printing-office, fenced off by a great screen pasted over with old
exchanges. Behind this, Strong sat at his table, correcting proof
energetically. It was evident that he took the editing of this little
four-page weekly rather seriously--but, then, a man must needs be
business-like to produce even four pages weekly with one assistant,
and Strong had to economize time enough from strictly editorial
functions to do a goodly share of type-setting and the rest of the
mechanics of the office.
"I beg your pardon for interrupting you, Mr. Strong," said the Judge.
"I perceive you are arduously occupied. But it becomes necessary to
confer with you with regard to the school-teacher."
The Judge was a tall and vigorously built man--a little red-faced, but
good-looking, if one did not insist on too fine a definiteness of
outline. He spoke habitually with a certain inflation of manner, and
tried to form himself upon a Southern type that was pretty abundant in
our politics some years earlier. He was, however, a native of rural
New York, early transplanted to California.
Strong turned in his chair, and sitting sidewise, rested his elbow on
the proof-sheets, holding the pencil still in his fingers.
"Well?" he said. "I thought everything was settled."
"Assuredly." Judge Garvey rested his folded arms upon the pile of
books stacked at the rear of the table, and leaned over them in a
friendly way. "Mr. Coakley is to arrive Sunday evening, and will
begin the term on Monday morning, to the great satisfaction, I
can guarantee, of all concerned. A slight and merely temporary
embarrassment has arisen, with respect to which a few words will
make it all right. In point of fact, the young woman with whom we
previously held correspondence--who, you will remember, broke her
engagement with us to take a more advantageous position--is here."
The Judge stopped for question or comment, but as Strong waited for
explanation, he went on:
"She has, it appears, failed after all to secure that, and come here
expecting to fall back upon our school, not having heard that it was
engaged."
"Well, that's unfortunate for her," said Strong, "but you can't ship
Coakley now."
"Your views coincide exactly with my own, my dear sir." The Judge
straightened up with some relief. "I have only to ask, then, for a
note to the lady to that effect, that my own explanation already given
may be corroborated."
Strong began to look alert and suspicious at this.
"Views coincide?" he said. "What two views could there be? What does
she say brought her here?"
"She's got an idea that she's got first claim on the place," said the
Judge, plumping suddenly into colloquial diction. He had a trick of
doing so when he got down to business. It would have had something the
effect of candid confession, produced by a maiden's plain-hair days
alternated with her waved-hair days, had not the grandiloquence of
tone and manner become so far second nature that it ran through both
his dialects, and lessened the contrast. "You can't always make a
woman see sense."
Strong looked suspiciously at him a few seconds. "Well, I'll go see
her this evening," he said. "Where's she staying?"
"That is a totally superfluous tax on your time, my dear Strong," said
the Judge, leaning persuasively across the books again. "I have here
a mere formal line, stating that Coakley is the regularly engaged
teacher of the school, and will begin next Monday; your signature
to it--Green's and mine are already there--will be all that is
necessary." He pushed pen and ink toward Strong with his exaggerated
air of courtesy.
"Oh, I'm not going to sign things that way, you know. I'll go see
her." He turned and drew his proof-sheets to him with an air of
dismissal.
The Judge stood up very straight, expanded his chest, and folded his
arms according to his conception of the Virginian manner. "Am I to
understand, sir, that you question my veracity?"
"I don't question anything," said the young man, impatiently. "I'll
know what I'm talking about when I've seen her."
"Permit me to suggest, sir"--the Judge was approaching his platform
manner--"permit me to suggest, sir, that Mr. Green and myself
constitute a majority of the board, and Mr. Green, sir--Uncle Billy
Green--has confidence in my honor, and will sustain my action,
whatever line you may be persuaded to adopt."
"Oh, as to that," said Strong, exaggerating his crispness of manner in
protest against the Judge's staginess, "I'm clerk of the board, and
you can't hold a legal meeting nor pay a salary without me. What's the
reason you don't want me to see her?"
Judge Garvey unfolded his arms, fell back a step, and dropped easily
into the sonorous declamation that made the stalwart Judge no
inconspicuous figure on the floor of the Legislature. The newspapers,
of course, were responsible for his language--as for the rest of
his education; but such as it was, he used it fluently, and the
declamatory manner was, to his constituency, quite an essential of
eloquence--the prime difference, in fact, between oratory and plain
talking.
"You cast aspersions upon my honor, sir. Through me you insult the
people of Green's Ferry--of this county--of this district--the
enlightened and honorable constituency who it is my proud honor to
represent. I sco-r-n to answer your insinuations, sir. They will
be hurled back upon yourself by the united voice and righteous
indignation of my justly aroused fellow-townsmen, by the voters of
this noble district--I may say, by the whole State of California--to
which I am not unknown, sir."
Half-a-dozen of the justly aroused fellow-townsmen were straggling in
from the street, for in Green's Ferry a sprinkling of the citizens
spend the warm afternoons sitting in absolute tranquillity on boxes
and barrels here and there, under the awnings of the several business
blocks; and the knowledge that a row was at last on between Judge
Garvey and young Strong reached them at the first peal. The Judge,
alive to the increase of his audience, raised his voice a shade, and
went on with a curious mixture of complacency and genuine wrath.
"Is it lack of confidence that has sent me to represent my honorable
constituency in the legislative halls of California, Mr. Strong? Have
I received that proud token of esteem only to be insulted by one whose
obscurity is his only shield; who, with unknown record, with no
recommendation save his own overwhelming self-esteem, comes among us
to sow dissent in peaceful counsels, and draw scorn and contempt upon
his own head by impotent and futile attacks upon those whom he is
powerless to harm?"
This rounded the climax well, so the Judge only added: "The call you
propose, sir, I shall regard as a direct insult to myself," and strode
dramatically from the room.
The papered screen went crashing to the floor behind him. The justly
aroused fellow-townsmen looked after him, laughing but admiring.
"Laid you out, didn't he, Strong?"
"That's the way he does it at Sacramento. Oh, the Judge is a real
orator--there's no doubt of that."
"_He_ don't have to make his speech up before-hand. No, sir, right
where he is, any time of day, he just turns the faucet, and there it
comes."
"What was the row, anyway, Strong?"
"I don't know myself; something about a teacher--he began to bluster
all of a sudden." Strong walked over to the screen, picked it up, set
it straight along a crack with intense precision, and went back to his
seat. "Drunk, isn't he? I haven't heard him take the stump that way
since election. He's always made rather a point of not quarrelling
with me, too."
"Oh, he's no drunker'n usual," answered with candor a fellow-townsman.
"The Judge ain't really himself until he's a little off. He didn't
blow so without some reason; don't you fool yourself--not if _I_ know
the man."
"Well, if he's got any game he must have come to his last chance in
it, to try bullying on _me_," said Strong; and then another of the
group asked:
"What row could there be about a teacher, Strong? Thought you'd given
him his man."
The pencil rolled from the edge of the table across the floor at
Strong's movement of attention. "Coakley?--what of him?"
The man began to laugh, and one or two others joined in. One of them
said a little offensively: "Pretty good on you, youngster! You took
too big a contract for your age when you undertook to keep up with
Judge Garvey. He'll give you odds and take you in, every time."
Strong reddened a little, but waited to be answered with very fair
composure.
"Didn't you really know, Strong? The Judge scored one on you that
time, then. Why, he's been Garvey's man in Sierra Township one or two
elections now. Used to be a Millerite preacher, before your day, but
he broke down at that. Good hand in county politics, but he's always
completely out of business between times. Why you remember him,
Strong--he was round with the Judge election times--cross-eyed fellow,
with black siders."
"_That_ fellow? Why, he can't spell straight! The way of it was, Judge
Garvey told us only Tuesday that the teacher we'd got--first-rate
certificates--had backed out; and we couldn't put off beginning school
any longer, nor hear of any teacher to be had; so when he produced
this man, we had really no choice. I suppose I needn't ask where he
got his certificates."
"No--Garvey's solid with this county board and superintendent."
"Disgraceful!" said Strong; whereat all laughed, except one who had
lost a ranch a few years before during business dealings with the
Judge.
"Oh, he's a scamp--I wouldn't trust him out of sight with his baby's
silver mug," said this man, with feeling. The rest laughed again. In
Green's Ferry a certain easy-going good-heartedness is required by the
public conscience, rather than decalogue virtues. Garvey liked sharp
practice--all right; if you were yourself hurt, you would naturally
begin to vote against him; otherwise, it was none of your business,
except as successful rascality had a claim on your admiration. Young
Strong liked to write furious reform editorials--all right; if you
were the one hit, you would swear at Strong and stop your subscription
until a hit on some one else made you renew it; otherwise, it was none
of your business and lively reading. They leaned against the wall and
desk, and began with perfect good-nature to tell stories of the Judge.
"R'member the time he got that Mexican ranch? Fellow thought it was a
bill of sale for thirty acres he was signing, and it was three
hundred."
"Best thing was when he made old man Meeker believe he was dying, and
deed over a good fifty thousand dollars in stock to his daughter--and
married the girl, sir, before the old fellow found he was good for
twenty years more. He made the air smell of brimstone the rest of his
life if you mentioned Garvey to him! Drowned in a ford a winter or two
later, after all. Used to live in a little shanty up Indian Crick and
raise potatoes--and Garvey sent him a cow--cheekiest thing!"
Strong turned sharply away from the laugh that followed, and went on
with his work, while they slowly dispersed. He worked on savagely with
brows drawn together. "It isn't so much the existence of scoundrels
like Garvey that gets me," he was saying to himself, "as the way the
whole crowd of them take him." He stopped to read over the words he
was correcting--they were editorial:
"Was ever folly greater than this of our community, in dropping
everything else to run after money. For what do you expect to do with
it when you get it? Better eating, and drinking, and the privilege of
being toadied to by those who want to make something out of you--what
more can you get out of money, if you have never made anything of
_yourself_? Just as a pig, if he might take his choice whether he
would be turned into a man or would be moved into a cosier sty, with
more unbounded swill, would doubtless choose the sty!"
"My broom against the ocean," he said; but he went on correcting
doggedly.
And, not to conceal from you what was in reality the most significant
fact about Will Strong--the key to about everything he thought and
did--he was mentally submitting this editorial, as he had submitted
every other he had written, to the test of the probable opinion of
a young woman he had not seen nor heard from for two years, but
who nevertheless constituted to his mind the chief motive for
existence--if not the chief and sufficient explanation of the human
race's having been created at all. You must realize, before trying to
understand his story, that Will Strong was really a very romantic
young man indeed, though he pretended to Green's Ferry that he was
not.
Outside the screen, the strips of sun through the western window and
open door lengthened across the meagre collection of dusty fonts of
type, the small press, the piles of papers. The black-fingered,
red-haired boy setting type among them reflected that it must be
nearly dinner-time, and turned to see how far in the hot strips had
crept--turned, and stood staring; for he met squarely the inquiring
look of a pair of clear eyes, and became aware of a lady in the
door-way.
It is probable that Jim had never dreamed in his life of any other
social distinction than that between rich and poor, notorious and
obscure, nor was he a lad of perceptions; yet he knew at once that
this was a very unusual sort of lady for Green's Ferry. If he had been
a man of the social world he would have known that she was a
gentlewoman of notably high-bred appearance. She glanced, not without
dismay, about the shabby work-room, as if she felt herself where she
had no business to be. Nevertheless, she came forward frankly, and
asked in the friendly way of one whose station needs no asserting:
"Mr. Strong?--one of the school-board?--Is he here?"
"Yes'm." The boy made no motion, but stood blankly staring.
"May I see him, please?"
"Lady to see you, Mr. Strong," shouted Jim, standing still.
In the few seconds before Strong emerged, the lady stood her ground in
the middle of the floor, with some appearance of anxiety. She was
certainly a very noticeable person, and came nearer to warranting that
strong word "beautiful" than falls often to the lot of woman. It was a
matter of outline more than color, however, for she had not much of
that about her--brown hair, blue-gray eyes, skin of a warm paleness.
All this low coloring, however, was so perfect of its sort, that it
gave something the effect of a fine etching--a rich distinctness
attained by shades, not colors. Instead of being outshone by more
brilliant-hued women, Miss Northrop had always had the effect of
making them look chromo-like. So, too, a certain nobility and
self-forgetfulness of manner made the more elaborate manners of others
seem the crude device of inferiority. It was a good deal due to
her eyes; she had most wonderful eyes, and I doubt if any man or
many women ever met them in a full look without feeling a little
stir of pulse--whether it was in the lashes, or in the sweet
straightforwardness of look, utterly devoid of coquetry, or in the
depth of the gray, or in what; certain it is that no one ever saw Miss
Northrop without talking of her beautiful eyes.
"A lady to see him?" The word in Green's Ferry defined only the sex.
Some one with a notice of a flock of sheep for sale, which she wanted
to get in as a local; or with an ill-spelled poem; or--by George,
yes--that school-mistress. Lucky she had not met Garvey there--poor
girl! Strong laid his pencil down, and came out from behind the screen
good-naturedly enough--and stopped short. What a thing to happen to a
man, that he should live and move and have his being for a dozen years
in the thought of one woman, should count a world worth living in
because she was somewhere on it, and a pitiful human race worth
working for because they were her fellow-creatures--and should come
out from behind his screen, and see her before his eyes--on his dingy
work-room floor--out of her four thousand miles' distance!
They had been four years schoolmates in a New England High School.
Will was a farmer's lad, from an outlying, rocky village, who worked
for his board while he went to school. He came of an unschooled,
hard-working, God-fearing yeoman race. Winifred could look up every
line of her descent, through vista of governors, college-presidents,
and ministers, back to Colonial aristocracy and gentry beyond sea.
Her great-grandfathers had carried swords in Revolutionary battles,
where Will's had followed with muskets. Winifred herself was
one of those flowers into which excellent family trees break
occasionally--flowers so lovely that no excellence of the tree seems
enough to account for them. If she had any core of aristocratic
coldness, it was so overlaid by a sweet humaneness, a frank generosity
of impulse, that no one would have known it. If she had been a man, to
have a valet, she would have been a hero to him.
Even in the democracy of school, Will Strong knew well enough the
difference between his shy awkwardness and her pleasant frankness; and
knew that though he could meet school requirements about as well as
she, yet his mental range was crude and narrow beside hers; and any
one could see that in the town where he was an unknown boy she was an
important young lady. These things would not have counted for much had
not some mediaeval follower of some exiled king dropped down into the
boy's temperament that passion of self-abasing loyalty that is rather
an anachronism in our democratic days. They had been on terms of
friendliness rather than friendship in school, but that was due more
to his shyness than anything else. She had really given to him more
opportunities than to most of her schoolmates; she liked his integrity
and earnestness.
He had looked to college as the natural door between his world and
hers; after four years at New Haven he might seek her acquaintance
without audacity. To that end he had laboriously accumulated money,
and had even passed his matriculation, when his father's death made
him indispensable on the poor little farm. Since then he had doggedly
plodded alone through the college curriculum, but without finding in
it the mysterious pass-word that he had expected into the intellectual
aristocracy. Some two years before, his mother's death and the growing
up of younger brothers had left him free to seek his fortune in
California. At twenty-seven he had lost his fresh look and boyish
shyness; he looked older than he was, but he was really very youthful,
and believed in all sorts of abstractions beginning with capitals.
His mental furniture, being obtained from books, not people, was not
quite in the style of the present decade, and he read Carlyle and
Emerson more than Herbert Spencer. His creed had, therefore, quite
transcendentalism enough to accommodate without incongruity his little
private deification.
Once in every year or two, as opportunity took him near her home, he
had called on her, and had multiplied each call mightily by thinking
of it before and after. He had also kept up a stupid correspondence
with a schoolmate who had lived in the same town with her, for the
chance of her name being mentioned. Within a couple of years, however,
she had lost her father and gone to relatives in New York, so he had
lost exact knowledge even of her whereabouts.
She spoke before he had found his voice--without an instant's
hesitation, indeed. "Oh, Will Strong!" she cried, stepping quickly
toward him and holding out her hand. "I _hoped_ it was you!"
He took the offered hand, and said to himself that his own was
consecrated by the touch to clean deeds forever. He would not have
known how to address her, but he followed her leading.
"It is Winifred Northrop!" he said. "What is it? Can I do something
for you?"
"You are school-committee man, are you not?" Anxiety, relief, and
trust mingled in her voice.
"Trustee--yes. Why," he cried, "it isn't possible that _you_ are the
lady!"
She laughed. "I suppose the lady must be I."
He did not smile. He even lost color with wrath. "Garvey has dared to
play you some trick!--I did not dream--" he went on, eagerly, "Garvey
kept the letters in his hands, and bungled over the name, so I did not
once fairly catch it."
He turned back to his corner, and put the remaining bit of proof into
his pocket. New heavens and new earth had come into existence since
the last pencil mark on it.
"Jim," he said, "I'm called off on school-business. You get as much of
that set up as you can before dinner, and then lock up; and I'll come
down and make the corrections in the editorials before I go to bed.
Now--Winifred--if I may walk home with you, we'll get to the bottom
of Garvey's tricks. Villain!"
The epithet was so fervent, and so entirely without humorous intent,
that Miss Northrop laughed again as they walked out into the dull, hot
September afternoon sun. The board sidewalk was uneven and full of
projecting nails and splinters, and she held her thin, blue-gray dress
prettily aside from them; Will noted the gesture with admiration as
intense as unreasonable. It seemed to him peculiarly admirable that
she should draw her hat a little forward to shade her eyes, and should
take just the length of step that she did; the absolutely right step
for a lady was thenceforth settled; since then, he has insisted
unreasonably upon a certain shade as the only right thing in gray, as
if he held in his own mind some positive standard beyond the realm of
variable taste.
The two or three business blocks--rows of slight frame-buildings, more
of them saloons than would seem possible--were very quiet; Green's
Ferry is the shipping point of a wide stock-raising district, and
all its activity centres about the railroad station at stated times
daily. The justly aroused fellow-townsmen were all back under the
awnings--leaning against the wall by the post-office, sitting on boxes
by the grocery; some indolently telling stories and chaffing; some
looking sleepily before them in absolute repose; some in various
stages of inert drunkenness. All stared curiously at young Strong and
the strange lady, and prepared to talk them over afterward, but no
one addressed him.
They turned aside soon into a broad cross street with no sidewalk,
where the coarse dust was in places ankle deep. Behind them, beyond
the main street, a few groups of yellowing cottonwoods on bare banks
of reddish clay marked the course of the Sacramento; before them the
street faded into a limitless expanse of gravel, thinly dotted in the
distance with dull green oaks, and bounded by long knolls, like
wrinkles in the plain, dark with oaks against the smoky sky of
September--a sky dull blue above, dull gray near the horizon.
Along either side of the street the flimsy wooden houses were set
back, each in its yard, and surrounded by oleanders; sometimes there
would be a few parched roses, a trellis of Madeira-vine, a patch of
carefully nursed grass, often a row of China trees, whose fallen
black seeds stippled the dust--but always the great rosy clumps of
oleanders, glorying in the heat and drought. Every evening after
dinner the owners come out, and stand watering these gardens with hose
and sprinkler, till all along the street there is a murmur like rain
and a smell of damp earth, and here and there through the warm
twilight a glimpse of the white sprays of water; while the families
sit on the porches and doorstep, and gossip and laugh. At this hour,
however, the little gardens and splendid oleanders lay hot and
deserted in the dusty afternoon.
"I haven't till now had time to spare from being anxious to be
interested," Miss Northrop said. "I was rather panic-stricken this
morning, and things were awful, instead of interesting, in proportion
to their newness."
This bit of pathos stiffened Will's manner with the awkwardness of
over-feeling, as he asked: "Now, what can I do for you--Winifred?"