THE PRODIGAL VILLAGE
A Christmas Tale
_By_
IRVING BACHELLER
_Author of_
THE LIGHT IN THE CLEARING
A MAN FOR THE AGES, Etc.
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1920
AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
COPYRIGHT 1920
IRVING BACHELLER
_Printed in the United States of America_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHICH INTRODUCES THE SHEPHERD OF THE BIRDS 1
II THE FOUNDING OF THE PHYLLISTINES 18
III WHICH TELLS OF THE COMPLAINING COIN AND THE MAN
WHO LOST HIS SELF 68
IV IN WHICH MR. ISRAEL SNEED AND OTHER WORKING MEN
RECEIVE A LESSON IN TRUE DEMOCRACY 91
V IN WHICH J. PATTERSON BING BUYS A NECKLACE OF PEARLS 103
VI IN WHICH HIRAM BLENKINSOP HAS A NUMBER OF ADVENTURES 117
VII IN WHICH HIGH VOLTAGE DEVELOPS IN THE CONVERSATION 137
VIII IN WHICH JUDGE CROOKER DELIVERS A FEW OPINIONS 146
IX WHICH TELLS OF A MERRY CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE LITTLE
COTTAGE OF THE WIDOW MORAN 163
THE PRODIGAL VILLAGE
CHAPTER ONE
WHICH INTRODUCES THE SHEPHERD OF THE BIRDS
The day that Henry Smix met and embraced Gasoline Power and went up Main
Street hand in hand with it is not yet forgotten. It was a hasty
marriage, so to speak, and the results of it were truly deplorable.
Their little journey produced an effect on the nerves and the remote
future history of Bingville. They rushed at a group of citizens who were
watching them, scattered it hither and thither, broke down a section of
Mrs. Risley's picket fence and ran over a small boy. At the end of their
brief misalliance, Gasoline Power seemed to express its opinion of Mr.
Smix by hurling him against a telegraph pole and running wild in the
park until it cooled its passion in the fountain pool. In the language
of Hiram Blenkinsop, the place was badly "smixed up." Yet Mr. Smix was
the object of unmerited criticism. He was like many other men in that
quiet village--slow, deliberate, harmless and good-natured. The action
of his intellect was not at all like that of a gasoline engine. Between
the swiftness of the one and the slowness of the other, there was a wide
zone full of possibilities. The engine had accomplished many things
while Mr. Smix's intellect was getting ready to begin to act.
In speaking of this adventure, Hiram Blenkinsop made a wise remark: "My
married life learnt me one thing," said he. "If you are thinkin' of
hitchin' up a wild horse with a tame one, be careful that the tame one
is the stoutest or it will do him no good."
The event had its tragic side and whatever Hiram Blenkinsop and other
citizens of questionable taste may have said of it, the historian has no
intention of treating it lightly. Mr. Smix and his neighbor's fence
could be repaired but not the small boy--Robert Emmet Moran, six years
old, the son of the Widow Moran who took in washing. He was in the
nature of a sacrifice to the new god. He became a beloved cripple, known
as the Shepherd of the Birds and altogether the most cheerful person in
the village. His world was a little room on the second floor of his
mother's cottage overlooking the big flower garden of Judge Crooker--his
father having been the gardener and coachman of the Judge. There were in
this room an old pine bureau, a four post bedstead, an armchair by the
window, a small round nickel clock, that sat on the bureau, a rubber
tree and a very talkative little old tin soldier of the name of Bloggs
who stood erect on a shelf with a gun in his hand and was always looking
out of the window. The day of the tin soldier's arrival the boy had
named him Mr. Bloggs and discovered his unusual qualities of mind and
heart. He was a wise old soldier, it would seem, for he had some sort of
answer for each of the many questions of Bob Moran. Indeed, as Bob knew,
he had seen and suffered much, having traveled to Europe and back with
the Judge's family and been sunk for a year in a frog pond and been
dropped in a jug of molasses, but through it all had kept his look of
inextinguishable courage. The lonely lad talked, now and then, with the
round, nickel clock or the rubber-tree or the pine bureau, but mostly
gave his confidence to the wise and genial Mr. Bloggs. When the spring
arrived the garden, with its birds and flowers, became a source of joy
and companionship for the little lad. Sitting by the open window, he
used to talk to Pat Crowley, who was getting the ground ready for
sowing. Later the slow procession of the flowers passed under the boy's
window and greeted him with its fragrance and color.
But his most intimate friends were the birds. Robins, in the elm tree
just beyond the window, woke him every summer morning. When he made his
way to the casement, with the aid of two ropes which spanned his room,
they came to him lighting on his wrists and hands and clamoring for the
seeds and crumbs which he was wont to feed them. Indeed, little Bob
Moran soon learned the pretty lingo of every feathered tribe that camped
in the garden. He could sound the pan pipe of the robin, the fairy flute
of the oriole, the noisy guitar of the bobolink and the little piccolo
of the song sparrow. Many of these dear friends of his came into the
room and explored the rubber tree and sang in its branches. A colony of
barn swallows lived under the eaves of the old weathered shed on the far
side of the garden. There were many windows, each with a saucy head
looking out of it. Suddenly half a dozen of these merry people would
rush into the air and fill it with their frolic. They were like a lot of
laughing schoolboys skating over invisible hills and hollows.
With a pair of field-glasses, which Mrs. Crooker had loaned to him, Bob
Moran had learned the nest habits of the whole summer colony in that
wonderful garden. All day he sat by the open window with his work, an
air gun at his side. The robins would shout a warning to Bob when a cat
strolled into that little paradise. Then he would drop his brushes,
seize his gun and presently its missile would go whizzing through the
air, straight against the side of the cat, who, feeling the sting of it,
would bound through the flower beds and leap over the fence to avoid
further punishment. Bob had also made an electric search-light out of
his father's old hunting jack and, when those red-breasted policemen
sounded their alarm at night, he was out of bed in a jiffy and sweeping
the tree tops with a broom of light, the jack on his forehead. If he
discovered a pair of eyes, the stinging missiles flew toward them in the
light stream until the intruder was dislodged. Indeed, he was like a
shepherd of old, keeping the wolves from his flock. It was the parish
priest who first called him the Shepherd of the Birds.
Just opposite his window was the stub of an old pine partly covered with
Virginia creeper. Near the top of it was a round hole and beyond it a
small cavern which held the nest of a pair of flickers. Sometimes the
female sat with her gray head protruding from this tiny oriel window of
hers looking across at Bob. Pat Crowley was in the habit of calling
this garden "Moran City," wherein the stub was known as Woodpecker
Tower and the flower bordered path as Fifth Avenue while the widow's
cottage was always referred to as City Hall and the weathered shed as
the tenement district.
What a theater of unpremeditated art was this beautiful, big garden of
the Judge! There were those who felt sorry for Bob Moran but his life
was fuller and happier than theirs. It is doubtful if any of the world's
travelers saw more of its beauty than he.
He had sugared the window-sill so that he always had company--bees and
wasps and butterflies. The latter had interested him since the Judge had
called them "stray thoughts of God." Their white, yellow and blue wings
were always flashing in the warm sunlit spaces of the garden. He loved
the chorus of an August night and often sat by his window listening to
the songs of the tree crickets and katydids and seeing the innumerable
firefly lanterns flashing among the flowers.
His work was painting scenes in the garden, especially bird tricks and
attitudes. For this, he was indebted to Susan Baker, who had given him
paints and brushes and taught him how to use them, and to an unusual
aptitude for drawing.
One day Mrs. Baker brought her daughter Pauline with her--a pretty
blue-eyed girl with curly blonde hair, four years older than Bob, who
was thirteen when his painting began. The Shepherd looked at her with an
exclamation of delight; until then he had never seen a beautiful young
maiden. Homely, ill-clad daughters of the working folk had come to his
room with field flowers now and then, but no one like Pauline. He felt
her hair and looked wistfully into her face and said that she was like
pink and white and yellow roses. She was a discovery--a new kind of
human being. Often he thought of her as he sat looking out of the window
and often he dreamed of her at night.
The little Shepherd of the Birds was not quite a boy. He was a spirit
untouched by any evil thought, unbroken to lures and thorny ways. He
still had the heart of childhood and saw only the beauty of the world.
He was like the flowers and birds of the garden, strangely fair and
winsome, with silken, dark hair curling about his brows. He had large,
clear, brown eyes, a mouth delicate as a girl's and teeth very white and
shapely. The Bakers had lifted the boundaries of his life and extended
his vision. He found a new joy in studying flower forms and in imitating
their colors on canvas.
Now, indeed, there was not a happier lad in the village than this young
prisoner in one of the two upper bedrooms in the small cottage of the
Widow Moran. True, he had moments of longing for his lost freedom when
he heard the shouts of the boys in the street and their feet hurrying by
on the sidewalk. The steadfast and courageous Mr. Bloggs had said: "I
guess we have just as much fun as they do, after all. Look at them
roses."
One evening, as his mother sat reading an old love tale to the boy, he
stopped her.
"Mother," he said, "I love Pauline. Do you think it would be all right
for me to tell her?"
"Never a word," said the good woman. "Ye see it's this way, my little
son, ye're like a priest an' it's not the right thing for a priest."
"I don't want to be a priest," said he impatiently.
"Tut, tut, my laddie boy! It's for God to say an' for us to obey," she
answered.
When the widow had gone to her room for the night and Bob was thinking
it over, Mr. Bloggs remarked that in his opinion they should keep up
their courage for it was a very grand thing to be a priest after all.
Winters he spent deep in books out of Judge Crooker's library and
tending his potted plants and painting them and the thick blanket of
snow in the garden. Among the happiest moments of his life were those
that followed his mother's return from the post-office with _The
Bingville Sentinel_. Then, as the widow was wont to say, he was like a
dog with a bone. To him, Bingville was like Rome in the ancient world or
London in the British Empire. All roads led to Bingville. The _Sentinel_
was in the nature of a habit. One issue was like unto another--as like
as "two chaws off the same plug of tobaccer," a citizen had once said.
Its editor performed his jokes with a wink and a nudge as if he were
saying, "I will now touch the light guitar." Anything important in the
_Sentinel_ would have been as misplaced as a cannon in a meeting-house.
Every week it caught the toy balloons of gossip, the thistledown events
which were floating in the still air of Bingville. The _Sentinel_ was a
dissipation as enjoyable and as inexplicable as tea. It contained
portraits of leading citizens, accounts of sundry goings and comings,
and teas and parties and student frolics.
To the little Shepherd, Bingville was the capital of the world and Mr.
J. Patterson Bing, the first citizen of Bingville, who employed eleven
hundred men and had four automobiles, was a gigantic figure whose shadow
stretched across the earth. There were two people much in his thoughts
and dreams and conversation--Pauline Baker and J. Patterson Bing. Often
there were articles in the _Sentinel_ regarding the great enterprises of
Mr. Bing and the social successes of the Bing family in the metropolis.
These he read with hungry interest. His favorite heroes were George
Washington, St. Francis and J. Patterson Bing. As between the three he
would, secretly, have voted for Mr. Bing. Indeed, he and his friends and
intimates--Mr. Bloggs and the rubber tree and the little pine bureau and
the round nickel clock--had all voted for Mr. Bing. But he had never
seen the great man.
Mr. Bing sent Mrs. Moran a check every Christmas and, now and then, some
little gift to Bob, but his charities were strictly impersonal. He used
to say that while he was glad to help the poor and the sick, he hadn't
time to call on them. Once, Mrs. Bing promised the widow that she and
her husband would go to see Bob on Christmas Day. The little Shepherd
asked his mother to hang his best pictures on the walls and to decorate
them with sprigs of cedar. He put on his starched shirt and collar and
silk tie and a new black coat which his mother had given him. The
Christmas bells never rang so merrily.
The great white bird in the Congregational Church tower--that being
Bob's thought of it--flew out across the valley with its tidings of good
will.
To the little Shepherd it seemed to say:
"Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing--Bing! Com-ing, Com-ing, Com-ing!!"
Many of the friends of his mother--mostly poor folk of the parish who
worked in the mill--came with simple gifts and happy greetings. There
were those among them who thought it a blessing to look upon the sweet
face of Bob and to hear his merry laughter over some playful bit of
gossip and Judge Crooker said that they were quite right about it. Mr.
and Mrs. J. Patterson Bing were never to feel this blessing. The
Shepherd of the Birds waited in vain for them that Christmas Day. Mrs.
Bing sent a letter of kindly greeting and a twenty-dollar gold piece
and explained that her husband was not feeling "quite up to the mark,"
which was true.
"I'm not going," he said decisively, when Mrs. Bing brought the matter
up as he was smoking in the library an hour or so after dinner. "No
cripples and misery in mine at present, thank you! I wouldn't get over
it for a week. Just send them our best wishes and a twenty-dollar gold
piece."
There were tears in the Shepherd's eyes when his mother helped him into
his night clothes that evening.
"I hate that twenty-dollar gold piece!" he exclaimed.
"Laddie boy! Why should ye be sayin' that?"
The shiny piece of metal was lying on the window-sill. She took it in
her hand.
"It's as cold as a snow-bank!" she exclaimed.
"I don't want to touch it! I'm shivering now," said the Shepherd. "Put
it away in the drawer. It makes me sick. It cheated me out of seeing Mr.
Bing."
CHAPTER TWO
THE FOUNDING OF THE PHYLLISTINES
One little word largely accounted for the success of J. Patterson Bing.
It was the word "no." It saved him in moments which would have been full
of peril for other men. He had never made a bad investment because he
knew how and when to say "no." It fell from his lips so sharply and
decisively that he lost little time in the consideration of doubtful
enterprises. Sometimes it fell heavily and left a wound, for which Mr.
Bing thought himself in no way responsible. There was really a lot of
good-will in him. He didn't mean to hurt any one.
"Time is a thing of great value and what's the use of wasting it in idle
palaver?" he used to say.
One day, Hiram Blenkinsop, who was just recovering from a spree, met
Mr. Bing at the corner of Main and School Streets and asked him for the
loan of a dollar.
"_No sir!_" said Mr. J. Patterson Bing, and the words sounded like two
whacks of a hammer on a nail. "No _sir_," he repeated, the second whack
being now the more emphatic. "I don't lend money to people who make a
bad use of it."
"Can you give me work?" asked the unfortunate drunkard.
"No! But if you were a hired girl, I'd consider the matter."
Some people who overheard the words laughed loudly. Poor Blenkinsop made
no reply but he considered the words an insult to his manhood in spite
of the fact that he hadn't any manhood to speak of. At least, there was
not enough of it to stand up and be insulted--that is sure. After that
he was always racking his brain for something mean to say about J.
Patterson Bing. Bing was a cold-blooded fish. Bing was a scrimper and a
grinder. If the truth were known about Bing he wouldn't be holding his
head so high. Judas Iscariot and J. Patterson Bing were off the same
bush. These were some of the things that Blenkinsop scattered abroad and
they were, to say the least of them, extremely unjust. Mr. Bing's
innocent remark touching Mr. Blenkinsop's misfortune in not being a
hired girl, arose naturally out of social conditions in the village.
Furthermore, it is quite likely that every one in Bingville, including
those impersonal creatures known as Law and Order, would have been much
happier if some magician could have turned Mr. Blenkinsop into a hired
girl and have made him a life member of "the Dish Water Aristocracy," as
Judge Crooker was wont to call it.
The community of Bingville was noted for its simplicity and good sense.
Servants were unknown in this village of three thousand people. It had
lawyers and doctors and professors and merchants--some of whom were
deservedly well known--and J. Patterson Bing, the owner of the pulp
mill, celebrated for his riches; but one could almost say that its most
sought for and popular folk were its hired girls. They were few and
sniffy. They exercised care and discretion in the choice of their
employers. They regulated the diet of the said employers and the
frequency and quality of their entertainments. If it could be said that
there was an aristocracy in the place they were it. First, among the
Who's Who of Bingville, were the Gilligan sisters who worked in the big
brick house of Judge Crooker; another was Mrs. Pat Collins, seventy-two
years of age, who presided in the kitchen of the Reverend Otis
Singleton; the two others were Susan Crowder, a woman of sixty, and a
red-headed girl with one eye, of the name of Featherstraw, both of whom
served the opulent Bings. Some of these hired girls ate with the
family--save on special occasions when city folk were present. Mrs.
Collins and the Gilligans seemed to enjoy this privilege but Susan
Crowder, having had an ancestor who had fought in the Revolutionary War,
couldn't stand it, and Martha Featherstraw preferred to eat in the
kitchen. Indeed there was some warrant for this remarkable situation.
The Gilligan sisters had a brother who was a Magistrate in a large city
and Mrs. Collins had a son who was a successful and popular butcher in
the growing city of Hazelmead.
That part of the village known as Irishtown and a settlement of Poles
and Italians furnished the man help in the mill, and its sons were also
seen more or less in the fields and gardens. Ambition and Education had
been working in the minds of the young in and about Bingville for two
generations. The sons and daughters of farmers and ditch-diggers had
read Virgil and Horace and plodded into the mysteries of higher
mathematics. The best of them had gone into learned professions; others
had enlisted in the business of great cities; still others had gone in
for teaching or stenography.
Their success had wrought a curious devastation in the village and
countryside. The young moved out heading for the paths of glory. Many a
sturdy, stupid person who might have made an excellent plumber, or
carpenter, or farmer, or cook, armed with a university degree and a
sense of superiority, had gone forth in quest of fame and fortune
prepared for nothing in particular and achieving firm possession of it.
Somehow the elective system had enabled them "to get by" in a state of
mind that resembled the Mojave Desert. If they did not care for Latin or
mathematics they could take a course in Hierology or in The Taming of
the Wild Chickadee or in some such easy skating. Bingville was like many
places. The young had fled from the irksome tasks which had roughened
the hands and bent the backs of their parents. That, briefly, accounts
for the fewness and the sniffiness above referred to.
Early in 1917, the village was shaken by alarming and astonishing news.
True, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and our own enlistment in the World
War and the German successes on the Russian frontier had, in a way,
prepared the heart and intellect of Bingville for shocking events.
Still, these disasters had been remote. The fact that the Gilligan
sisters had left the Crookers and accepted an offer of one hundred and
fifty dollars a month from the wealthy Nixons of Hazelmead was an event
close to the footlights, so to speak. It caused the news of battles to
take its rightful place in the distant background. Men talked of this
event in stores and on street corners; it was the subject of
conversation in sewing circles and the Philomathian Literary Club. That
day, the Bings whispered about it at the dinner table between courses
until Susan Crowder sent in a summons by Martha Featherstraw with the
apple pie. She would be glad to see Mrs. J. Patterson Bing in the
kitchen immediately after dinner. There was a moment of silence in the
midst of which Mr. Bing winked knowingly at his wife, who turned pale as
she put down her pie fork with a look of determination and rose and went
into the kitchen. Mrs. Crowder regretted that she and Martha would have
to look for another family unless their wages were raised from one
hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a month.
"But, Susan, we all made an agreement for a year," said Mrs. Bing.
Mrs. Crowder was sorry but she and Martha could not make out on the
wages they were getting--everything cost so much. If Mary Gilligan, who
couldn't cook, was worth a hundred dollars a month Mrs. Crowder
considered herself cheap at twice that figure.
Mrs. Bing, in her anger, was inclined to revolt, but Mr. Bing settled
the matter by submitting to the tyranny of Susan. With Phyllis and three
of her young friends coming from school and a party in prospect, there
was nothing else to do.
Maggie Collins, who was too old and too firmly rooted in the village to
leave it, was satisfied with a raise of ten dollars a month. Even then
she received a third of the minister's salary. "His wife being a swell
leddy who had no time for wurruk, sure the boy was no sooner married
than he yelled for help," as Maggie was wont to say.
All this had a decided effect on the economic life of the village.
Indeed, Hiram Blenkinsop, the village drunkard, who attended to the
lawns and gardens for a number of people, demanded an increase of a
dollar a day in his wages on account of the high cost of living,
although one would say that its effect upon him could not have been
serious. For years the historic figure of Blenkinsop had been the
destination and repository of the cast-off clothing and the worn and
shapeless shoes of the leading citizens. For a decade, the venerable
derby hat, which once belonged to Judge Crooker, had survived all the
incidents of his adventurous career. He was, indeed, as replete with
suggestive memories as the graveyard to which he was wont to repair for
rest and recuperation in summer weather. There, in the shade of a locust
tree hard by the wall, he was often discovered with his faithful dog
Christmas--a yellow, mongrel, good-natured cur--lying beside him, and
the historic derby hat in his hand. He had a persevering pride in that
hat. Mr. Blenkinsop showed a surprising and commendable industry under
the stimulation of increased pay. He worked hard for a month, then
celebrated his prosperity with a night of such noisy, riotous joy that
he landed in the lockup with a black eye and a broken nose and an empty
pocket. As usual, the dog Christmas went with him.
When there was a loud yell in the streets at night Judge Crooker used to
say, "It's Hiram again! The poor fellow is out a-Hiraming."
William Snodgrass, the carpenter, gave much thought and reflection to
the good fortune of the Gilligan girls. If a hired girl could earn
twenty-five dollars a week and her board, a skilled mechanic who had to
board himself ought to earn at least fifty. So he put up his prices.
Israel Sneed, the plumber, raised his scale to correspond with that of
the carpenter. The prices of the butcher and grocer kept pace with the
rise of wages. A period of unexampled prosperity set in.
Some time before, the Old Spirit of Bingville had received notice that
its services would no longer be required. It had been an industrious and
faithful Old Spirit. The new generation did not intend to be hard on it.
They were willing to give it a comfortable home as long as it lived. Its
home was to be a beautiful and venerable asylum called The Past. There
it was to have nothing to do but to sit around and weep and talk of
bygone days. The Old Spirit rebelled. It refused to abandon its
appointed tasks.
The notice had been given soon after the new theater was opened in the
Sneed Block, and the endless flood of moving lights and shadows began to
fall on its screen. The low-born, purblind intellects of Bohemian New
York began to pour their lewd fancies into this great stream that flowed
through every city, town and village in the land. They had no more
compunction in the matter than a rattlesnake when it swallows a rabbit.
To them, there were only two great, bare facts in life--male and female.
The males, in their vulgar parlance, were either "wise guys" or
"suckers"! The females were all "my dears."
Much of this mental sewage smelled to heaven. But it paid. It was cheap
and entertaining. It relieved the tedium of small-town life.
Judge Crooker was in the little theater the evening that the Old Spirit
of Bingville received notice to quit. The sons and daughters and even
the young children of the best families in the village were there.
Scenes from the shady side of the great cities, bar-room adventures with
pugilists and porcelain-faced women, the thin-ice skating of illicit
love succeeded one another on the screen. The tender souls of the young
received the impression that life in the great world was mostly
drunkenness, violence, lust, and Great White Waywardness of one kind or
another.
Judge Crooker shook his head and his fist as he went out and expressed
his view to Phyllis and her mother in the lobby. Going home, they called
him an old prude. The knowledge that every night this false instruction
was going on in the Sneed Block filled the good man with sorrow and
apprehension. He complained to Mr. Leak, the manager, who said that he
would like to give clean shows, but that he had to take what was sent
him.
Soon a curious thing happened to the family of Mr. J. Patterson Bing. It
acquired a new god--one that began, as the reader will have observed,
with a small "g." He was a boneless, India-rubber, obedient little god.
For years the need of one like that had been growing in the Bing family.
Since he had become a millionaire, Mr. Bing had found it necessary to
spend a good deal of time and considerable money in New York. Certain of
his banker friends in the metropolis had introduced him to the joys of
the Great White Way and the card room of the Golden Age Club. Always he
had been ill and disgruntled for a week after his return to the homely
realities of Bingville. The shrewd intuitions of Mrs. Bing alarmed her.
So Phyllis and John were packed off to private schools so that the good
woman would be free to look after the imperiled welfare of the lamb of
her flock--the great J. Patterson. She was really worried about him.
After that, she always went with him to the city. She was pleased and
delighted with the luxury of the Waldorf-Astoria, the costumes, the
dinner parties, the theaters, the suppers, the cabaret shows. The latter
shocked her a little at first.
* * * * *
They went out to a great country house, near the city, to spend a
week-end. There was a dinner party on Saturday night. One of the ladies
got very tipsy and was taken up-stairs. The others repaired to the music
room to drink their coffee and smoke. Mrs. Bing tried a cigarette and
got along with it very well. Then there was an hour of heart to heart,
central European dancing while the older men sat down for a night of
bridge in the library. Sunday morning, the young people rode to hounds
across country while the bridge party continued its session in the
library. It was not exactly a restful week-end. J. Patterson and his
wife went to bed, as soon as their grips were unpacked, on their return
to the city and spent the day there with aching heads.
While they were eating dinner that night, the cocktail remarked with the
lips of Mrs. Bing: "I'm getting tired of Bingville."
"Oh, of course, it's a picayune place," said J. Patterson.
"It's so provincial!" the lady exclaimed.
Soon, the oysters and the entree having subdued the cocktail, she
ventured: "But it does seem to me that New York is an awfully wicked
place."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Godless," she answered. "The drinking and gambling and those dances."
"That's because you've been brought up in a seven-by-nine Puritan
village," J. Patterson growled very decisively. "Why shouldn't people
enjoy themselves? We have trouble enough at best. God gave us bodies to
get what enjoyment we could out of them. It's about the only thing we're
sure of, anyhow."
It was a principle of Mrs. Bing to agree with J. Patterson. And why not?
He was a great man. She knew it as well as he did and that was knowing
it very well indeed. His judgment about many things had been
right--triumphantly and overwhelmingly right. Besides, it was the only
comfortable thing to do. She had been the type of woman who reads those
weird articles written by grass widows on "How to Keep the Love of a
Husband."
So it happened that the Bings began to construct a little god to suit
their own tastes and habits--one about as tractable as a toy dog. They
withdrew from the Congregational Church and had house parties for sundry
visitors from New York and Hazelmead every week-end.
Phyllis returned from school in May with a spirit quite in harmony with
that of her parents. She had spent the holidays at the home of a friend
in New York and had learned to love the new dances and to smoke,
although that was a matter to be mentioned only in a whisper and not in
the presence of her parents. She was a tall, handsome girl with blue
eyes, blonde hair, perfect teeth and complexion, and almost a perfect
figure. Here she was, at last, brought up to the point of a coming-out
party.
It had been a curious and rather unfortunate bringing up that the girl
had suffered. She had been the pride of a mother's heart and the
occupier of that position is apt to achieve great success in supplying a
mother's friends with topics of conversation. Phyllis had been flattered
and indulged. Mrs. Bing was entitled to much credit, having been born of
poor and illiterate parents in a small village on the Hudson a little
south of the Capital. She was pretty and grew up with a longing for
better things. J. Patterson got her at a bargain in an Albany department
store where she stood all day behind the notion counter. "At a bargain,"
it must be said, because, on the whole, there were higher values in her
personality than in his. She had acquired that common Bertha Clay habit
of associating with noble lords who lived in cheap romances and had a
taste for poor but honest girls. The practical J. Patterson hated that
kind of thing. But his wife kept a supply of these highly flavored
novels hidden in the little flat and spent her leisure reading them.
One of the earliest recollections of Phyllis was the caution, "Don't
tell father!" received on the hiding of a book. Mrs. Bing had bought, in
those weak, pinching times of poverty, extravagant things for herself
and the girl and gone in debt for them. Collectors had come at times to
get their money with impatient demands.
The Bings were living in a city those days. Phyllis had been a witness
of many interviews of the kind. All along the way of life, she had heard
the oft-repeated injunction, "Don't tell father!" She came to regard men
as creatures who were not to be told. When Phyllis got into a scrape at
school, on account of a little flirtation, and Mrs. Bing went to see
about it, the two agreed on keeping the salient facts from father.
A dressmaker came after Phyllis arrived to get her ready for the party.
The afternoon of the event, J. Patterson brought the young people of the
best families of Hazelmead by special train to Bingville. The Crookers,
the Witherills, the Ameses, the Renfrews and a number of the most
popular students in the Normal School were also invited. They had the
famous string band from Hazelmead to furnish music, and Smith--an
impressive young English butler whom they had brought from New York on
their last return.
Phyllis wore a gown which Judge Crooker described as "the limit." He
said to his wife after they had gone home: "Why, there was nothing on
her back but a pair of velvet gallowses and when I stood in front of
her my eyes were seared."
"Mrs. Bing calls it high art," said the Judge's wife.
"I call it down pretty close to see level," said the Judge. "When she
clinched with those young fellers and went wrestling around the room she
reminded me of a grape-vine growing on a tree."
This reaction on the intellect of the Judge quite satisfies the need of
the historian. Again the Old Spirit of Bingville had received notice. It
is only necessary to add that the punch was strong and the house party
over the week-end made a good deal of talk by fast driving around the
country in motor-cars on Sunday and by loud singing in boats on the
river and noisy play on the tennis courts. That kind of thing was new to
Bingville.
When it was all over, Phyllis told her mother that Gordon King--one of
the young men--had insulted her when they had been out in a boat
together on Sunday. Mrs. Bing was shocked. They had a talk about it up
in Phyllis' bedroom at the end of which Mrs. Bing repeated that familiar
injunction, "Don't tell father!"
It was soon after the party that Mr. J. Patterson Bing sent for William
Snodgrass, the carpenter. He wanted an extension built on his house
containing new bedrooms and baths and a large sun parlor. The estimate
of Snodgrass was unexpectedly large. In explanation of the fact the
latter said: "We work only eight hours a day now. The men demand it and
they must be taken to and from their work. They can get all they want to
do on those terms."
"And they demand seven dollars and a half a day at that? It's big pay
for an ordinary mechanic," said J. Patterson.
"There's plenty of work to do," Snodgrass answered. "I don't care the
snap o' my finger whether I get your job or not. I'm forty thousand
ahead o' the game and I feel like layin' off for the summer and takin' a
rest."
"I suppose I could get you to work overtime and hurry the job through if
I'm willing to pay for it?" the millionaire inquired.
"The rate would be time an' a half for work done after the eight hours
are up, but it's hard to get any one to work overtime these days."
"Well, go ahead and get all the work you can out of these plutocrats of
the saw and hammer. I'll pay the bills," said J. Patterson.
The terms created a record in Bingville. But, as Mr. Bing had agreed to
them, in his haste, they were established.
Israel Sneed, the plumber, was working with his men on a job at
Millerton, but he took on the plumbing for the Bing house extension, at
prices above all precedent, to be done as soon as he could get to it on
his return. The butcher and grocer had improved the opportunity to raise
their prices for Bing never questioned a bill. He set the pace. Prices
stuck where he put the peg. So, unwittingly, the millionaire had created
conditions of life that were extremely difficult.
Since prices had gone up the village of Bingville had been running down
at the heel. It had been at best and, in the main, a rather shiftless
and inert community. The weather had worn the paint off many houses
before their owners had seen the need of repainting. Not until the rain
drummed on the floor was the average, drowsy intellect of Bingville
roused to action on the roof. It must be said, however, that every one
was busy, every day, except Hiram Blenkinsop, who often indulged in
_ante mortem_ slumbers in the graveyard or went out on the river with
his dog Christmas, his bottle and his fishing rod. The people were
selling goods, or teaming, or working in the two hotels or the machine
shop or the electric light plant or the mill, or keeping the hay off the
lawns, or building, or teaching in the schools. The gardens were
suffering unusual neglect that season--their owners being so profitably
engaged in other work--and the lazy foreigners demanded four dollars and
a half a day and had to be watched and sworn at and instructed, and not
every one had the versatility for this task. The gardens were largely
dependent on the spasmodic industry of schoolboys and old men. So it
will be seen that the work of the community had little effect on the
supply of things necessary to life. Indeed, a general habit of
extravagance had been growing in the village. People were not so careful
of food, fuel and clothing as they had been.
It was a wet summer in Bingville. The day after the rains began,
Professor Renfrew called at the house of the sniffy Snodgrass--the
nouveau riche and opulent carpenter. He sat reading the morning paper
with a new diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand.
"My roof is leaking badly and it will have to be fixed at once," the
Professor announced.
"I'm sorry, I can't do a thing for you now," said Snodgrass. "I've got
so much to do, I don't know which way to turn."
"But you're not working this rainy day, are you?" the Professor asked.
"No, and I don't propose to work in this rain for anybody; if I did I'd
fix my own roof. To tell you the truth, I don't have to work at all! I
calculate that I've got all the money I need. So, when it rains, I
intend to rest and get acquainted with my family."
He was firm but in no way disagreeable about it.
Some of the half-dozen men who, in like trouble, called on him for help
that day were inclined to resent his declaration of independence and his
devotion to leisure, but really Mr. Snodgrass was well within his
rights.
It was a more serious matter when Judge Crocker's plumbing leaked and
flooded his kitchen and cellar. Israel Sneed was in Millerton every day
and working overtime more or less. He refused to put a hand on the
Judge's pipes. He was sorry but he couldn't make a horse of himself and
even if he could the time was past when he had to do it. Judge Crooker
brought a plumber from Hazelmead, sixty miles in a motor-car, and had to
pay seventy dollars for time, labor and materials. This mechanic
declared that there was too much pressure on the pipes, a judgment of
whose accuracy we have abundant proof in the history of the next week or
so. Never had there been such a bursting of pipes and flooding of
cellars. That little lake up in the hills which supplied the water of
Bingville seemed to have got the common notion of moving into the
village. A dozen cellars were turned into swimming pools. Modern
improvements were going out of commission. A committee went to Hazelmead
and after a week's pleading got a pair of young and inexperienced
plumbers to come to Bingville.
"They must 'a' plugged 'em with gold," said Deacon Hosley, when the bill
arrived.
New leaks were forthcoming, but Hiram Blenkinsop conceived the notion of
stopping them with poultices of white lead and bandages of canvas bound
with fine wire. They dripped and many of the pipes of Bingville looked
as if they were suffering from sprained ankles and sore throats, but
Hiram had prevented another deluge.
The price of coal had driven the people of Bingville back to the woods
for fuel. The old wood stoves had been cleaned and set up in the
sitting-rooms and kitchens. The saving had been considerable. Now, so
many men were putting in their time on the house and grounds of J.
Patterson Bing and the new factory at Millerton that the local wood
dealer found it impossible to get the help he needed. Not twenty-five
per cent. of the orders on his books could be filled.
Mr. Bing's house was finished in October. Then Snodgrass announced that
he was going to take it easy as became a man of his opulence. He had
bought a farm and would only work three days a week at his trade. Sneed
had also bought a farm and acquired a feeling of opulence. He was going
to work when he felt like it. Before he tackled any leaking pipes he
proposed to make a few leaks in the deer up in the Adirondacks. So the
roofs and the plumbing had to wait.
Meanwhile, Bingville was in sore trouble. The ancient roof of its
respectability had begun to leak. The beams and rafters in the house of
its spirit were rotting away. Many of the inhabitants of the latter
regarded the great J. Patterson Bing with a kind of awe--like that of
the Shepherd of the Birds. He was the leading citizen. He had done
things. When J. Patterson Bing decided that rest or fresh air was better
for him than bad music and dull prayers and sermons, and that God was
really not much concerned as to whether a man sat in a pew or a rocking
chair or a motor-car on Sunday, he was, probably, quite right. Really,
it was a matter much more important to Mr. Bing and his neighbors than
to God. Indeed, it is not at all likely that the ruler of the universe
was worrying much about them. But when J. Patterson Bing decided in
favor of fun and fresh air, R. Purdy--druggist--made a like decision,
and R. Purdy was a man of commanding influence in his own home. His
daughters, Mabel and Gladys, and his son, Richard, Jr., would not have
been surprised to see him elected President of the United States, some
day, believing that that honor was only for the truly great. Soon Mrs.
Purdy stood alone--a hopeless minority of one--in the household. By much
pleading and nagging, she kept the children in the fold of the church
for a time but, by and by, grew weary of the effort. She was converted
by nervous exhaustion to the picnic Sunday. Her conscience worried her.
She really felt sorry for God and made sundry remarks calculated to
appease and comfort Him.
Now all this would seem to have been in itself a matter of slight
importance. But Orville Gates, the superintendent of the mill, and John
Seaver, attorney at law, and Robert Brown, the grocer, and Pendleton
Ames, who kept the book and stationery store, and William Ferguson, the
clothier, and Darwin Sill, the butcher, and Snodgrass, the carpenter,
and others had joined the picnic caravan led by the millionaire. These
good people would not have admitted it, but the truth is J. Patterson
Bing held them all in the hollow of his hand. Nobody outside his own
family had any affection for him. Outwardly, he was as hard as nails.
But he owned the bank and controlled credits and was an extravagant
buyer. He had given freely for the improvement of the village and the
neighboring city of Hazelmead. His family was the court circle of
Bingville. Consciously or unconsciously, the best people imitated the
Bings.
Judge Crooker was, one day, discussing with a friend the social
conditions of Bingville. In regard to picnic Sundays he made this
remark: "George Meredith once wrote to his son that he would need the
help of religion to get safely beyond the stormy passions of youth. It
is very true!"
The historian was reminded of this saying by the undertow of the life
currents in Bingville. The dances in the Normal School and in the homes
of the well-to-do were imitations of the great party at J. Patterson
Bing's. The costumes of certain of the young ladies were, to quote a
clause from the posters of the Messrs. Barnum and Bailey, still clinging
to the bill-board: "the most daring and amazing bareback performances in
the history of the circus ring." Phyllis Bing, the unrivaled
metropolitan performer, set the pace. It was distinctly too rapid for
her followers. If one may say it kindly, she was as cold and heartless
and beautiful in her act as a piece of bronze or Italian marble. She was
not ashamed of herself. She did it so easily and gracefully and
unconsciously and obligingly, so to speak, as if her license had never
been questioned. It was not so with Vivian Mead and Frances Smith and
Pauline Baker. They limped and struggled in their efforts to keep up. To
begin with, the art of their modiste had been fussy, imitative and
timid. It lacked the master touch. Their spirits were also improperly
prepared for such publicity. They blushed and looked apologies and were
visibly uncomfortable when they entered the dance-hall.
On this point, Judge Crooker delivered a famous opinion. It was: "I feel
sorry for those girls but their mothers ought to be spanked!"
There is evidence that this sentence of his was carried out in due time
and in a most effectual manner. But the works of art which these mothers
had put on exhibition at the Normal School sprang into overwhelming
popularity with the young men and their cards were quickly filled. In
half an hour, they had ceased to blush. Their eyes no longer spoke
apologies. They were new women. Their initiation was complete. They had
become in the language of Judge Crooker, "perfect Phyllistines!"
The dancing tried to be as naughty as that remarkable Phyllistinian
pastime at the mansion of the Bings and succeeded well, if not
handsomely. The modern dances and dress were now definitely established
in Bingville.
Just before the holidays, the extension of the ample home of the
millionaire was decorated, furnished, and ready to be shown. Mrs. Bing
and Phyllis who had been having a fling in New York came home for the
holidays. John arrived the next day from the great Padelford School to
be with the family through the winter recess. Mrs. Bing gave a tea to
the ladies of Bingville. She wanted them to see the improvements and
become aware of her good will. She had thought of an evening party, but
there were many men in the village whom she didn't care to have in her
house. So it became a tea.
The women talked of leaking roofs and water pipes and useless bathrooms
and outrageous costs. Phyllis sat in the Palm Room with the village
girls. It happened that they talked mainly about their fathers. Some had
complained of paternal strictness.
"Men are terrible! They make so much trouble," said Frances Smith. "It
seems as if they hated to see anybody have a good time."
"Mother and I do as we please and say nothing," said Phyllis. "We never
tell father anything. Men don't understand."
Some of the girls smiled and looked into one another's eyes.
There had been a curious undercurrent in the party. It did not break the
surface of the stream until Mrs. Bing asked Mrs. Pendleton Ames, "Where
is Susan Baker?"
A silence fell upon the group around her.
Mrs. Ames leaned toward Mrs. Bing and whispered, "Haven't you heard the
news?"
"No. I had to scold Susan Crowder and Martha Featherstraw as soon as I
got here for neglecting their work and they've hardly spoken to me
since. What is it?"
"Pauline Baker has run away with a strange young man," Mrs. Ames
whispered.
Mrs. Bing threw up both hands, opened her mouth and looked toward the
ceiling.
"You don't mean it," she gasped.
"It's a fact. Susan told me. Mr. Baker doesn't know the truth yet and
she doesn't dare to tell him. She's scared stiff. Pauline went over to
Hazelmead last week to visit Emma Stacy against his wishes. She met the
young man at a dance. Susan got a letter from Pauline last night making
a clean breast of the matter. They are married and stopping at a hotel
in New York."
"My lord! I should think she _would_ be scared stiff," said Mrs. Bing.
"I think there is a good reason for the stiffness of Susan," said Mrs.
Singleton, the wife of the Congregational minister. "We all know that
Mr. Baker objected to these modern dances and the way that Pauline
dressed. He used to say that it was walking on the edge of a precipice."
There was a breath of silence in which one could hear only a faint
rustle like the stir of some invisible spirit.
Mrs. Bing sighed. "He may be all right," she said in a low, calm voice.
"But the indications are not favorable," Mrs. Singleton remarked.
The gossip ceased abruptly, for the girls were coming out of the Palm
Room.