to do that morning in the barn. It was such a strange, rickety little
affair, that barn; it did seem to look so much more like a shed than
anything else, that he was continually haunted by his father’s words:
'Barn? I’m afraid she wouldn’t recognize it.' But he could make it
clean, anyway, if it wasn’t new. He looked up at the battered manger,
from his kneeling position on the floor, as he scrubbed with soap and
water, and wondered what he could do about that. Something he was sure.
Why, there were plenty of ways to do things if you only had sense. He
thought he must be mistaken when he heard his mother calling him to
dinner; but then, when he stopped and looked around, he felt a tired
glow of satisfaction. The walls and floor of the old stall had not
changed color, as he had hoped they would by washing, but they looked
damp, and clean, too. Across the battered front of the manger was tacked
a shining but crooked piece of clean, brown paper, and inside was a
fresh little pile of grass and three large, round ginger-cakes beside
it. But Crosby’s eyes traveled most lovingly to a small row of
implements which hung down from the wall, at one side, from nails which
he had pounded in. Of course ponies had to be groomed, and he looked up
proudly at the small, clean brush, hanging by a string and suggestive no
longer of the sink; at the worn whisk-broom next; at the broken comb;
and finally at a little, shrunken last winter’s glove, with its fingers
cut off evenly, which completed the line. He would wear that glove when
he did his daily grooming.
'I’ll finish everything after dinner,' he meditated, and went in.
When he came back, a saucer of milk trembled dangerously in one hand,
and with a faint, half-conscious smile flickering about his mouth, he
put it down on the floor in the corner.
'She’ll be thirsty when she gets here,' he reasoned; and then, half
apologetically, he glanced down at a big, loose bunch of summer
goldenrod, supported by the other hand. Standing high on his toes, he
propped it very jauntily over a time-worn beam just opposite the door.
'To look nice when she comes in,' he whispered; and then he cast round a
final look, sighed a tired sigh of satisfaction--and went out and closed
the door.
He wandered about restlessly that afternoon, and finally, with a queer,
light feeling in his head, that he associated dimly with the long walk
on the hill road the day before, he turned out of the yard and struck
off across the street in the direction of the railroad station. He
wanted to inquire about trains and the station was near. Besides, he
knew the station-master, and he would tell him just what he wanted to
know.
To be sure! The station-master was both alert and intelligent.
'A pony from New York?' he echoed. 'You’re expecting a pony from New
York? Well, now I hope you aren’t going to be disappointed about it! You
say it was to leave New York to-day? Well, there’s a New York-Boston
train that gets in here at half-past six. That’s the last one there is.
So if there’s any pony coming, she’ll be on that train, won’t she? Yes,
if she’s coming at all, she’ll be on that train.'
'Half-past six? What time is it--now?' questioned Crosby.
'It’s just half-past four. Now, you don’t want to hang round here for
two hours. No, you run home and make yourself easy. I pass your place on
my way home to supper, and if you’re outside I’ll let you know whether
there’s anything for you. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high.'
Crosby looked up gratefully. He had not even heard the last sentence. He
was already making his way out of the station and back home again,
wondering just how he could spend all that time.
Two hours later, his father came swinging up the walk. Crosby, sitting
on the grass close to the sidewalk, hardly saw him. He thought he saw
some one else--away down the walk--moving slowly towards him.
'Hullo, Crosby,' began his father cheerfully. 'What you doing? Looking
at the view?'
Crosby smiled faintly, but his eyes were straining away down the walk.
'You look pale, son; what’s the matter? You’d better come in to supper.'
'No, it isn’t going to be ready--quite yet, mother said.'
His father gave him another questioning look and went on into the house.
'What’s the matter with Crosby?' he asked inside. 'He looks as if he’d
been frightened half to death.'
'Oh, he’s worrying himself to pieces about that pony. He’s been fussing
round in the barn all day long. He really thinks he’s going to get it, I
suppose.'
'Pony? What pony? Has he been working himself to death over _that_
business? What’s he been doing in the barn?'
He walked through the house and down the back steps and crossed the
yard. Then he opened the door which led directly into the old stall and
stopped.
'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered.
Never, since he was a child, a child like the one who had just looked up
at him from the grass, had such an over-mastering desire swept over him
to sit down, right where he was, and drop his head down into his
hands--and cry.
'Oh, Lord above us!' he whispered again faintly, pushing his hand up to
his eyes.
It was all just as it had been left, the old walls and floor with great
splinters scoured out of them everywhere; the manger with its shining,
crooked front of clean, brown paper; the little hanging row of grooming
implements: the small brush, the worn whisk-broom, the comb, the little
old glove, the pile of grass in the manger, and the three ginger-cakes,
the saucer of milk in the corner--and the jaunty bunch of goldenrod
nodding down upon it all from the beam just opposite the door.
He pushed his hands blindly to his eyes again; then he went out, closed
the door, and walked down the yard where Crosby was sitting--no, he was
standing, standing and looking dumbly after a man who was walking away
and blowing his nose.
'Crosby,' began his father huskily, 'Crosby,--come into the house, come
in to supper,--I want to see you.'
Crosby looked up with dry, hunted-looking eyes, and his chin trembled
just perceptibly.
'I’m coming--in just a minute,' he began, with a quivering appeal in the
dry, hunted eyes to be left--to be left alone--just for a minute!
His father turned and went up the steps, while Crosby’s gaze shifted
mechanically back to the man who was going on up the street. But he
turned, too, slowly, and crossed the yard to the barn and opened the
door and went in. He hoped no one had seen it, and he pulled off the
brown paper from the manger and wrapped it round the pile of
ginger-cakes. Then he reached up for the little row of grooming
implements and took them down one by one.
When Crosby was three, he had tumbled down on a brick walk one day, and
had sat up winking vaguely while drops of blood ran down his face--and
tried to smile at his mother. It had never been just natural for Crosby
to cry when he was hurt; but as he came slowly back into the old stall
and stooped down to take up the saucer of milk, something dropped with a
splashing sound into the milk, making rings away out to the edge. He
raised his arm and dragged his hand across his eyes, and then he reached
up for the jaunty bunch of flowers on the beam. But that strange, light
feeling in his head, dimly associated with the hill road, seemed to
confuse him again--and he could not just remember what he was going to
do next. As he pushed open the door, he tripped over some scattered
goldenrod, and then went stumbling along to the house.
'He said--I could have her--if I got started right off--he said--I could
have her--if I got started right off--he said--he said--he said I could
have her--if I got started--'
His mother met him at the door.
'Come in--Crosby--' she began brokenly, 'come in--'
'He said--_I could have her--if I got started right off!_' he shrieked
out in a high, quivering, babyish wail, 'and--I _did_--get
started--right--off--'
'Hush--hush! You have worked--so hard! You are so tired!' She looked,
with frightened eyes, at his dully burning cheeks.
'Take him up to bed--let me take him up,' came a husky voice behind
them; and he was lifted in his father’s arms and carried upstairs.
As they undid the straining buttons of the well-filled little waist,
some papers dropped down to the floor and the man stooped and picked
them up. He looked at them and put them in his pocket.
'I’m going to call up the doctor,' he whispered.
But after the doctor had come and gone, he went upstairs again and sat
down by the bed, while his shocked eyes sought the small, still upturned
face. It was so characteristic of the boy that, in a high fever, he
should not chatter in delirium, that he should not scream wild things
about a pony, that he should only lie there quietly, with his eyes
closed and his face turned upwards. For a long time the watcher by the
bed looked down in the flickering half-light, and then he went
downstairs to his study and shut the door. When he had read the papers,
which he took from his pocket, from beginning to end, he placed a clean
sheet sharply on the desk before him, and with his mouth closed into a
taut, straight line which relaxed into no curve of compromise as his pen
marched down the sheet, Mr. Henry Tarbell wrote a letter to the Pony
Man.
He sealed and directed it--and walked out of the house, with long
strides, to the post-box.
It was many days later that he hung over the bed where a child lay tired
out with fever, and gently said something that he thought might bring a
little light back into the white face.
'They did send you a prize, Crosby, after all! A first-class little
prize that has just come this morning! Look!' And he held up a small but
crisply ticking watch upon a cheaply shining chain.
Crosby reached up his hand. 'I don’t believe--it would keep the--right
time--would it?' he asked slowly, with a suspiciousness quite new. And
his unwavering eyes sought his father’s.
'_Why_ did they--write such a--lie to me--about the pony?' he challenged
faintly.
'Forget it, boy!' returned his father gayly. 'We’ll have a pony yet!
We’ll have to have one to get the color back into your face, I’m
thinking! Say, sonny, I’m glad you got the old stall fixed up for it,
aren’t you?'
The unwavering eyes were still upon his father, and the first entirely
unresisted tears that any one had ever seen in them since he stepped out
of his baby’s dresses and marched forth to life, with brave but
unaccustomed feet, and steadying pauses, slipped quietly down the white
cheeks.
'_You--you_ wouldn’t--talk that way--unless you meant it!' whispered
Crosby.
THE SQUIRE
BY ELSIE SINGMASTER
THE squire was a bachelor, and lived alone in his house; therefore he
was able to use the parlor and dining-room for offices. The parlor
contained only a pine desk, a map, hanging 'at' the wall, as Millerstown
would have said, and a dozen or so plain pine chairs. The law was
administered with scant ceremony in Millerstown.
The squire sat now in the twilight in his 'back' office, which was
furnished with another pine table, two chairs, and a large old-fashioned
iron safe. He was clearly of a geographical turn of mind, for table,
safe, and floor were littered with railroad maps and folders. The squire
was about sixty years old; he had all the grave beauty which the Gaumer
men acquired. Their hair did not thin as it turned gray, their
smooth-shaven faces did not wrinkle. They all looked stern, but their
faces brightened readily at sight of a little child or an old friend, or
with amusement over some untold thought.
The squire’s face glowed. He was going--his age, his inexperience, the
certain disapproval of Millerstown notwithstanding--he was going round
the world! He would start in a month, and thus far he had told no one
but Edwin Seem, an adventurous young Millerstonian who was to leave that
night for a ranch in Kansas, and whom the squire was to visit on his own
journey. For thirty years he had kept Millerstown straight; there was no
possible case for which his substitute would not find a precedent.
Fortunately there were no trusts to be investigated and reproved, and no
vote-buyers or bribers to be imprisoned or fined. There were disputes
of all kinds, dozens of them. There was one waiting for the squire now
in the outer office; he shook his head solemnly at thought of it, as he
gathered up his maps and thrust them back into the safe, that precious
old safe which held the money for his journey. He had been thirty years
gathering the money together.
The law might be administered in Millerstown without formality, but it
was not administered without the eager attention of the citizens. Every
one in the village was on hand when simple-minded Venus Stuber was
indicted for stealing, or when the various dramatic scenes of the
Miller-Weitzel feud were enacted. This evening’s case, Sula Myers vs.
Adam Myers for non-support, might be considered part of the
Miller-Weitzel feud, since the two real principals, Sula’s mother and
Adam’s mother, had been respectively Sally Miller and Maria Weitzel.
The air was sultry, and rain threatened. The clouds seemed to rest on
the tops of the maple trees; it was only because the Millerstonians knew
the rough brick pavements as they knew the palms of their hands that
there were no serious falls in the darkness. They laughed as they
hurried to the hearing: it was seldom that a dispute promised so richly.
There was almost no one in the village who could not have been
subpœnaed as a witness, so thorough was every one’s knowledge of the
case.
Already the real principals faced each other, glaring, under the
blinding light of the squire’s hanging lamp. It made no difference that
Millerstown listened and chuckled or that the squire had taken his seat
behind the pine desk.
'When it don’t give any religion, it don’t give any decent behaving. But
God trieth the hearts of the righteous,' said Mrs. Myers meaningly.
She was a large, commanding woman, who had been converted in middle life
to the fervent sect of the new Mennonites, and young Adam had been
brought up in that persuasion. Except for his marriage, young Adam had
been thus far his mother’s creature, body and soul.
Sula’s mother, Mrs. Hill, was large also. She took off her sunbonnet,
and folded her arms as tightly as possible across her broad bosom.
'There is sometimes too much religion' she said.
'Not in your family, Sally,' rejoined Mrs. Myers, her glance including
not only Mrs. Hill and Sula, but all their sympathizers, and even Caleb
Stemmel, who was supposed to be neutral.
Caleb Stemmel belonged in the same generation with the squire; his
interest could be only general. Caleb did not see Mrs. Myers’s scornful
glance; he was watching pretty Sula, who sat close by her mother’s side.
Sula looked at nobody, neither at her angry mother beside her, nor at
her angry mother-in-law opposite, nor even at Adam her husband, sitting
close by his mother. She wore her best clothes, her pretty summer hat,
the white dress in which she had been married a year before. Even her
wedding handkerchief was tucked into her belt.
Sula had been strangely excited when she dressed in the bedroom of her
girlhood for the hearing. There was the prospect of getting even with
her mother-in-law, with whom she had lived for a year and whom she
hated; there was the prospect of seeing Adam’s embarrassment; there was
another reason, soothing to her pride, and as yet almost unacknowledged,
even to herself.
Now, however, the glow had begun to fade, and she felt uncomfortable and
distressed. She heard only dimly Mrs. Myers’s attack and her mother’s
response. Immediately Mrs. Myers told Mrs. Hill to be quiet, and Mrs.
Hill replied with equal elegance.
'You will both be quiet' said the squire sternly. 'The court will come
to order. Now, Sula, you are the one that complains; you will tell us
what you want.'
Sula did not answer; she was tugging at her handkerchief. The
handkerchief had been pinned fast, its loosening took time.
'It was this way,' began Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Hill, together.
The squire lifted his hand. 'We will wait for Sula.' He looked sternly
at Mrs. Hill. 'No whispering, Sally!'
Sula’s complaint came out with a burst of tears.
'He won’t support me. For three months already I didn’t have a cent.'
'All this time I supported her,' said her mother.
'She had a good home and wouldn’t stay in it,' said Mrs. Myers.
The squire commanded silence again.
'Sula, you were willing to live with Adam’s mother when you were
married. Why aren’t you now?'
'She--she wouldn’t give me no peace. She wouldn’t let him take me for a
wedding-trip, not even to the Fair.' She repeated it as though it were
the worst of all her grievances: 'Not even a wedding-trip to the Fair
would he dare to take.'
Mrs. Hill burst forth again. She would have spoken if decapitation had
followed.
'He gave all his money to his mom.'
'He is yet under age,' said Mrs. Myers.
Again Mrs. Hill burst forth:--
'She wanted that Sula should convert herself to the Mennonites.'
'I wanted to save her soul,' declared Mrs. Myers.
'You needn’t to worry yourself about her soul,' answered Mrs. Hill.
'When you behave as well as Sula when you’re young, you needn’t to worry
yourself about other people’s souls when you get old.'
Mrs. Myers’s youth had not been as strait-laced as her middle age; there
was a depth of reminiscent innuendo in Mrs. Hill’s remark. Millerstown
laughed. It was one of the delights of these hearings that no allusion
failed to be appreciated.
'Besides, I did give her money,' Mrs. Myers hastened to say.
'Yes; five cents once in a while, and I had to ask for it every time,'
said Sula. 'I might as well stayed at home with my mom as get married
like that.' Sula’s eyes wandered about the room, and suddenly her face
brightened. Her voice hardened as though some one had waved her an
encouraging sign. 'I want him to support me right. I must have four
dollars a week. I can’t live off my mom.'
The squire turned for the first time to the defendant.
'Well, Adam, what have you to say?'
Adam had not glanced toward his wife. He sat with bent head, staring at
the floor, his face crimson. He was a slender fellow, he looked even
younger than his nineteen years.
'I did my best,' he said miserably.
'Can’t you make a home for her alone, Adam?'
'No.'
'How much do you earn?'
'About seven dollars a week. Sometimes ten.'
'Other people in Millerstown live on that.'
'But I have nothing to start, no furniture or anything.'
'Your mother will surely give you something, and Sula’s mother.' The
squire looked commandingly at Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Hill. 'It is better
for young ones to begin alone.'
'I have nothing to spare,' said Mrs. Myers stiffly.
'I wouldn’t take any of your things,' blazed Sula. 'I wouldn’t use any
of your things, or have any of your things.'
'You knew how much he had when you married him,' said Mrs. Myers
calmly. 'You needn’t have run after him.'
'Run after him!' cried Sula.
It was the climax of sordid insult. They had been two irresponsible
children mating as birds mate, with no thought for the future. It was
not true that she had run after him. She burst into loud crying.
'If you and your son begged me on your knees to come back, I wouldn’t.'
'Run after him!' echoed Sula’s mother. 'I had almost to take the broom
to him at ten o’clock to get him to go home!'
Adam looked up quickly. For the moment he was a man. He spoke as hotly
as his mother; his warmth startled even his pretty wife.
'It isn’t true; she--never ran after me.'
He looked down again; he could not quarrel, he had heard nothing but
quarreling for months. It made no difference to him what happened. A
plan was slowly forming in his mind. Edwin Seem was going West; he would
go too, away from mother and wife alike.
'She can come and live in the home I can give her or she can stay away,'
he said sullenly, knowing that Sula would never enter his mother’s
house.
The squire turned to Sula once more. He had been staring at the back of
the room, where Cabel Stemmel’s keen, selfish face moved now into the
light, now back into the shadow. On it was a strange expression, a
hungry gleam of the eyes, a tightening of the lips, an eager watching of
the girlish figure in the white dress. The squire knew all the gossip of
Millerstown, and he knew many things which Millerstown did not know. He
had known Caleb Stemmel for fifty years. But it was incredible that
Caleb Stemmel with all his wickedness should have any hand in this.
The squire bent forward.
'Sula, look at me. You are Adam’s wife. You must live with him. Won’t
you go back?'
Sula looked about the room once more. Sula would do nothing wrong--yet.
It was with Caleb Stemmel that her mother advised, it was Caleb Stemmel
who came evening after evening to sit on the porch. Caleb Stemmel was a
rich man even if he was old enough to be her father, and it was many
months since any one else had told Sula that her hat was pretty or her
dress becoming.
Now, with Caleb’s eyes upon her, she said the little speech which had
been taught her, the speech which set Millerstown gasping, and sent the
squire leaping to his feet, furious anger on his face. Neither
Millerstown nor the squire, English as they had become, was yet entirely
of the world.
'I will not go back,' said pretty Sula lightly. 'If he wants to apply
for a divorce, he can.'
'Sula!' cried the squire.
He looked about once more. On the faces of Sula’s mother and Caleb
Stemmel was complacency, on the face of Mrs. Myers astonished approval,
on the faces of the citizens of Millerstown--except the very
oldest--there was amazement, but no dismay. There had never been a
divorce in Millerstown; persons quarreled, sometimes they separated,
sometimes they lived in the same house without speaking to each other
for months and years, but they were not divorced. Was this the beginning
of a new order?
If there were to be a new order, it would not come during the two months
before the squire started on his long journey! He shook his fist, his
eyes blazing.
'There is to be no such threatening in this court,' he cried; 'and no
talking about divorce while I am here. Sula! Maria! Sally! Are you out
of your heads?'
'There are higher courts,' said Mrs. Hill.
Millerstown gasped visibly at her defiance. To its further amazement,
the squire made no direct reply. Instead he went toward the door of the
back office.
'Adam,' he commanded, 'come here.'
Adam rose without a word, to obey. He had some respect for the majesty
of the law.
'Sula, you come, too.'
For an instant Sula held back.
'Don’t you do it, Sula,' said her mother.
'Sula!' said the squire; and Sula, too, rose.
'Don’t you give up,' commanded her mother. Then she got to her feet.
'I’m going in there, too.'
Again the squire did not answer. He presented instead the effectual
response of a closed and locked door.
The back office was as dark as a pocket. The squire took a match from
the safe, and lit the lamp. Behind them the voices of Mrs. Myers and
Mrs. Hill answered each other with antiphonal regularity. Adam stood by
the window; Sula advanced no farther than the door. The squire spoke
sharply.
'Adam!'
Adam turned from the window.
'Sula!'
Sula looked up. She had always held the squire in awe; now, without the
support of her mother’s elbow and Caleb Stemmel’s eyes, she was badly
frightened. Moreover, it seemed to her suddenly that the thing she had
said was monstrous. The squire frightened her no further. He was now
gentleness itself.
'Sula,' he said, 'you didn’t mean what you said in there, did you?'
Sula burst into tears, not of anger but of wretchedness.
'You’d say anything, too, if you had to stand the things I did.'
'Sit down, both of you,' commanded the squire. 'Now, Adam, what are you
going to do?'
Adam hid his face in his hands. The other room had been a
torture-chamber. 'I don’t know.' Then, at the squire’s next question, he
lifted his head suddenly. It seemed as if the squire had read his soul.
'When is Edwin Seem going West?'
'To-night.'
'How would you like to go with him?'
'He wanted me to. He could get me a place with good wages. But I
couldn’t save even the fare in half a year.'
'Suppose,'--the squire hesitated, then stopped, then went on
again,--'suppose I should give you the money?'
'Give me the money!'
'Yes, lend it to you?'
A red glow came into Adam’s face. 'I would go to-night.'
'And Sula?' said the squire.
'I would--' The boy was young, too young to have learned despair from
only one bitter experience. Besides, he had not seen Caleb Stemmel’s
eyes. 'I would send for her when I could.'
The squire made a rapid reckoning. He did not dare to send the boy away
with less than a hundred dollars, and it would take a long while to
replace it. He could not, could not send Sula, too, no matter how much
he hated divorce, no matter how much he feared Caleb Stemmel’s influence
over her, no matter how much he loved Millerstown and every man, woman,
and child in it. If he sent Sula, it would mean that he might never
start on his own journey. He looked down at her, as she sat drooping in
her chair.
'What do you say, Sula?'
Sula looked up at him. It might have been the thought of parting which
terrified her, or the recollection of Caleb Stemmel.
'Oh, I would try,' she said faintly; 'I would try to do what is right.
But they are after me all the time--and--and--' Her voice failed, and
she began to cry.
The squire swung open the door of the old safe.
'You have ten minutes to catch the train,' he said gruffly. 'You must
hurry.'
Adam laid a shaking hand on the girl’s shoulder. It was the first time
he had been near her for weeks.
'Sula,' he began wretchedly.
The squire straightened up. He had pulled out from the safe a roll of
bills. With it came a mass of brightly colored pamphlets which drifted
about on the floor.
'Here,' he said, 'I mean both of you, of course.'
'I am to go, too?' cried Sula.
'Of course,' said the squire. 'Edwin will look after you.'
'In this dress?' said Sula.
'Yes, now run.'