A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE KANKAKEE
Harwood's faith in Bassett as a political prophet was badly shaken by
the result of the campaign that fall. About half the Democratic
candidates for state office were elected, but even more surprising was
the rolling-up of a good working majority in both houses of the General
Assembly. If Thatcher had knifed Bassett men or if Thatcher men had been
knifed at Bassett's behest, evidence of such perfidy was difficult to
adduce from the returns. Harwood was not sure, as he studied the
figures, whether his party's surprising success was attributable to a
development of real strength in Thatcher, who had been much in evidence
throughout the campaign, or whether Bassett deserved the credit. He was
disposed to think it only another expression of that capriciousness of
the electorate which is often manifested in years when national success
is not directly involved. While Thatcher and Bassett had apparently
struck a truce and harmonized their factions, Harwood had at no time
entertained illusions as to the real attitude of the men toward each
other. When the _entente_ between the leaders was mentioned among
Thatcher's intimates they were prone to declare that Ed would "get"
Bassett; it might take time, but the day of retribution would surely
come.
As a candidate for the lower house in Marion County, Harwood had been
thrust forward prominently into a campaign whose liveliness belied the
traditional apathy of "off" years. On the Saturday night before the
election, Thatcher and Bassett had appeared together on the platform at
a great meeting at the capital--one of those final flourishes by which
county chairmen are prone to hearten their legions against the morrow's
battle. Bassett had spoken for ten minutes at this rally, urging support
of the ticket and in crisp phrases giving the lie to reports of his
lukewarmness. His speech was the more noteworthy from the fact that it
was the first time, in all his political career, that he had ever spoken
at a political meeting, and there was no questioning its favorable
impression.
Bassett was, moreover, reelected to his old seat in the senate without
difficulty; and Harwood ran ahead of his associates on the legislative
ticket in Marion County, scoring a plurality that testified to his
personal popularity. Another campaign must intervene before the United
States Senatorship became an acute issue, and meanwhile the party in the
state had not in many years been so united. Credit was freely given to
the "Courier" for the formidable strength developed by the Democracy:
and it had become indubitably a vigorous and conservative reflector of
party opinion, without estranging a growing constituency of readers who
liked its clean and orderly presentation of general news. The ownership
of the newspaper had become, since the abrupt termination of the lawsuit
instituted by Thatcher, almost as much of a mystery as formerly.
Harwood's intimate relations with it had not been revived, and neither
Mrs. Owen nor Bassett ever spoke to him of the newspaper except in the
most casual fashion.
Dan was conscious that the senator from Fraser had changed in the years
that had passed since the beginning of their acquaintance. Bassett had
outwardly altered little as he crossed the watershed of middle life; but
it seemed to Dan that the ill-temper he had manifested in the Thatcher
affair had marked a climacteric. The self-control and restraint that had
so impressed him at first had visibly diminished. What Harwood had taken
for steel seemed to him now only iron after all--and brittle iron.
During the last week of the campaign an incident occurred that shook
Harwood a good deal. He had been away from the capital for several days
making speeches, and finding that his itinerary would permit it, he ran
into town unexpectedly one night to replenish his linen and look at his
mail. An interurban car landed him in town at eleven o'clock, and he
went directly to the Boordman Building. As he walked down the hall
toward his office he was surprised to see a light showing on the
ground-glass door of Room 66. Though Bassett kept a room at the Whitcomb
for private conferences, he occasionally used his office in the Boordman
for the purpose, and seeing the rooms lighted, Dan expected to find him
there. He tried the door and found it locked, and as he drew out his key
he heard suddenly the click of the typewriter inside. Miss Farrell was
rarely at the office at night, but as Harwood opened the door, he found
her busily tapping the keys of her machine. She swung round quickly with
an air of surprise, stretched herself, and yawned.
"Well, I wasn't exactly looking for you, but I can't deny that I'm glad
to be interrupted. Hope you don't mind my doing a small job on the
side--"
As Harwood stood, suit-case in hand, blinking at her, he heard a door
farther down the hall close, followed by a step in the hall outside.
Harwood had seen no lights in the neighboring offices as he crossed the
hall, and in his frequent long night vigils with his law books, it was
the rarest thing to find any of the neighboring tenants about. He turned
quickly to the door while the retreating steps were still audible.
"Oh!"
Rose had half-risen from her seat as he put his hand to the knob and her
tone of alarm arrested him. Instead of flinging open the door he dropped
his bag into a corner. His face flushed with sudden anger.
"I didn't suppose you'd mind my doing a little extra work out of hours,
Mr. Harwood. Colonel Ramsay was in the office to see Mr. Bassett this
afternoon and asked me to take some dictation for him. I guess it's
about time for me to go home."
She pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter with a sharp _brrrrr_
and dropped it into a drawer with a single deft twist of the wrist.
"The Colonel didn't mention it to me," remarked Dan, feigning
indifference and not looking at her. "He was making a speech at Terre
Haute to-night when I left there."
He tried to minimize the disagreeable aspects of the matter. Rose had
been employed by Bassett as stenographer to one of his legislative
committees before Dan's relations with the politician began. Since
Harwood employed her Bassett had made use of her constantly in the
writing of letters. There would have been nothing extraordinary in his
calling her to the office for an evening's work; it was the girl's
falsehood about Ramsay and the quiet closing of the door of Bassett's
inner room that disturbed Harwood. He passed into the library and Rose
left without saying good-night. The incident annoyed Dan; Bassett's step
had been unmistakable, and the girl's confusion had its disagreeable
significance. He had not thought this of Bassett; it was inconsonant
with the character of man he still believed Morton Bassett to be.
In winding up the receivership of the paper company Bassett had treated
Harwood generously. Dan was out of debt; he had added forty acres of
good land to his father's farm, and he kept a little money in bank. He
had even made a few small investments in local securities that promised
well, and his practice had become quite independent of Bassett: almost
imperceptibly Bassett had ceased to be a factor in his prosperity. The
office in the Boordman Building remained the same, and Bassett spent a
good deal of time there. There were days when he seemed deeply
preoccupied, and he sometimes buried himself in his room without
obvious reason; then after an interval he would come out and throw his
leg over a corner of Dan's desk and talk to him with his earlier
frankness. Once he suggested that Dan might like to leave the Boordman
for a new office building that was lifting the urban skyline; but the
following day he came rather pointedly to Dan's desk, and with an
embarrassment he rarely showed, said that of course if Dan moved he
should expect to go with him; he hoped Dan had understood that. A few
days later he entrusted Dan with several commissions that he seemed to
have devised solely to show his good will and confidence.
Harwood was happy these days. He was still young and life had dealt
kindly with him. Among lawyers he was pointed to as a coming light of
the bar; and in politics he was the most conspicuous man of his age in
the state. He was invited to Harrison County that fall to deliver an
address at a reunion of the veterans of his father's regiment, and that
had pleased him. He had more than justified the hopes of his parents and
brothers, and they were very proud of him. While they did not understand
his apostasy from the family's stern Republicanism, this did not greatly
matter when Dan's name so often came floating home in the Indianapolis
newspapers. His mother kept careful track of his social enthrallments;
her son was frequently among those present at private and public
dinners; and when the president of Yale visited Indiana, Dan spoke at
the banquet given in his honor by the alumni; and not without emotion
does a woman whose life has been spent on a humble farm find that her
son has won a place among people of distinction in a city which is to
her the capital of the Universe. There were times when Dan wished to be
free of Bassett. He had reached a point where Bassett was not only of
little service to him, but where he felt he was of little use to
Bassett. And it was irksome to find that all the local newspapers,
except the "Courier," constantly identified the Boordman Building with
Bassett's political activities.
Amid all the agitations of the campaign Dan had seen as much as possible
of Sylvia. The settlement of Andrew Kelton's estate gave him an excuse
for consulting her frequently, but he sought her frankly for the
pleasure of seeing her. He found that she was a good deal at Mrs.
Owen's, and it was pleasanter to run in upon her there than at Elizabeth
House, where they must needs share the parlor with other callers. Often
he and Allen met at Mrs. Owen's and debated the questions that were
forever perplexing young Thatcher's eager mind,--debates that Mrs. Owen
suffered to run so far and then terminated with a keen observation that
left no more to be said, sending them to the pantry to forage for food
and drink. Thatcher had resented for a time Harwood's participation in
his humiliation at the convention; but his ill-feeling had not been
proof against Allen's warm defense. Thatcher's devotion to his son had
in it a kind of pathos, and it was not in him to vent his spleen against
his son's best friend.
A few days after the election Thatcher invited Harwood to join him and
Allen in a week's shooting in the Kankakee where he owned a house-boat
that Allen had never seen.
"Come up, Dan, and rest your voice. It's a good place to loaf, and we'll
take John Ware along as our moral uplifter. Maybe we'll pot a few ducks,
but if we don't we'll get away from our troubles for a little while
anyhow."
The house-boat proved to be commodious and comfortable, and the ducks
scarce enough to make the hunter earn his supper. I may say in
parenthesis that long before Thatcher's day many great and good Hoosiers
scattered birdshot over the Kankakee marshes--which, alack! have been
drained to increase Indiana's total area of arable soil. "Lew" Wallace
and other Hoosier generals and judges used to hunt ducks on the
Kankakee; and Maurice Thompson not only camped there, but wrote a poem
about the marshes,--a poem that _is_ a poem,--all about the bittern and
the plover and the heron, which always, at the right season, called him
away from the desk and the town to try his bow (he was the last of the
toxophilites!) on winged things he scorned to destroy with gunpowder.
(Oh what a good fellow you were, Maurice Thompson, and what songs you
wrote of our lakes and rivers and feathered things! And how I gloated
over those songs of fair weather in old "Atlantics" in my grandfather's
garret, before they were bound into that slim, long volume with the
arrow-pierced heron on its cover!)
John Ware, an ancient and honorable son of the tribe of Nimrod, was the
best of comrades. The striking quality in Ware was his beautiful
humanness, which had given him a peculiar hold upon men. Thatcher was
far from being a saint, but, like many other cheerful sinners in our
capital, he had gone to church in the days when Ware occupied the First
Congregational pulpit. A good many years had passed since Ware had been
a captain of cavalry, chasing Stuart's boys in the Valley of Virginia,
but he was still a capital wing shot. A house-boat is the best place in
the world for talk, and the talk in Thatcher's boat, around the
sheet-iron stove, was good those crisp November evenings.
On Sunday Ware tramped off to a country church, taking his companions
with him. It was too bad to miss the ducks, he said, but a day's peace
in the marshes gave them a chance to accumulate. That evening he talked
of Emerson, with whom he had spoken face to face in Concord in that
whitest of houses. We shouldn't bring this into our pages if it hadn't
been that Ware's talk in that connection interested Thatcher greatly.
And ordinarily Thatcher knew and cared less about Emerson than about the
Vedic Hymns. Allen was serenely happy to be smoking his pipe in the
company of a man who had fought with Sheridan, heard Phillips speak, and
talked to John Brown and Emerson. When Ware had described his interview
with the poet he was silent for a moment, then he refilled his pipe.
"It's odd," he continued, "but I've picked up copies of Emerson's books
in queer places. Not so strange either; it seems the natural thing to
find loose pages of his essays stuck around in old logging-camps. I did
just that once, when I was following Thoreau's trail through the Maine
woods. Some fellow had pinned a page of 'Compensation' on the door of a
cabin I struck one night when it was mighty good to find shelter,--the
pines singing, snowstorm coming on. That leaf was pretty well
weather-stained; I carried it off with me and had it framed--hangs in my
house now. Another time I was doing California on horseback, and in an
abandoned shack in the Sierras I found Emerson's 'Poems'--an old copy
that somebody had thumbed a good deal. I poked it out of some rubbish
and came near making a fire of it. Left it, though, for the next fellow.
I've noticed that if one thing like that happens to you there's bound to
be another. Is that superstition, Thatcher? I'm not superstitious,--not
particularly,--but we've all got some of it in our hides. After that
second time--it was away back in the seventies, when I was preaching for
a spell in 'Frisco--I kept looking for the third experience that I felt
would come."
"Oh, of course it did come!" cried Allen eagerly.
"Well, that third time it wasn't a loose leaf torn out and stuck on a
plank, or just an old weather-stained book; it was a copy that had been
specially bound--a rare piece of work. I don't care particularly for
fine bindings, but that had been done with taste,--a dark green,--the
color you get looking across the top of a pine wood; and it seemed
appropriate. Emerson would have liked it himself."
The sheet-iron stove had grown red hot and Harwood flung open the door.
The glow from the fire fell full upon the dark, rugged face and the
white hair of the minister, who was sitting on a soap-box with his
elbows on his knees. In a gray flannel shirt he looked like a lumberman
of the North. An unusual tenderness had stolen into his lean,
Indian-like face.
"That was a long while after that ride in the Sierras. Let me see, it
was more than twenty years ago,--I can't just place the year; no
difference. I'd gone up into the Adirondacks to see my folks. I told you
about our farm once, Allen,--not far from John Brown's old place. It
isn't as lonesome up there now as it was when I was a boy; there were
bully places to hide up there; I used to think of that when I was
reading Scott and Cooper. Brown could have hid there forever if he'd got
out of Virginia after the raid. Nowadays there are too many hotels, and
people go canoeing in ironed collars. No good. My folks were all gone
even then, and strangers lived in my father's house. From the old place
I moved along, walking and canoeing it. Stopped on Saturday in a
settlement where there was a church that hadn't been preached in since
anybody could remember. Preached for 'em on Sunday. An old Indian died,
while I was there, and I baptized and buried him. But that wasn't what
kept me. There was a young woman staying at the small boarding-house
where I stopped--place run by a man and his wife. Stranger had brought
her there early in the summer. City people--they told the folks they
came from New York. They were young, well-appearing folks--at least the
girl was. The man had gone off and left her there, and she was going to
have a child soon and was terribly ill. They called me in one day when
they thought the woman was dying. The country doctor wasn't much
good--an old fellow who didn't know that anything particular had
happened in his profession since Harvey discovered the circulation of
the blood. I struck off to Saranac and got a city doctor to go and look
at the woman. Nice chap he was, too. He stayed there till the woman's
troubles were over. Daughter born and everything all right. She never
mentioned the man who had left her there. Wouldn't answer the doctor's
questions and didn't tell me anything either. Strange business, just to
drop in on a thing like that."
It occurred to Harwood that this big, gray, kindly man had probably
looked upon many dark pictures in his life. The minister appeared to be
talking half to himself, and there had been abrupt pauses in his
characteristically jerky recital. There was a long silence which he
broke by striking his hands together abruptly, and shaking his head.
"The man that kept the boarding-house was scared for fear the woman
wasn't straight; didn't like the idea of having a strange girl with a
baby left on his hands. I had to reason some with that fellow; but his
wife was all right, and did her full duty by the girl. She was a mighty
pretty young girl, and she took her troubles, whatever they were, like
what you'd call a true sport, Ed."
Thatcher, stretched out on a camp bed at the side of the room, chewing a
cigar, grunted.
"Well," the minister continued, "I was around there about three weeks;
put in all my vacation there. Fact is I hated to go off and leave that
girl until I was sure I couldn't do anything for her. But she was
getting out of the woods before I left, and I offered to help her any
way I could. She didn't seem to lack for money; a couple of letters with
money came for her, but didn't seem to cheer her much. There was a beast
in the jungle,--no doubt of that,--but she was taking good care to hide
him. Didn't seem to care much about taking care of herself, even when
she must have known that it looked bad for her. She was a flighty,
volatile sort of creature; made a lot of what I'd done for her in
bringing over the doctor. That doctor was a brick, too. Lots of good
people in the world, boys. Let me see; Dan, feel in that shooting-coat
of mine on the nail behind you and you'll find the book I started to
tell you about. Thanks. You see it's a little banged up because I've
carried it around with me a good deal--fishing-trips and so on; but it's
acquired tone since I began handling it--the green in that leather has
darkened. 'Society and Solitude.' There's the irony of fate for
you.--Where had I got to? When I went in to say good-bye we had quite a
talk. I thought maybe there was some message I could carry to her
friends for her, but she was game and wouldn't hear to it. She wanted
the little girl baptized, but said she hadn't decided what to name her;
asked me if I could baptize a baby without having a real name. She was
terribly cut up and cried about it. I said I guessed God Almighty didn't
care much about names, and if she hadn't decided on one I'd name the
baby myself and I did: I named the little girl--and a mighty cute
youngster she was, too--I named her Elizabeth--favorite name of
mine;--just the mother, lying there in bed, and the man and woman that
kept the boarding-house in the room. The mother said she wanted to do
something for me; and as I was leaving her she pulled this book out and
made me take it."
"I suppose it was a favorite book of hers and all that," suggested Dan.
"I don't think anybody had ever opened that book," replied Ware,
smiling. "It was brand-new--not a scratch on it."
"And afterward?" asked Allen, anxious for the rest of the story.
"Well, sir, I passed through there four years afterward and found the
same people living in the little cottage there at that settlement.
Strange to say, that woman had stayed there a couple of years after the
baby was born. Hadn't any place to go, I reckon. Nobody ever went near
her, they said; but finally she picked up and left; took the baby with
her. She had never been well afterward, and finally, seeing she hadn't
long to live, she struck out for home. Wanted to die among her own
people, maybe. I don't know the rest of the story, Allen. What I've told
you is all I know,--it's like finding a magazine in a country hotel
where you haven't anything to read and dip into the middle of a serial
story. I never told anybody about that but my wife. I had a feeling that
if that woman took such pains to bury herself up there in the wilderness
it wasn't my business to speak of it. But it's long ago now--most
everything that an old chap like me knows is!"
Thatcher rose and crossed to the stove and took the book. He turned it
over and scrutinized it carefully, scanned the blank pages and the
silk-faced lids in the glow from the stove, and then handed it to Allen.
"What does that say there, that small gold print on the inside of the
cover?"
"That's the binder's name--Z. Fenelsa."
Allen closed the book, passed his hand over the smooth covers, and
handed it back to Ware.
"What did you say the woman's name was, Ware?" asked Thatcher.
"Didn't say, but the name she went by up there was Forbes. She told me
it was an assumed name. The people she stayed with told me they never
knew any better."
Several minutes passed in which no one spoke. The minister lapsed into
one of his deep reveries. Thatcher stood just behind him peering into
the fire. Suddenly he muttered under his breath and almost inaudibly,
"Well, by God!"