Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA
By Booth Tarkington
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY
II. THE STRANGE LADY
III. LONESOMENESS
IV. THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
V. AT THE PASTURE BARS: ELDER-BUSHES MAY HAVE STINGS
VI. JUNE
VII. MORNING: “SOME IN RAGS AND SOME IN TAGS AND SOME IN VELVET GOWNS”
VIII. GLAD AFTERNOON: THE GIRL BY THE BLUE TENT POLE
IX. NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST
X. THE COURT-HOUSE BELL
XI. JOHN BROWN'S BODY
XII. JERRY THE TELLER
XIII. JAMES FISBEE
XIV. A RESCUE
XV. NETTLES
XVI. PRETTY MARQUISE
XVII. HELEN'S TOAST
XVIII. THE TREACHERY OF H. FISBEE
XIX. THE GREAT HARKLESS COMES HOME
CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY
There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian
Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their
eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a
Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level:
bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in
summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles on miles with not one cool hill
slope away from the sun. The persistent tourist who seeks for signs of
man in this sad expanse perceives a reckless amount of rail fence; at
intervals a large barn; and, here and there, man himself, incurious,
patient, slow, looking up from the fields apathetically as the Limited
flies by. Widely separated from each other are small frame railway
stations--sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates
that somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin
cottages are grouped about a couple of brick stores.
On the station platforms there are always two or three wooden
packing-boxes, apparently marked for travel, but they are sacred from
disturbance and remain on the platform forever; possibly the right train
never comes along. They serve to enthrone a few station loafers, who
look out from under their hat-brims at the faces in the car-windows with
the languid scorn a permanent fixture always has for a transient, and
the pity an American feels for a fellow-being who does not live in his
town. Now and then the train passes a town built scatteringly about
a court-house, with a mill or two humming near the tracks. This is
a county-seat, and the inhabitants and the local papers refer to it
confidently as “our city.” The heart of the flat lands is a central area
called Carlow County, and the county-seat of Carlow is a town unhappily
named in honor of its first settler, William Platt, who christened it
with his blood. Natives of this place have sometimes remarked, easily,
that their city had a population of from five to six thousand souls. It
is easy to forgive them for such statements; civic pride is a virtue.
The social and business energy of Plattville concentrates on the Square.
Here, in summer-time, the gentlemen are wont to lounge from store
to store in their shirt sleeves; and here stood the old, red-brick
court-house, loosely fenced in a shady grove of maple and elm--“slipp'ry
ellum”--called the “Court-House Yard.” When the sun grew too hot for the
dry-goods box whittlers in front of the stores around the Square and the
occupants of the chairs in front of the Palace Hotel on the corner, they
would go across and drape themselves over the court-house fence, under
the trees, and leisurely carve there initials on the top board. The
farmers hitched their teams to the fence, for there were usually loafers
energetic enough to shout “Whoa!” if the flies worried the horses
beyond patience. In the yard, amongst the weeds and tall, unkept grass,
chickens foraged all day long; the fence was so low that the most
matronly hen flew over with propriety; and there were gaps that
accommodated the passage of itinerant pigs. Most of the latter, however,
preferred the cool wallows of the less important street corners. Here
and there a big dog lay asleep in the middle of the road, knowing well
that the easy-going Samaritan, in his case, would pass by on the other
side.
Only one street attained to the dignity of a name--Main Street, which
formed the north side of the Square. In Carlow County, descriptive
location is usually accomplished by designating the adjacent, as, “Up at
Bardlocks',” “Down by Schofields',” “Right where Hibbards live,” “Acrost
from Sol. Tibbs's,” or, “Other side of Jones's field.” In winter, Main
Street was a series of frozen gorges land hummocks; in fall and spring,
a river of mud; in summer, a continuing dust heap; it was the best
street in Plattville.
The people lived happily; and, while the world whirled on outside, they
were content with their own. It would have moved their surprise as
much as their indignation to hear themselves spoken of as a “secluded
community”; for they sat up all night to hear the vote of New York,
every campaign. Once when the President visited Rouen, seventy miles
away, there were only few bankrupts (and not a baby amongst them) left
in the deserted homes of Carlow County. Everybody had adventures; almost
everybody saw the great man; and everybody was glad to get back home
again. It was the longest journey some of them ever set upon, and these,
elated as they were over their travels, determined to think twice ere
they went that far from home another time.
On Saturdays, the farmers enlivened the commercial atmosphere of
Plattville; and Miss Tibbs, the postmaster's sister and clerk, used to
make a point of walking up and down Main Street as often as possible,
to get a thrill in the realization of some poetical expressions that
haunted her pleasingly; phrases she had employed frequently in her poems
for the “Carlow County Herald.” When thirty or forty country people were
scattered along the sidewalks in front of the stores on Main Street, she
would walk at nicely calculated angles to the different groups so as to
leave as few gaps as possible between the figures, making them appear
as near a solid phalanx as she could. Then she would murmur to herself,
with the accent of soulful revel, “The thronged city streets,” and,
“Within the thronged city,” or, “Where the thronging crowds were
swarming and the great cathedral rose.” Although she had never been
beyond Carlow and the bordering counties in her life, all her poems were
of city streets and bustling multitudes. She was one of those who had
been unable to join the excursion to Rouen when the President was there;
but she had listened avidly to her friends' descriptions of the crowds.
Before that time her muse had been sylvan, speaking of “Flow'rs of May,”
and hinting at thoughts that overcame her when she roved the woodlands
thro'; but now the inspiration was become decidedly municipal and
urban, evidently reluctant to depart beyond the retail portions of a
metropolis. Her verses beginning, “O, my native city, bride of Hibbard's
winding stream,”--Hibbard's Creek runs west of Plattville, except in
time of drought--“When thy myriad lights are shining, and thy faces,
like a dream, Go flitting down thy sidewalks when their daily toil is
done,” were pronounced, at the time of their publication, the best poem
that had ever appeared in the “Herald.”
This unlucky newspaper was a thorn in the side of every patriot of
Carlow County. It was a poor paper; everybody knew it was a poor paper;
it was so poor that everybody admitted it was a poor paper--worse, the
neighboring county of Amo possessed a better paper, the “Amo Gazette.”
The “Carlow County Herald” was so everlastingly bad that Plattville
people bent their heads bitterly and admitted even to citizens of Amo
that the “Gazette” was the better paper. The “Herald” was a weekly,
issued on Saturday; sometimes it hung fire over Sunday and appeared
Monday evening. In their pride, the Carlow people supported the “Herald”
loyally and long; but finally subscriptions began to fall off and the
“Gazette” gained them. It came to pass that the “Herald” missed fire
altogether for several weeks; then it came out feebly, two small
advertisements occupying the whole of the fourth page. It was breathing
its last. The editor was a clay-colored gentleman with a goatee, whose
one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of disposition and
a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the outstanding
subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just mentioned, and,
thoughtfully neglecting several items on the other side of the ledger,
departed from Plattville forever.
The same afternoon a young man from the East alighted on the platform
of the railway station, north of the town, and, entering the rickety
omnibus that lingered there, seeking whom it might rattle to deafness,
demanded to be driven to the Herald Building. It did not strike the
driver that the newcomer was precisely a gay young man when he climbed
into the omnibus; but, an hour later, as he stood in the doorway of the
edifice he had indicated as his destination, depression seemed to have
settled into the marrow of his bones. Plattville was instantly alert to
the stranger's presence, and interesting conjectures were hazarded all
day long at the back door of Martin's Dry-Goods Emporium, where all the
clerks from the stores around the Square came to play checkers or look
on at the game. (This was the club during the day; in the evening the
club and the game removed to the drug, book, and wall-paper store on
the corner.) At supper, the new arrival and his probable purposes were
discussed over every table in the town. Upon inquiry, he had informed
Judd Bennett, the driver of the omnibus, that he had come to stay.
Naturally, such a declaration caused a sensation, as people did not come
to Plattville to live, except through the inadvertency of being born
there. In addition, the young man's appearance and attire were reported
to be extraordinary. Many of the curious, among them most of the
marriageable females of the place, took occasion to pass and repass the
sign of the “Carlow County Herald” during the evening.
Meanwhile, the stranger was seated in the dingy office upstairs with
his head bowed low on his arms. Twilight stole through the dirty
window-panes and faded into darkness. Night filled the room. He did not
move. The young man from the East had bought the “Herald” from an
agent; had bought it without ever having been within a hundred miles of
Plattville. He had vastly overpaid for it. Moreover, the price he had
paid for it was all the money he had in the world.
The next morning he went bitterly to work. He hired a compositor from
Rouen, a young man named Parker, who set type all night long and helped
him pursue advertisements all day. The citizens shook their heads
pessimistically. They had about given up the idea that the “Herald”
could ever amount to anything, and they betrayed an innocent, but
caustic, doubt of ability in any stranger.
One day the new editor left a note on his door; “Will return in fifteen
minutes.”
Mr. Rodney McCune, a politician from the neighboring county of Gaines,
happening to be in Plattville on an errand to his henchmen, found the
note, and wrote beneath the message the scathing inquiry, “Why?”
When he discovered this addendum, the editor smiled for the first time
since his advent, and reported the incident in his next issue, using the
rubric, “Why Has the 'Herald' Returned to Life?” as a text for a rousing
editorial on “honesty in politics,” a subject of which he already knew
something. The political district to which Carlow belonged was governed
by a limited number of gentlemen whose wealth was ever on the increase;
and “honesty in politics” was a startling conception to the minds of the
passive and resigned voters, who discussed the editorial on the street
corners and in the stores. The next week there was another editorial,
personal and local in its application, and thereby it became evident
that the new proprietor of the “Herald” was a theorist who believed, in
general, that a politician's honor should not be merely of that
middling healthy species known as “honor amongst politicians”; and, in
particular, that Rodney McCune should not receive the nomination of his
party for Congress. Now, Mr. McCune was the undoubted dictator of the
district, and his followers laughed at the stranger's fantastic onset.
But the editor was not content with the word of print; he hired a horse
and rode about the country, and (to his own surprise) he proved to be
an adaptable young man who enjoyed exercise with a pitchfork to the
farmer's profit while the farmer talked. He talked little himself, but
after listening an hour or so, he would drop a word from the saddle as
he left; and then, by some surprising wizardry, the farmer, thinking
over the interview, decided there was some sense in what that young
fellow said, and grew curious to see what the young fellow had further
to say in the “Herald.”
Politics is the one subject that goes to the vitals of every rural
American; and a Hoosier will talk politics after he is dead.
Everybody read the campaign editorials, and found them interesting,
although there was no one who did not perceive the utter absurdity of a
young stranger's dropping into Carlow and involving himself in a party
fight against the boss of the district. It was entirely a party fight;
for, by grace of the last gerrymander, the nomination carried with it
the certainty of election. A week before the convention there came a
provincial earthquake; the news passed from man to man in awe-struck
whispers--McCune had withdrawn his name, making the hollowest of excuses
to his cohorts. Nothing was known of the real reason for his disordered
retreat, beyond the fact that he had been in Plattville on the morning
before his withdrawal and had issued from a visit to the “Herald” office
in a state of palsy. Mr. Parker, the Rouen printer, had been present at
the close of the interview; but he held his peace at the command of his
employer. He had been called into the sanctum, and had found McCune,
white and shaking, leaning on the desk.
“Parker,” said the editor, exhibiting a bundle of papers he held in his
hand, “I want you to witness a verbal contract between Mr. McCune and
myself. These papers are an affidavit and copies of some records of a
street-car company which obtained a charter while Mr McCune was in
the State legislature. They were sent to me by a man I do not know, an
anonymous friend of Mr. McCune's; in fact, a friend he seems to have
lost. On consideration of our not printing these papers, Mr. McCune
agrees to retire from politics for good. You understand, if he ever
lifts his head again, politically, We publish them, and the courts will
do the rest. Now, in case anything should happen to me----”
“Something will happen to you, all right,” broke out McCune. “You can
bank on that, you black----”
“Come,” the editor interrupted, not unpleasantly “why should there be
anything personal, in all this? I don't recognize you as my private
enemy--not at all; and I think you are getting off rather easily; aren't
you? You stay out of politics, and everything will be comfortable. You
ought never to have been in it, you see. It's a mistake not to keep
square, because in the long run somebody is sure to give you away--like
the fellow who sent me these. You promise to hold to a strictly private
life?”
“You're a traitor to the party,” groaned the other, “but you only
wait----”
The editor smiled sadly. “Wait nothing. Don't threaten, man. Go home to
your wife. I'll give you three to one she'll be glad you are out of it.”
“I'll give you three to one,” said McCune, “that the White Caps will
get you if you stay in Carlow. You want to look out for yourself, I tell
you, my smart boy!”
“Good-day, Mr. McCune,” was the answer. “Let me have your note of
withdrawal before you leave town this afternoon.” The young man paused
a moment, then extended his hand, as he said: “Shake hands, won't you?
I--I haven't meant to be too hard on you. I hope things will seem easier
and gayer to you before long; and if--if anything should turn up that I
can do for you in a private way, I'll be very glad, you know. Good-by.”
The sound of the “Herald's” victory went over the State. The paper came
out regularly. The townsfolk bought it and the farmers drove in for it.
Old subscribers came back. Old advertisers renewed. The “Herald” began
to sell in Amo, and Gaines County people subscribed. Carlow folk held
up their heads when journalism was mentioned. Presently the “Herald”
announced a news connection with Rouen, and with that, and the aid of
“patent insides,” began an era of three issues a week, appearing on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The Plattville Brass Band serenaded
the editor.
During the second month of the new regime of the “Herald,” the working
force of the paper received an addition. One night the editor found some
barroom loafers tormenting a patriarchal old man who had a magnificent
head and a grand white beard. He had been thrown out of a saloon, and he
was drunk with the drunkenness of three weeks steady pouring. He propped
himself against a wall and reproved his tormentors in Latin. “I'm
walking your way, Mr. Fisbee,” remarked the journalist, hooking his arm
into the old man's. “Suppose we leave our friends here and go home?”
Mr. Fisbee was the one inhabitant of the town who had an unknown past;
no one knew more about him than that he had been connected with a
university somewhere, and had travelled in unheard-of countries before
he came to Plattville. A glamour of romance was thrown about him by the
gossips, to whom he ever proved a fund of delightful speculation. There
was a dark, portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion
not too well confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a
pathetic habit of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that
had a queer sort of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the
Holy Grail, perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had
a look of race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he
was lost in dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be
of great practicability in their application. Some such impression of
Fisbee was probably what caused the editor of the “Herald” to nickname
him (in his own mind) “The White Knight,” and to conceive a strong, if
whimsical, fancy for him.
Old Fisbee had come (from nobody knew where) to Plattville to teach,
and had been principal of the High School for ten years, instructing
his pupils after a peculiar fashion of his own, neglecting the ordinary
courses of High School instruction to lecture on archaeology to the
dumfounded scholars; growing year by year more forgetful and absent,
lost in his few books and his own reflections, until, though undeniably
a scholar, he had been discharged for incompetency. He was old; he had
no money and no way to make money; he could find nothing to do. The blow
had seemed to daze him for a time; then he began to drop in at the hotel
bar, where Wilkerson, the professional drunkard, favored him with his
society. The old man understood; he knew it was the beginning of the
end. He sold his books in order to continue his credit at the Palace
bar, and once or twice, unable to proceed to his own dwelling, spent
the night in a lumber yard, piloted thither by the hardier veteran,
Wilkerson.
The morning after the editor took him home, Fisbee appeared at the
“Herald” office in a new hat and a decent suit of black. He had received
his salary in advance, his books had been repurchased, and he had become
the reportorial staff of the “Carlow County Herald”; also, he was to
write various treatises for the paper. For the first few evenings, when
he started home from the office, his chief walked with him, chatting
heartily, until they had passed the Palace bar. But Fisbee's redemption
was complete.
The old man had a daughter. When she came to Plattville, he told her
what the editor of the “Herald” had done for him.
The journalist kept steadily at his work; and, as time went on, the
bitterness his predecessor's swindle had left him passed away. But his
loneliness and a sense of defeat grew and deepened. When the vistas of
the world had opened to his first youth, he had not thought to spend his
life in such a place as Plattville; but he found himself doing it, and
it was no great happiness to him that the congressional representative
of the district, the gentleman whom the “Herald's” opposition to
McCune had sent to Washington, came to depend on his influence for
renomination; nor did the realization that the editor of the “Carlow
County Herald” had come to be McCune's successor as political dictator
produce a perceptibly enlivening effect on the young man. The years
drifted very slowly, and to him it seemed they went by while he stood
far aside and could not even see them move. He did not consider the life
he led an exciting one; but the other citizens of Carlow did when he
undertook a war against the “White Caps.” The natives were much more
afraid of the “White Caps” than he was; they knew more about them and
understood them better than he did.