vivacity. "I am glad to get to a shelter. By the way, I hear this is a
dry town. Will some of you gentlemen have something with me?" He had
pulled out a flask and was flashing his brilliant smile at Robbins.
"No, thank you, I don't drink," said Robbins; but he felt his throat
itching at the sight.
"We'll drink your licker after we've finished our business with you,"
the gray man struck in. He was old Captain Sparks, who had been very
bitter since his eldest son went crazy with overwork and sunstroke and
killed himself. The other men laughed. They looked at each other; they
looked with goading hate in their dull eyes at the stranger; and they
laughed.
"Here, Johnny," said the young man, taking no notice, "run up to
twenty-five and fetch me the bag there, the black one. If we are to
drink to our business, I want you all to join. You are all interested, I
take it? And get some glasses while you are about it."
The boy whom he addressed, the landlord's son, a lad of twelve, had been
busy staring at the stranger ever since he entered the room. He ran
away, but as he ran could not restrain himself from flinging one or two
glances back over his shoulder.
"Don't you smoke, either?" said the stranger to Robbins, his hand to his
breast pocket.
"Only a pipe," answered Robbins. He wished that he didn't feel an
absurd, morbid sympathy for the poor fool's pluck sneaking into his
consciousness.
"What are we waiting for?" The captain whispered it to a mild-eyed,
short-bearded man next him; but the captain's whisper carried far. "Aw,
give him rope!" suggested the mild-eyed man; "maybe he ain't so sandy's
he seems."
Not seeming to recognize any chill in his reception, the young stranger
approached the stove. No one moved to admit him to the inner circle;
this, also, he did not seem to observe. "This whole country looks as if
you had been having hard times," he continued. His voice had full, rich,
magnetic notes, but its unfamiliar intonations jarred on his hearers;
they knew them to belong to the East, and they hated the East. "It's
pretty sad to ride through miles and miles of farming country and see
the burned fence-posts that caught fire from the cinders, just lying
where they fell, and the smoke not coming out of one farm-house chimney
in six. It looks as if the farmers out this way had simply given up the
fight."
"You've hit it," said the mild-eyed man; "they have. Some of them have
moved away and some of them have killed themselves, after they've lost
their stock on chattel mortgages and lost their land to the improvement
company. There ought to be lots of ghosts on those abandoned farms and
in those houses where the fences are down. This country is full of
ghosts. We ain't much better than ghosts ourselves."
"It was the three dry years, I suppose."
"That and the mortgage sharks and the Shylocks from the East," old
Captain Sparks interrupted in a venomous tone; "what pickings the
drought left they got."
"Pretty rough!" said the stranger, declining the combat again. "There's
one man I want to meet here; his name is Russell--Doctor Russell."
The mild-eyed man explained that his name was Russell; the other men
looked puzzled and suspicious. "What's his little game?" whispered the
captain. "It won't go, whatever it is," said the man next him. Robbins
heard question and answer distinctly; but the young fellow near him did
not wince. "Are you the one that wrote to Fairport, Doctor Russell? I
guess you must be."
"Yes, I wrote to Fairport," said Russell.
"Well, I hope you liked the barrel we sent, and the boxes. They were
going to send them to another place, but your letter decided us. That's
my church, you know, which sent them. And, for that matter, it was your
letter first turned my father's attention to investing in your part of
the country. Oh, tell me, where did that tea go? My mother _would_ send
her best London mixture--"
"Was it your mother?" Robbins spoke. With a red face and a flash of his
eyes at the sullen group about him, he withdrew his chair, making a
clear passage to the stove. "I'd like to thank her, then, and her son
for her; that tea and that quince jam--whose was the quince jam?"
"I rather think my mother put that in, too."
"Well, it almost cured my wife; it was better than medicine, that and
the tea, for, not to mention that we couldn't get any medicine, it put
heart into her as medicine couldn't. I wonder was it your mother, or who
was it put in that volume of college songs? _I_ got that. You wouldn't
think it, but I'm a university man--Harvard--"
The young fellow caught his hand and gripped it hard. "Harvard? So am
I--Martin Wallace, '92."
"My name is George Robbins, and I'm a good deal farther back; and, as
you can see, I'm down on my luck. But there's no need going into my
hard-luck story; it's like a lot of our stories here. You see where we
are--hardly shoes to our feet; not because we have been shiftless or
idle, or have wronged anybody; yet the cutthroats and thieves in the
penitentiary have had better fare and suffered less with cold and hunger
than we have. And it's not that we are fools, either; we're not
uneducated. There are at least three other college men in our community;
there's Doc Russell--"
"I _am_," drawled Russell; "much good it's done me; but I won honors at
the University of Iowa."
"I didn't win any honors, but I went to the State University--was
graduated there before I went to Harvard. But--you aren't Teddy Russell,
Teddy Russell of the Glee Club and the football eleven?"
"Yes, I am Teddy Russell."
"E. D. Russell, of course; why didn't I guess? You were there two years
before me, but I daresay they are talking of you still; and the way you
won a touchdown with a broken rib on you, and the time all the rest of
the Glee Club missed the train at Fairport, going to Lone Tree, and you
went on with the banjoes and were the whole thing for three-quarters of
an hour! Well, I'm glad to meet you, Doctor. Let us have a good song or
two together after business."
Russell unconsciously felt for the cravat which was not round his soiled
and frayed collar; he buttoned his wreck of a frock coat. "Yes, we
will," he began, but his voice stuck in his throat as the captain's
rough grasp gripped his arm.
"I guess not," said the captain; "business first, young feller!"
Russell shook off the hand, muttering something too low for Robbins'
ear; but Robbins sidled nearer to him, so near that he was able to
exchange a single glance and to see Russell's lips form the words,
"Watch Orr!" They understood each other.
"Weren't you from Ann Arbor yourself, Captain?" said Robbins, grabbing
at any straw of peace.
"I've been too poor ever since the war to remember whether I ever had a
college education or not," retorted the captain with a sneer. "I belong
to the people now; their cause is my cause. Where do _you_ belong? We've
tended your folks when you were sick, and helped you lay by your crops,
and driven the mortgage sharks off your stuff. Say, what are you doing
now? Are you monkeying around to turn traitor or coward, or what's the
matter?"
"We're all right, Captain," answered Russell, the western burr on his
tongue as soft and leisurely as ever, and no hint of excitement in his
manner; "but I see no harm in letting Mr. Wallace answer our questions
before we fly off the handle." So saying, before the captain realized
his purpose he edged through the crowd to Wallace's side. Robbins
followed him; and the eyes of all the others turned to the three
menacing and eager.
"All I ask is to answer questions and to make my proposition to you,"
said Wallace, his fearless young eyes running round the circle. "If you
don't like it you can refuse and send me home--to make other
arrangements."
"No, we ain't going to send you home," said Orr. It was the first time
that he had spoken. Wallace flashed a keen glance at him and spoke his
next words directly to him. "But I'm sure you won't want to do it. You
see, I'm your last chance and you _have_ to examine it!"
They had not expected such an answer. A little vibration ran like a wave
over the gaunt, ferociously attentive faces. Wallace's eyes were fixed
on Orr's face, which did not change. Orr's hand was in the breast of his
ragged waistcoat.
"You people have certainly had the devil's own time and through no fault
of yours, unless it's a fault that you aren't quitters!"
"That's right," said Robbins. Orr's eyes narrowed a little. Wallace
continued, not taking his own eyes off the farmer's:
"This country is all right when there's a good year, but the good years
come so seldom! What you fellows need down here is not free silver, but
free water. With plenty of water you can raise big crops; and down in
this valley there is not the danger, if we dig ditches, of the river
running dry; we can get--"
"And who'll pay for irrigation?" a voice demanded. Wallace did not shift
his gaze to the speaker; he talked to Orr as if Orr were the only man in
the room: "We expect to furnish the money."
"And what will happen till the ditches are digged?"
"There's alfalfa to be raised on all these abandoned fields."
"And what's to become of _us_?" said Orr. "I can see where you folks can
git a holt and come out even; but what's going to become of us? Are we
to move off the earth and let you stay here?"
Every one listened for Wallace's answer. Even the boy in the doorway,
returning with Wallace's bag, stood half scared at the foot of the
stairs, not daring to go forward.
"Why not stay and take pot luck with us?" said Wallace, coolly. "We
bought the mortgages cheap, and we'll sell them cheap. We'll sell water
rights cheap also. And you will make better colonists than any we could
import--cheaper, too. It's for our interests as well as yours to make a
deal with you and to make one that will be satisfactory. Isn't it?"
Orr's hand dropped to his side, he shuffled his feet, his eyes turned
from Wallace to seek the captain. "I hadn't figured it out you was going
to make any such proposition," said the captain.
"Perhaps you thought we intended to chuck you all out in the cold and
hog everything. We are neither such pigs nor such fools. You fellows can
help us more than anybody else. Here is Johnny. Now, let's come to
business; but first, Johnny, get some glasses. We'll all drink to the
new deal."
And afterwards they told with chuckles how even the captain, who was an
original Prohibitionist before he became a Populist, touched his lips to
the glass that was passed over the big map.
"All you folks here need is _hope_," said the cheerful young Iowan; "you
have plenty of pluck and plenty of sense and oodles of experience; and
we stand ready to put in the capital. Now, what do you say; does it go?"
After an hour of talk over the maps, he repeated the question, and the
captain himself led the chorus, "It goes. We'll all stand by you!"
The blizzard had not come, and the moon was shining when George Robbins
and Wesley Orr drove home from town. A basket was carefully held on
Orr's knees. Robbins was caroling the chorus to "Johnny Harvard" and
wishing a health to him and his true love at the top of a hoarse and
husky voice. Orr looked solemnly ahead into the little wavering disk of
radiance that their lantern cast. Once he shivered violently, but he was
not cold. Suddenly he spoke. There was a quiver in his face and his
voice, but all he said was: "Say, he was dead right. We was so desperate
we was crazy. Hope, that was what we needed, and he give it to us; but
how some fellers would have messed that job, getting round to that same
proposal we all wanted to hug him for! And--I'm glad he didn't. I'm
almighty glad we didn't git a chance to do what we set out to do. He was
slick. Say, what is it they call them newspaper boys? Spellbinders?
That's him--a first-class, A-number-one spellbinder!"
THE OBJECT OF THE FEDERATION
"I joined a woman's club in the Federation a little over two years ago,"
said Mrs. Hardy. "I didn't know what was the object then; and to tell
you the truth, I am no wiser now."
"You know as much as I," was her neighbor's reply, politely given, the
neighbor, however, feeling no real interest, at the moment, in anything
outside the approaching election of president, and the gossip regarding
a possible "dark horse" which was buzzing behind her, between some
better informed members of the delegation.
The babble of mighty waters is like the noise that filled the theater.
It surged from the plant-bedecked platform (where it might be likened to
nothing more resonant than the hum of insects of a summer night) through
the auditorium, to the dais under the balconies. The dais was noisy,
always, not because its occupants were any more inclined to talk than
other women, but because it was the rarest thing in the world for them
to hear anyone either on the stage or the floor; and generally, they had
to vote by their eyes, watching the advocates of their pet measures; and
rising or sitting by their example; hence they solaced themselves with
conversation.
At this moment, however, the quiet gentlewoman with the gavel, behind
the long table, had not lifted her hand; and the upper part of the hall
(which being in good hearing distance, was used to keep silence and
criticise the talkers) was as busy with tongues and hands as its
neighbors. So Mrs. Hardy, smiling a little at her neighbor's absent
glance, listened until her thoughts wandered far afield. She only half
caught the enthusiasm of the neighbor to her right, over an address on
village improvement, or the indignation of the dames to the left, who
were rehearsing the political baseness of Massachusetts. She was
recalling a day thirty-three years ago. She did not see the secretary
behind the table, whispering to the president; she did not notice a
little group to the left near where the silk banner of Massachusetts
fluttered, putting their heads together and gesticulating above their
whispers. She forgot her surroundings and saw only a tall young man
whose ardent eyes sank as they met her own, a handsome young fellow, who
caught her hand in his, as they sat alone in the carriage, driving to
the depot, and kissed the fingers and the wedding-ring, crying out he
was not half good enough for her. "He was in love with me, _then_!" she
thought. But now? Well, it was not to be expected a man with a great
business and cares and money to think about and political affairs (for
they were importuning Darius to go to the senate) should be paying
romantic compliments to his middle-aged wife. Nevertheless, Darius had
never forgotten their anniversary until last year. On her reminding him,
he had whistled and laughed. "So it is," says he, "we ought to spend it
together; it's a shame I have to go to Chicago; why don't you come with
me?"
Smiling (yet a foolish something not merry was twitching at her nerves),
she had declined. But she made a good excuse; Darius never guessed that
she was so silly as to mind; and he brought her a sweet pigeon-blood
ruby ring, set in diamonds, from Chicago; and he kissed her when he
slipped it on her finger--kissed her cheek, not her hand. She wondered,
at this minute, why she should wish that he had kissed the hand instead;
an elderly woman ought to be content with a calm, assured, faithful
affection, and let beautiful youngsters have the frills. That evening,
she planned a dinner carefully to his liking, and she would not let
herself be disappointed when he brought a political magnate, who talked
politics, from the terrapin to the coffee. She smiled again, as she
thought how much more of interest she would have found in the
conversation, to-day, after the club's year on Our Colonial Policies.
This last anniversary Darius had clean forgotten. In fact, he had
advised her to go to the Federation meeting; saying, lightly, that it
came at an opportune moment because he must be away that week, himself.
"Milwaukee is a pretty city," he ended amiably, "and there will be lots
of hen-functions and you'll enjoy yourself; but what's the object of it
all, your Federation?"
"I don't know"--she astonished him with her frank levity--"when I do,
I'll tell you."
"Well, don't get into any rows you can help," said he easily; "want any
more money? Got plenty?"
"Plenty, thank you," said she, "although I am going to be rather
extravagant and get some very smart toilets."
He looked over his glasses at her; and she was not able to decipher his
smile. Didn't he approve of her clothes? She sent her fine eyes into the
mirror of her dressing-table, after he had gone, and studied the picture
there with a frown and a smile, at last with a moisture over her eyes.
But, although he said nothing, when she next examined her bank-book she
found her credit larger. "Maybe he _does_ like my spending more money on
my gowns," she thought.
She went to Milwaukee. She did not remind him of the anniversary. She
said to herself that she would seriously try to discover the object of
the Federation; then she would tell Darius. Her daughter-in-law
accompanied her, and her daughter was to meet her. "Quite a family
party," said her son; "well, I hope you girls will have a good lark!
And, I say, Hester, find out what it's all about--if you can!"
At first, Myrtle Hardy was more bewildered than excited. The scene was
unlike anything in her experience. The hotels glittering with feminine
finery and humming with feminine voices; the placards over doorways in
rotundas or corridors, announcing headquarters; the vast crooning bulk
of the lake, the iridescent gleam of water that came to one in glimpses
as one was whirled down the wide and breeze-swept avenues, amid a dazzle
of lovely fabrics and smiling faces, blooming like flowers in swiftly
passing victorias or rattling cabs, or rippling over the sidewalks into
the wide vestibules where Milwaukee welcomed her guests; the noisy rush
of the city; the ceaseless rattle and clang of the electric-cars which
were like an orchestral accompaniment to the magnetic excitement pulsing
under the decorous calm of the meetings, in the flower-decked theaters,
or eddying through the foyer; these at first dazed the woman unused to
clubs. But only for a brief time. Presently, she began to be consulted;
her advice was asked; she made a speech in a meeting of the state
delegation. There was, in the speech, her natural clear sense--which
goes for something always and everywhere--there was, also, the mark in
voice and speech and pose, of her years' training with the teachers. "I
believe you could be heard all right, in the theater," said the
president of the state delegation, afterward, "will you make a motion
or two for us, this afternoon?" She made the motions; and, strangely
enough, she wasn't so frightened as she had been in the state
delegation; in fact, she proposed a simple short cut through an
unnecessary dilemma with not much feeling beyond wonderment that so many
clever women could get themselves into such a tangle. The applause and
delight of her companions of the delegation touched her. "I'm in it,
again," she thought, railing at her own vanity, but curiously pleased.
Now, her thoughts were back, groping through the years when she was not
"in it." Not the days of her youth, not at all; she had been the leader
of her mates, an ingenious, tolerant, easy-going leader, admired and
loved, shining among them by right of two years in an eastern
boarding-school and a trip to Europe.
Not in her early married life, either; although, at first, Darius was
poor and the great wagon manufactory was but a daring experiment. In
those days she knew all her husband's hopes and plans as well as his
troubles. He used to say, often, that she had a good business head.
Those days they lived in a little brown wooden house with a five-foot
piazza; and Darius mowed the tiny lawn himself; and she put up her own
preserves and made all the children's clothes--pretty clothes they were,
too; she was a housewife whose praise was in all the churches. But it
does not follow that she had ceased to be a leader, far from it; she was
the president of the "Ladies' Sewing Society" of her church; and of the
first woman's club, classically named the "Clionian." She was a
progressive spirit; she it was who introduced the regular motion into
the business meetings; before her reign it having been the artless
custom of the societies to talk until the discussion either languished
or grew too violent, when some promoter of harmony would call out, "Let
us put it to vote," whereupon there would be a few timid ayes and a
self-respecting silence instead of no; and the measure would be adopted.
Pertaining to this custom was an inevitable sequel of plaintive
criticism from all the modest souls who "didn't like to speak," but who
were full of foreboding wisdom. Myrtle Hardy was one of the few who
could speak; and she was considered to speak very much to the point.
Those days, she was keenly interested in all the life of a young,
hopeful, bustling little western city. She belonged to a musical
society and would rise at five in the morning to practice, and she was
one of an anxious band of women who had bought a library and were
running an amateur entertainment bureau to support it. Then, Darrie was
in home-made knickerbockers; Myrtie was a sweet, little, loving hoyden
who was her mother's despair because she would climb trees in her white
frocks; Ralph was a baby, and the two little girls that died were their
mother's tiny helpers, with the willingest little hands and feet.
Sitting there in the crowded and noisy theater, a quiver ran over the
mother's face. Her friends had forgotten, the brothers and sisters had
forgotten, even Darius seemed to forget; but, day and night, she
remembered the eager little faces, lighting so happily at her praise,
the shining little heads that used to nestle against her heart. The two
died of scarlet fever in one terrible week. In that week, the first gray
threads had crept into Myrtle Hardy's beautiful brown hair. She was
nurse and comforter and helper, then, to Darius. She felt her eyes cloud
with the vision of him, as he flung himself on the babies' little bed,
sobbing in the terrible, racking passion of a man's grief. "Not now,
dear, not now, not till the others are safe," she had whispered; "we
have them still; they need us."
She wondered was it after the babies went that she began to drop out of
things. Somehow she was so busy comforting Darius and nursing the others
back to health, and crowding back her own ceaseless grief out of sight;
and thinking of cheerful things to say and new interests for the others,
that the library passed out of corporate existence and into endowed rest
with hardly a thought from her. Nearly at the same time, the musical
society perished in a cataclysm, due to the sensitive musical
temperament, and the literary society died of inanition, after browsing
through literature from Milton to Dante; and after each member had
written one or two papers, thus sating the natural curiosity of the
other members. Myrtle did not lift a hand to save either of the
societies. She heard the wrathful accusations of the musical warriors,
and put in the unappreciated word for peace, but did not resent its
failure. She consoled the literary mourners with the reflection that
they could read up about things in the magazines or the books of the new
library; and masked her secret listlessness with perfunctory regret.
Long after, she came to wonder whether it was not she who went into
prison, then; rather than the world that left her on one side. Did she
not gently but rigidly exclude the friends who would have called upon
her and shut herself apart with her own? Continually, she used to pray
for cheerfuless, for patience; but it never occurred to her to pray for
interest. When other societies were formed, she did not care to join
them; she followed her own advice and read apart by herself. By and by,
although so much more of a personage, she was no longer beset with
invitations. The younger women organized a new club with new methods;
and Myrtle Hardy read her books, peacefully, on her wide piazzas, amid
her plants and flowers. When Myrtie came back from college, Darius asked
her wasn't she going to help Myrtie by joining the club with her?
"Dear, no," said she, blithely, "they are all so young."
"Why don't you get up a club of your own, then, and take in the other
left outs?" said he.