IN DEFENSE OF THE PROPRIETIES
Virginia and I arrived in Waterloo about two days after we left the
Grove of Destiny, as my granddaughter Gertrude insists on calling the
place at which we camped after we left Independence. We went in a sort
of rather-guess way back to the Ridge Road, very happy, talking to each
other about ourselves all the while, and admiring everything we saw
along the way.
The wild sweet-williams were in bloom, now, and scattered
among them were the brilliant orange-colored puccoons; and the grass
even on the knolls was long enough to wave in the wind like a rippling
sea. It was a cool and sunny spell of weather, with fleecy clouds
chasing one another up from the northwest like great ships under full
sail running wing-and-wing before the northwest wind which blew strong
day and night. It was a new sort of weather to me--the typical
high-barometer weather of the prairies after a violent "low." The
driving clouds on the first day were sometimes heavy enough to spill
over a scud of rain (which often caught Virginia like a cold splash from
a hose), and were whisked off to the southeast in a few minutes,
followed by a brilliant burst of sunshine--and all the time the shadows
of the clouds raced over the prairie in big and little bluish patches
speeding forever onward over a groundwork of green and gold dotted with
the white and purple and yellow of the flowers.
We were now on terms of simple trust and confidence. We played. We bet
each other great sums of money as to whether or not the rain-scud coming
up in the west would pass over us, or miss us, or whether or not the
shadow of a certain cloud would pass to the right or the left. People
with horse teams who were all the time passing us often heard us
laughing, and looked at us and smiled, waving their hands, as Virginia
would cry out, "I won that time!" or "You drove slow, just to beat me!"
or "Well, I lost, but you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars yet!"
Once an outfit with roan horses and a light wagon stopped and hailed us.
The woman, sitting by her husband, had been pointing at us and
talking to him.
"Right purty day," he said.
"Most of the time," I answered; for it had just sloshed a few barrels of
water from one of those flying clouds and forced us to cover
ourselves up.
"Where's your folks?" he asked.
"We ain't too old to travel alone," I replied; "but we'll catch up with
the young folks at Waterloo!"
He laughed and whipped up his team.
"Go it while you're young!" he shouted as he went out of hearing.
We were rather an unusual couple, as any one could see; though most
people doubtless supposed that there were others of our party riding
back under the cover. Virginia had not mentioned Buckner Gowdy since we
camped in the Grove of Destiny; and not once had she looked with her old
look of terror at an approaching or overtaking team, or scuttled back
into the load to keep from being seen. I guess she had come to believe
in the sufficiency of my protection.
2
Waterloo was a town of seven or eight years of age--a little straggling
village on the Red Cedar River, as it was then called, building its
future on the growth of the country and the water-power of the stream.
It was crowded with seekers after "country," and its land dealers and
bankers were looking for customers. It seemed to be a strong town in
money, and I had a young man pointed out to me who was said to command
unlimited capital and who was associated with banks and land companies
in Cedar Rapids and Sioux City,--I suppose he was a Greene, a Weare, a
Graves, a Johnson or a Lusch. Many were talking of the Fort Dodge
country, and of the new United States Land Office which was just then on
the point of opening at Fort Dodge. They tried to send me to several
places where land could be bought cheaply, in the counties between the
Cedar and the Iowa Rivers, and as far west as Webster County; but when I
told them that I had bought land they at once lost interest in me.
We camped down by the river among the trees, and it was late before we
were free to sleep, on account of the visits we received from movers and
land men; but finally the camp-fires died down, the songs ceased, the
music of accordions and fiddles was heard no more, and the camp of
emigrants became silent.
Virginia bade me good night, and I rolled up in my blankets under the
wagon. I began wondering, after the questions which had been asked as
to our relationship, just what was to be the end of this strange journey
of the big boy and the friendless girl. We were under some queer sort of
suspicion--that was clear. Two or three wives among the emigrants had
tried to get a word with Virginia in private; and some of the men had
grinned and winked at me in a way that I should have been glad to notice
according to my old canal habits; but I had sense enough to see that
that would never do.
Virginia was now as free from care as if she had been traveling with her
brother; and what could I say? What did I want to say? By morning I had
made up my mind that I would take her to my farm and care for her there,
regardless of consequences--and I admit that I was not clear as to the
proprieties. Every one was a stranger to every one else in this country.
Whose business was it anyhow? Doctor Bliven and his companion--I had
worked out a pretty clear understanding of their case by this time--were
settling in the new West and leaving their past behind them. Who could
have anything to say against it if I took this girl with me to my farm,
cared for her, protected her; and gave her the home that nobody else
seemed ready to give?
"Do you ever go to church?" asked Virginia. "It's Sunday."
"Is there preaching here to-day?" I asked.
"Don't you hear the bell?" she inquired.
"Let's go!" said I.
We were late; and the heads of the people were bowed in prayer as we
went in; so we stood by the door until the prayer was over. The preacher
was Elder Thorndyke. I was surprised at seeing him because he had told
me that he and his wife were going to Monterey Centre; but there he was,
laboring with his text, speaking in a halting manner, and once in a
while bogging down in a dead stop out of which he could not pull himself
without giving a sort of honk like a wild goose. It was his way. I never
sat under a preacher who had better reasoning powers or a worse way of
reasoning. Down in front of him sat Grandma Thorndyke, listening
intently, and smiling up to him whenever he got in hub-deep; but at the
same time her hands were clenched into fists in her well-darned
black-silk gloves.
I did not know all this then, for her back was toward us; but I saw it
so often afterward! It was that honking habit of the elder's which had
driven them, she often told me, from New England to Ohio, then to
Illinois, and finally out to Monterey Centre. The new country caught the
halt like Elder Thorndyke, the lame like the Fewkeses, the outcast like
the Bushyagers and the Blivens, the blind like me, the far-seeing like
N.V. Creede, the prophets like old Dunlap the Abolitionist and Amos
Thatcher, and the great drift of those who felt a drawing toward the
frontier like iron filings to a magnet, or came with the wind of
emigration like tumble-weeds before the autumn blast.
I remembered that when Virginia was with me back there by the side of
the road that first day, Elder Thorndyke and his wife had come by
inquiring for her; and I did not quite relish the idea of being found
here with her after all these long days; so when church was out I took
Virginia by the hand and tried to get out as quickly as possible; but
when we reached the door, there were Elder Thorndyke and grandma
shaking hands with the people, and trying to be pastoral; though it was
clear that they were as much strangers as we. The elder was filling the
vacant pulpit that day by mere chance, as he told me; but I guess he was
really candidating a little after all. It would have been a bad thing
for Monterey Centre if he had received the call.
They greeted Virginia and me with warm handclasps and hearty inquiries
after our welfare; and we were passing on, when Grandma Thorndyke headed
us off and looked me fairly in the face.
"Why," said she, "you're that boy! Wait a minute."
She stepped over and spoke to her husband, who seemed quite in the dark
as to what she was talking about. She pointed to us--and then, in
despair, she came back to us and asked us if we wouldn't wait until the
people were gone, as she wanted us to meet her husband.
"Oh, yes," said Virginia, "we'll be very glad to."
"Let us walk along together," said grandma, after the elder had joined
us. "Ah--this is my husband, Mr. Thorndyke, Miss--"
"Royall," said Virginia, "Virginia Royall. And this is Jacob Vandemark."
"Where do you live?" asked grandma.
"I'm going out to my farm in Monterey County," I said; "and Virginia
is--is--riding with me a while."
"We are camping," said Virginia, smiling, "down by the river. Won't you
come to dinner with us?"
3
Grandma ran to some people who were waiting, I suppose, to take them to
the regular minister's Sunday dinner, and seemed to be making some sort
of plea to be excused. What it could have been I have no idea; but I
suspect it must have been because of the necessity of saving souls; some
plea of duty; anyhow she soon returned, and with her and the elder we
walked in silence down to the grove where our wagon stood among the
trees, with my cows farther up-stream picketed in the grass.
"Just make yourselves comfortable," said I; "while I get dinner."
"And," said the elder, "I'll help, if I may."
"You're company," I said.
"Please let me," he begged; "and while we work we'll talk."
In the meantime Grandma Thorndyke was turning Virginia inside out like a
stocking, and looking for the seamy side. She carefully avoided asking
her about our whereabouts for the last few days, but she scrutinized
Virginia's soul and must have found it as white as snow. She found out
how old she was, how friendless she was, how--but I rather think not
why--Virginia had run away from Buck Gowdy; and all that could be
learned about me which could be learned without entering into details of
our hiding from the world together all those days alone on the trackless
prairie. That subject she avoided, though of course she must have had
her own ideas about it. And after that, she came and helped me with the
dinner, talking all the time in such a way as to draw me out as to my
past. I told her of my life on the canal--and she looked distrustfully
at me. I told her of my farm, and of how I got it; and that brought out
the story of my long hunt for my mother, and of my finding of her
unmarked grave. Of my relations with Virginia she seemed to want no
information. By the time our dinner was over--one of my plentiful
wholesome meals, with some lettuce and radishes and young onions I had
bought the night before--we were chatting together like old friends.
"That was a better dinner," said the elder, "than we'd have had at Mr.
Smith's."
"But Jacob, here," said grandma, "is not a deacon of the church."
"That doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the dinner," said the elder.
"No," said Grandma Thorndyke dryly, "I suppose not. But now let us talk
seriously. This child"--taking Virginia's hand--"is the girl they were
searching for back there along the road."
"Ah," said the elder.
"She had perfectly good reasons for running away," went on Grandma
Thorndyke, "and she is not going back to that man. He has no claim upon
her. He is not her guardian. He is only the man who married her
sister--and as I firmly believe, killed her!"
"I wouldn't say that," said the elder.
"Now I calculate," said Grandma Thorndyke, "and unless I am corrected I
shall so report--and I dare any one to correct me!--that this
child"--squeezing Virginia's hand--"had taken refuge at some dwelling
along the road, and that this morning--not later than this morning--as
Jacob drove along into Waterloo he overtook Virginia walking into town
where she was going to seek a position of some kind. So that you two
children were together not longer than from seven this morning until
just before church. You ought not to travel on the Sabbath!"
"No, ma'am," said I; for she was attacking me.
"Now we are poor," went on Grandma Thorndyke, "but we never have starved
a winter yet; and we want a child like you to comfort us, and to help
us--and we mustn't leave you as you are any longer. You must ride on
with Mr. Thorndyke and me."
This to Virginia--who stretched out her hands to me, and then buried her
face in them in Grandma Thorndyke's lap. She was crying so that she did
not hear me when I asked:
"Why can't we go on as we are? I've got a farm. I'll take care of her!"
"Children!" snorted grandma. "Babes in the wood!"
I think she told the elder in some way without words to take me off to
one side and talk to me; for he hummed and hawed, and asked me if I
wouldn't show him my horses. I told him that I was driving cows, and
went with him to see them. I now had six again, besides those I had left
with Mr. Westervelt back along the road toward Dubuque; and it took me
quite a while to explain to him how I had traded and traded along the
road, first my two horses for my first cows, and then always giving one
sound cow for two lame ones, until I had great riches for those days
in cattle.
He thought this wonderful, and said that I was a second Job; and had
every faculty for acquiring riches. I had actually made property while
moving, an operation that was so expensive that it bankrupted many
people. It was astonishing, he insisted; and began looking upon me with
more respect--making property being the thing in which he was weakest,
except for laying up treasures in Heaven. He was surprised, too, to
learn that cows could be made draught animals. He had always thought of
them as good for nothing but giving milk. In fact I found myself so much
wiser than he was in the things we had been discussing that when he
began to talk to me about Virginia and the impossibility of our going
together as we had been doing, it marked quite a change in our
relationship--he having been the scholar and I the teacher.
"Quite a strange meeting," said he, "between you and Miss Royall."
"Yes," said I, thinking it over, from that first wolf-hunted approach to
my camp to our yesterday of clouds and sunshine; "I never had anything
like it happen to me."
"Mrs. Thorndyke," said he, "is a mighty smart woman. She knows what'll
do, and what won't do better than--than any of us."
I wasn't ready to admit this, and therefore said nothing.
"Don't you think so?" he asked.
"I do' know," I said, a little sullenly.
"A girl," said he, "has a pretty hard time in life if she loses her
reputation."
Again I made no reply.
"You are just two thoughtless children," said he; "aren't you now?"
"She's nothing," said I, "but a little innocent child!"
"Now that's so," said he, "that's so; but after all she's old enough so
that evil things might be thought of her--evil things might be said; and
there'd be no answer to them, no answer. Why, she's a woman grown--a
woman grown; and as for you, you're getting a beard. This won't do, you
know; it is all right if there were just you and Miss Royall and my wife
and me in the world; but you wouldn't think for a minute of traveling
with this little girl the way you have been--the way you speak of doing,
I mean--if you knew that in the future, when she must make her way in
the world with nothing but her friends, this little boy-and-girl
experience might take her friends from her; and when she will have
nothing but her good name you don't want, and would not for the world
have anything thoughtlessly done now, that might take her good name from
her. You are too young to understand this as you will some day----"
"The trouble with me," I blurted out, "is that I've never had much to do
with good women--only with my mother and Mrs. Fogg--and they could never
have anything said against them--neither of them!"
"Where have you lived all your life?" he asked.
Then I told him of the way I had picked up my hat and come up instead of
being brought up, of the women along the canal, of her who called
herself Alice Rucker, of the woman who stole across the river with
me--but I didn't mention her name--of as much as I could think of in my
past history; and all the time Elder Thorndyke gazed at me with
increasing interest, and with something the look we have in listening to
tales of midnight murder and groaning ghosts. I must have been an
astonishing sort of mystery to him. Certainly I was a castaway and an
outcast to his ministerial mind; and boy as I was, he seemed to feel for
me a sort of awed respect mixed up a little with horror.
"Heavenly Father!" he blurted out. "You have escaped as by the skin of
your teeth."
"I do' know," said I.
"But don't you understand," he insisted, "that this trip has got to end
here? Suppose your mother, when she was a child in fact, but a woman
grown also, like Miss Royall, had been placed as she is with a boy of
your age and one who had lived your life----"
"No," said I, "it won't do. You can have her!"
4
I really felt as if I was giving up something that had belonged to me. I
felt the pangs of renunciation.
We walked back to the wagon in silence, and found Virginia and Grandma
Thorndyke sitting on the spring seat with grandma's arm about the girl,
with a handkerchief in her hand, just as if she had been wiping the
tears from Virginia's eyes; but the girl was laughing and talking in a
manner more lively than I had ever seen her exhibit. She was as happy,
apparently, as I was gloomy and downcast.
I wanted the Thorndykes to go away so that I could have a farewell talk
with Virginia; but they stayed on and stayed on, and finally, after
dark, grandma rose with a look at Virginia which she seemed to
understand, and they took my girl's satchel and all walked off together
toward the tavern.
I sat down and buried my face in my hands, Virginia's good-by had been
so light, so much like the parting of two mere strangers. And after all
what was I to her but a stranger? She was of a different sort from me.
She had lived in cities. She had a good education--at least I thought
so. She was like the Thorndykes--city folks, educated people, who could
have no use for a clodhopper like me, a canal hand, a rough character.
And just as I had plunged myself into the deepest despair, I heard a
light footfall, and Virginia knelt down before me on the ground and
pulled my hands from my eyes.
"Don't cry," said she. "We'll see each other again. I came back to bid
you good-by, and to say that you've been so good to me that I can't
think of it without tears! Good-by, Jacob!"
She lifted my face between her two hands, kissed me the least little
bit, and ran off. Back in the darkness I saw the tall figure of Grandma
Thorndyke, who seemed to be looking steadily off into the distance.
Virginia locked arms with her and they went away leaving me with my cows
and my empty wagon--filled with the goods in which I took so much pride
when I left Madison.
With the first rift of light in the east I rose from my sleepless bed
under the wagon--I would not profane her couch inside by occupying
it--and yoked up my cattle. Before noon I was in Cedar Falls; and from
there west I found the Ridge Road growing less and less a beaten track
owing to decreasing travel; but plainly marked by stakes which those two
pioneers had driven along the way as I have said for the guidance of
others in finding a road which they had missed themselves.
We were developing citizenship and the spirit of America. Those wagon
loads of stakes cut on the Cedar River in 1854 and driven in the prairie
sod as guides for whoever might follow showed forth the true spirit of
the American pioneer.
But I was in no frame of mind to realize this. I was drawing nearer and
nearer my farm, but for a day or so this gave me no pleasure. My mind
was on other things. I was lonelier than I had been since I found Rucker
in Madison. I talked to no one--I merely followed the stakes--until one
morning I pulled into a strange cluster of houses out on the green
prairie, the beginning of a village. I drew up in front of its
blacksmith shop and asked the name of the place. The smith lifted his
face from the sole of the horse he was shoeing and replied,
"Monterey Centre."
I looked around at my own county, stretching away in green waves on all
sides of the brand-new village; which was so small that it did not
interfere with the view. I had reached my own county! I had been a part
of it on this whole wonderful journey, getting acquainted with its
people, picking up the threads of its future, now its history.
Prior to this time I had been courting the country; now I was to be
united with it in that holy wedlock which binds the farmer to the soil
he tills. Out of this black loam was to come my own flesh and blood, and
the bodies, and I believe, in some measure, the souls of my children.
Some dim conception of this made me draw in a deep, deep breath of the
fresh prairie air.