. She thought of him as loving her and of herself as
loving him. No solutions of her difficulty came to her and she did not look
for any. She was content to be in the midst of life. It no longer frightened
her.
“Good-night,” said Anthony. “I’ll be over often. Look for me on the
doorstep every morning.”