A JOURNEY IN VAIN
Elizabeth started out on foot, going northward along the eastern slope
of the mountain. Here lay large and well-cultivated farms, and orchards
which were already yielding large profits. Fences were well-made and
clear of vines and briars, lawns were mowed, and in beds and on porches
bloomed an abundance of flowers. She saw the windows of the Baring
house abloom the winter long with geraniums--before the day was over
she would ask for slips to plant for winter blooming.
She found few old persons. It was almost fifty years since the
battle and farms had changed hands, some of them many times. She saw
busy young men and women and tiny children, but no grandmothers or
grandfathers. When she inquired she was stared at curiously.
At last in the middle of the morning she saw on a farmhouse porch an
old lady shelling peas. There was a cat at her feet which was purring
a loud tune and the sound was a welcome to Elizabeth. She must have a
cat--perhaps she could take a kitten home with her.
The old lady smiled pleasantly. She had bright, intelligent eyes and
quick, deft hands. She invited Elizabeth to sit down and they exchanged
views about the beauty of the weather and the promising condition of
the crops.
“Have you lived here always?” asked Elizabeth.
“I was born in this house,” answered the old lady. “When I was married,
we stayed here because my people were old. Now I live here with my son.
I want him to get married, but he can’t find the right woman, though
he could give her pretty nearly everything.” She looked at Elizabeth
meaningly. “I might send him to get acquainted with you.”
Elizabeth smiled at this match-making.
“I have my own farm on my hands,” said she.
“Where is that?”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. For a few minutes she had forgotten the
cloud which hung over her. Then she told her story, Herbert’s long
illness, the advice of the doctors, their discovery that their mother
still owned her father’s property in Pennsylvania, and their journey
East.
“We settled down here and made a garden, and then we started out to
sell our things. I believe in being friendly so I told who I was.
Immediately people seemed to be repelled, they treated me unkindly.
Presently I found out that it was because of my grandfather and
something he was supposed to have done.”
The old lady looked at her intently. Her hands had ceased to work and
she frowned heavily.
“What is your name?”
Elizabeth went over the old formula.
“My name is Elizabeth Scott; my grandfather’s name was John Baring.”
The old lady responded in deeds and not in words. She rose and peas
and pan fell clattering to the floor. The cat, startled out of sleep,
dashed away, and all that had seemed a moment ago so friendly and
peaceful was now inimical and confused.
“I can’t sit with a granddaughter of John Baring!” said the old lady.
“You made a mistake to come back here! Why, you’re his image!”
Elizabeth sat still.
“Won’t you hear me till the end?” she asked. This melodramatic behavior
was, she believed, sincere. She was all the more anxious, unpleasant as
the situation was, to ask questions.
“Well, what have you to say?” The old lady stood with her hand on the
latch of the screen door, ready for instant flight.
“After I had been treated so rudely, I determined to find out what
was the matter, so I went to an old gentleman in Gettysburg, Colonel
Thomas, and he told me about John Baring.”
“He could tell you the truth! He was a soldier himself. He knows what
John Baring did!”
“Yes, he told me the truth, at least what seems like the truth. Then I
came home. It’s very hard to learn suddenly that you are a descendant
of a man whom his neighbors believe to be a traitor.”
“He was a traitor!” cried the old lady. “There never was a worse
traitor.”
“When I came home, I went through the house, carefully, to see whether
any papers belonging to him could have been stowed away and overlooked.
I couldn’t accept this without doing something, could I?”
The old lady’s hand dropped from the door-latch and she leaned against
the wall, a sign of relenting in her eyes.
“I didn’t find anything that referred directly to it,” went on
Elizabeth, “but I did find some writing on one of the beams in the
attic.”
“What writing?”
“It had nothing to do with the battle, but it had to do with John
Baring. It said, ‘I have built this house the best I know. God bless
those who go in and out.’ That didn’t look like the sentiment of a man
who was a traitor, did it? So I thought I would try to see whether
there were any persons who remembered him and who could tell me about
him. Perhaps there is some mistake.”
“Why didn’t he come back?” demanded the old woman. “That was what
finished him. There were some who couldn’t believe that he would do
such a thing, but why didn’t he come back? He went away with them and
having chosen his company he stayed. Even his friends gave up then.”
“So he had friends?”
“Of course he had friends. Everybody was his friend! But he was a
traitor! He betrayed his own neighbors! My people lost everything but
the actual ground of the farm. The crops were ruined, the barn was set
afire, everything we had was taken, stock driven off. And this is a
side road; they would never have known about it if they hadn’t been
shown.”
To Elizabeth’s astonishment the old lady was crying.
“May I help you gather up the peas?” she asked. “I’m afraid that I’ve
made you feel badly.”
The old lady stooped and began to fumble about.
“They can be washed,” said she. Then she straightened up. “He wasn’t an
ordinary man. It was like it says in the Bible, he was a star fallen
from heaven when he did wrong. That was what we couldn’t stand, that
_John Baring_ should have done such a thing! Now the heathen back
in the mountain, they would have done it and nobody would have been
surprised. But _John Baring_!”
Elizabeth was ready to go.
“Did you know his wife?”
“She was my companion!” said the old woman. “And I never spoke to her
afterwards. _I never spoke to her!_” In the declaration was a rage as
fresh as though its cause were of yesterday and--Elizabeth was certain
of it--a wild remorse. “I didn’t even go to see her buried!”
Elizabeth wiped her eyes.
“Come again, if you want to,” said the old lady.
Then Elizabeth smiled. Grudging as the invitation was, it gave her the
first faint hope that whatever John Baring had done, his descendants
might in time make their way here in his old home.
She could see, as she left the yard, one more farmhouse and this she
determined to visit. It was a mile away and was much smaller and less
well-cared-for than the establishment she was leaving. There she found
an old man, who stood leaning on the fence and chewing a straw. His
working days were obviously over.
Elizabeth bade him the time of day and asked him whether he remembered
John Baring.
“Yes, I remember him,” said he. “Everybody remembers him about here.
He set Chambersburg on fire. Three million dollars was lost and
thousands of people set out on the streets and animals driv’ off and
all kinds of damage done. It was Baring done it. If he comes back,
people will shoot him.”
Elizabeth asked no more questions. He had become, it seemed, to some, a
sort of legendary demon! But she saw him, reaching up to write on the
attic beam, “I have built this house the best I know. God bless those
who go in and out.”
As she walked home, her body was weary, but her spirits were brighter
than they had been. She imagined that he had gone to the attic on
a quiet Sunday afternoon and had sat looking out over the rich and
beautiful country.
“I don’t believe that he was a traitor!” said she.
When she reached home she saw an automobile at the entrance to the
yard. From it Colonel Thomas waved his hand, and she ran to meet him.
“Oh, won’t you come in?”
“No, I thank you. I was anxious about you on account of your neighbors.
Have they given you any trouble?”
“No; they hang round, but they haven’t bothered me.”
Then, impulsively, Elizabeth told him what she had been doing. He shook
his head.
“Oh, young lady, you’ll find it a wild-goose chase!”
“They think he burned Chambersburg,” said Elizabeth with a faint smile.
“The situation has a gleam of humor, hasn’t it?”
“Why, the burning took place a year after he had disappeared!”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about the battle,” said Elizabeth.
“When I was a child, it was my dream to come here.” Tears dimmed her
eyes. The old gentleman saw them and looked away.
“I’ll be up here again one of these days, then I’ll bring you some
books.”
“And will you stop and visit with us for a while?”
“Yes. You’ll not take any risk with those rascals beyond you, will you?”
Elizabeth promised.
“They have only one accomplishment and that is shooting, but I don’t
believe you need be afraid of that.”
For a day Elizabeth stayed at home. Herbert, who was always quiet, was
even quieter than usual, but she discovered no clue to his depression.
He was under no more of a cloud than she; he worked no harder; it was
time that he lifted up his head.
When she started out on her next journey of exploration she knew that
she was doing that of which the old gentleman would not approve. She
went not to the north where lay the cultivated farms, but turned in
toward the south on the old wood road which led into the mountain
and toward the settlement of the mountaineers. She had no serious
expectation of making any important discovery; it was rather with an
Elizabethan desire to finish that which she had begun. Among ignorant
people like the mountaineers there were often old persons whose
memories were long.
For almost an hour she went on without seeing a sign of human life.
The towering trees interlaced their branches far above her head,
sometimes she could see long distances, sometimes the view was cut off
on both sides by thickets of rhododendron. She saw many deer; once a
fox crossed her path, and partridges rose whirring. The road, if it
could be called a road, rose gradually. Presently she had to pick her
way over large clods of ground which had been dug up from the side and
tossed into the middle. Some one was mending the road according to the
inexplicable method followed in the neighborhood. A moment later she
heard the sound of voices, and at the next turn she came upon three
men working with mattock and spade. They worked close together as
though to forget the lonely forest, and they talked loudly and a little
nervously.
At sight of Elizabeth they stared open-mouthed. No other sort of
appearance could have surprised them as much as that of a young woman
alone in the wood road.
“Good-morning,” said Elizabeth.
The men did not answer her good-morning in kind, but made astonished
inquiry.
“You are not alone, miss?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going, miss?”
“I’m looking for a house. Aren’t there any on this road?”
The men looked at one another.
“There’s houses of a certain kind. There’s one round the bend; that’s
the nearest. But if I were you I wouldn’t go any farther. There’s a
good deal of reckless shooting in these woods, miss, and the people
ain’t very hospitable except with bullets.”
“_You_ aren’t afraid!” said Elizabeth.
“No, but that’s different.” The speaker scratched his head seeking a
reason for the difference. “You see they know we ain’t spyin’ on ’em,
and ain’t likely to give any information against ’em. You see there
ain’t no women goes in here but a nurse sometimes, and she ain’t afraid
of nothing.”
“Are there women living in there?”
“Oh, yes.”
“If you call them women,” said a second voice. “There’s an old one in
the first house.”
“I’ll walk that far,” said Elizabeth. “You’ll be working right here,
will you?”
“Yes, miss.”
She knew that the men did not begin to work as long as she was in
sight. Suddenly one of them ran after her.
“She’s a crazy old woman,” he said. “But she’s paralyzed and she can’t
hurt you. Don’t be afraid if she hollers!”
She thanked him and he stood still and stared at her. When he returned
to his mates, the three contemplated one another in silence.
“Could she be a teacher?” asked one.
“They chased the last teacher away before she ever taught.”
“I think we oughtn’t to make a noise with our implements, but we ought
to move up closer,” suggested the third.
The three moved slowly up the road one behind the other.
Elizabeth was thankful for the warning about the old woman’s
“hollering.” It began suddenly and so near that she was startled. The
cabin was hidden in a thicket; if it had not been for the shrill voice,
she would have passed it. She parted the branches and looked into a
little open space at a log house surrounded by heaps of wretched débris
gathered in years of careless, slovenly living. She slipped in through
the opening made by her arms and went to the door.
The single room held three pieces of furniture, a queer old charcoal
stove, a bed made of saplings with the bark still on and covered with a
mattress from which the stuffing of leaves was bursting, and a broken
chair. The chair stood by the bed and on it was a tin cup filled with
some unrecognizable liquid and a part of a rough loaf of grayish bread.
On the bed lay a pitiful old body of which only the dull eyes and lips
and one hand seemed still alive.
The eyes peered at Elizabeth as though the room were dark.
“Is a human being coming to visit me in my misery?” asked the old voice.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, aghast.
“Are you the nurse?” the question was put with feverish eagerness.
“No, but perhaps I can do something to make you more comfortable.”
The old woman began to cry loudly like a child.
“No, there ain’t. He’s been after me again, tormentin’ me an’ tauntin’
me.”
“Who’s been after you?”
“My son. He wants the forty dollars what is all I have in this yearth,
to buy him a gun, an’ I want it to bury me. I want to be buried decent
with a preacher an’ the singin’ of psalms an’ prayin’ to carry me away
from this yearth. He can’t get it now, but he can get it when I’m
dead.” She began to scream, “I want to be buried decent! I want to be
buried decent!”
Elizabeth went nearer to the dreadful bed.
“Why don’t you make a will?”
“Learnin’ is the possession of some, but not of none in the mountains,”
said the old woman. She began to cry again.
“I’ll write a will for you if I can find anything to write with,”
offered Elizabeth.
The old woman made a desperate effort to raise herself on her elbow and
thus see more plainly this comforting visitor.
“Will it hold in the courts of men?”
“It will hold if you have the forty dollars,” Elizabeth assured her.
“There are some men back here who will witness it, I’m sure.”
Fortunately one of the road-makers had a dull pencil and an old
envelope. But they were not so willing to help as Elizabeth expected.
At last after a great deal of persuasion the youngest consented to
go with her. She wrote a brief statement and the old woman put a mark
on it, and the road-maker signed his name as witness. Then he hurried
away, glad to get out of the filthy cabin.
“Put it up there back of the beam, lady. It’s a place my offspring have
never found.”
“Can’t I do anything to make you comfortable? I could heat some water
and--” as she spoke Elizabeth looked round for a vessel or cloths or
soap.
“Water shortens life,” said the old soul as though she were quoting a
proverb.
Then Elizabeth asked her a question, because she had come to ask it,
not because she had either expectation or desire of having it answered
here.
“Did you ever know John Baring?”
Elizabeth made at once for the door. From the old lips fell a stream of
denunciation, violent and profane.
“He lost the battle! It was him as did it! He lost the battle!” The old
woman denounced not only John Baring, but his descendants to distant
generations.
Elizabeth did not stay to hear the end. She stepped out into the road
and walked rapidly back. At the bend, seeing the road-makers, she drew
a deep breath of relief. They were still standing motionless.
“We didn’t expect you’d stay long, miss.”
“She’s a dreadful old woman!” said Elizabeth.
“They’re all dreadful, miss, but the fear of God’s bein’ put into ’em
by the constabulary. They’ve built too many huckleberry fires--”
“What are huckleberry fires?”
“When they wanted a good crop, they’d light the woods and acres of
trees would burn. They’s always a good crop of huckleberries after a
fire. But one of ’em, Sheldon, went to the penitentiary for it, and
there ain’t been any since. Now they’s often a constabulary round and
they know it. This was Sheldon’s mammy what you was visitin’. Sheldon
has a strong-willed wife too. The women they’s gettin’ new notions.
They go down sometimes an’ look at the Chambersburg trolley, and they
twist up their hair different. It’s the women’s day, miss.”
Elizabeth thanked them for their protection, and walked on. After a
while she smiled grimly. On the other side of the mountain they thought
that John Baring had set Chambersburg afire. Here they thought he had
lost the battle. But the battle hadn’t been lost. It was a benighted
community, indeed!
Herbert was nervously watching for her when she reached home.
“You mustn’t do this again!” said he crossly.
Elizabeth looked at him. If Herbert was going to be cross in addition
to being babyish, then she would have trouble.
“I shan’t,” she promised.
“Did you find out anything?”
“Nothing,” said Elizabeth, protecting him once more.