cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley
was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town,
who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys
quarrelled, and that she was cruel to him. Certain it is that she began
to feed on young boys, and made the old fellow sit up in his evening
clothes until impossible hours, for sheer appearance sake, while his bed
was piled with the wraps of boys and girls from what our paper called
the Hand-holders' Union, who were invading the Markley home, eating the
Markley olives and canned lobster, and dancing to the music of the
Markley pianola. Occasionally a young travelling man would be spoken of
by these young people as Isabel Markley's fellow.
Mrs. Markley began to make fun of her husband to the girls of the
third-rate dancing set whose mothers let them go to her house; also, she
reviled John Markley to the servants. It was known in the town that she
nicknamed him the "Goat." As for Markley, the fight was gone from him,
and his whole life was devoted to getting money. That part of his brain
which knew the accumulative secret kept its tireless energy; but his
emotions, his sensibilities, his passions seemed to be either atrophied
or burned out, and, sitting at his desk in the back room of the Mortgage
Company's offices, he looked like a busy spider spinning his web of gold
around the town. It was the town theory that he and Isabel must have
fought it out to a finish about the night sessions; for there came a
time when he went to bed at nine o'clock, and she either lighted up and
prepared to celebrate with the cheap people at home, or attached one of
her young men, and went out to some impossible gathering--generally
where there was much beer, and many risque things said, and the women
were all good fellows. And thus another year flew by.
One night, when the great house was still, John Markley grew sick and,
in the terror of death that, his office people say, was always with him,
rose to call for help. In the dark hall, feeling for an electric-light
switch, he must have lost his way, for he fell down the hard oak
stairs. It was never known how long he lay there unable to move one-half
of his body, but his wife stood nearly an hour at the front door that
night, and when she finally switched on the light, she and the man with
her saw Markley lying before them with one eye shut and with half his
face withered and dead, the other half around the open eye quivering
with hate. He choked on an oath, and shook at her a gnarled bare arm.
Her face was flushed, and her tongue was unsure, but she laughed a
shrill, wicked laugh and cried: "Ah, you old goat; don't you double your
fist at me!"
Whereupon she shuddered away from the shaking figure at her feet and
scurried upstairs. And the man standing in the doorway, wondering what
the old man had heard, wakened the house, and helped to carry John
Markley upstairs to his bed.
It was nearly three months before he could be wheeled to his office,
where he still sits every day, spinning his golden web and filling his
soul with poison. They say that, helpless as he is, he may live for a
score of years. Isabel Markley knows how old she will be then. A
thousand times she has counted it.
To see our town of a summer twilight, with the families riding abroad
behind their good old nags, under the overhanging elms that meet above
our newly-paved streets, one would not think that there could exist in
so lovely a place as miserable a creature as John Markley is; or as
Isabel, his wife, for that matter. The town--out beyond Main Street,
which is always dreary and ugly with tin gorgons on the cornices--the
town is a great grove springing from a bluegrass sod, with porch boxes
making flecks of colour among the vines; cannas and elephant ears and
foliage plants rise from the wide lawns; and children bloom like moving
flowers all through the picture.
There are certain streets, like the one past the Markley mansion, upon
which we make it a point always to drive with our visitors--show streets
we may as well frankly call them--and one of these leads down a wide,
handsome street out to the college. There the town often goes in its
best bib and tucker to hear the lecturers whom Mrs. Markley feeds. Last
winter one came who converted Dan Gregg--once Governor, but for ten
years best known among us as the town infidel. The lecturer explained
how matter had probably evolved from some one form--even the elements
coming in a most natural way from a common source. He made it plain that
all matter is but a form of motion; that atoms themselves are divided
into ions and corpuscles, which are merely different forms of electrical
motion, and that all this motion seems to tend to one form, which is the
spirit of the universe. Dan said he had found God there, and, although
the pious were shocked, in our office we were glad that Dan had found
his God anywhere. While we were sitting in front of the office one fine
evening this spring, looking at the stars and talking of Dan Gregg's God
and ours, we began to wonder whether or not the God that is the spirit
of things at the base of this material world might not be indeed the
spirit that moves men to execute His laws. Men in the colleges to-day
think they have found the moving spirit of matter; but do they know His
wonderful being as well as the old Hebrew prophets knew it who wrote
the Psalms and the Proverbs and the wisdom of the Great Book. That
brought us back to the old question about John Markley. Was it God,
moving in us, that punished Markley "by the rod of His wrath," that used
our hearts as wireless stations for His displeasure to travel through,
or was it the chance prejudice of a simple people? It was late when we
broke up and left the office--Dan Gregg, Henry Larmy, the reporter, and
old George. As we parted, looking up at the stars where our ways divided
out under the elms, we heard, far up Exchange Street, the clatter of the
pianola in the Markley home, and saw the high windows glowing like lost
souls in the night.
VIII
"A Bundle of Myrrh"
One of the first things that a new reporter on our paper has to learn is
the kinology of the town. Until he knows who is kin to whom, and how, a
reporter is likely at any time to make a bad break. Now, the kinology of
a country town is no simple proposition. After a man has spent ten years
writing up weddings, births and deaths, attending old settlers' picnics,
family reunions and golden weddings, he may run into a new line of kin
that opens a whole avenue of hitherto unexplainable facts to him,
showing why certain families line up in the ward primaries, and why
certain others are fighting tooth and toe-nail.
The only person in town who knows all of our kinology--and most of that
in the county, where it is a separate and interminable study--is "Aunt"
Martha Merryfield. She has lived here since the early fifties, and was a
Perkins, one of the eleven Perkins children that grew up in town; and
the Perkinses were related by marriage to the Mortons, of whom there are
over fifty living adult descendants on the town-site now. So one begins
to see why she is called "Aunt Martha" Merryfield. She is literally aunt
to over a hundred people here, and the habit of calling her aunt has
spread from them to the rest of the population.
She lives alone in the big brick house on the hill, though her children
and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are in and out all day and
most of the night, so that she is not at all lonesome. She is the only
person to whom we can look for accurate information about local history,
and when a man dies who has been at all prominent in affairs of the town
or county or State, we always call up "Aunt" Martha on the 'phone, or
send a reporter to her, to learn the real printable and unprintable
truth about him. She knows whom he "went with" before he was married,
and why they "broke off," and what crowd he associated with in the early
days; how he got his money, and what they used to "say" about him. If a
family began putting on frills, she can tell how the head of the house
got his start by stealing "aid" sent to the grasshopper sufferers and
opening a store with the goods. If a woman begins speaking of the hired
girl as her "maid," contrary to the vernacular rules of the town, Aunt
Martha does not hesitate to bring up the subject of the flour-sack
underwear which the woman wore when she was a girl during the drought of
'60.
Aunt Martha used to bring us flowers for the office table, and it was
her delight to sit down and take out her corn-knife--as she called
it--and go after the town shams. She has promised a dozen times to write
an article for the paper, which she says we dare not print, entitled
"Self-made Women I Have Known." She says that men were always bragging
about how they had clerked, worked on farms, dug ditches and whacked
mules across the plains before the railroads came; but that their wives
insisted that they were princesses of the royal blood. She says she is
going to include in her Self-made Women only those who have worked out,
and she maintains that we will be surprised at the list.
Her particular animosity in the town is Mrs. Julia Neal Worthington.
Aunt Martha told us that when Tim Neal came to town he had a brogue you
could scrape with a knife and an "O" before his name you could hoop a
hogshead with. "And that woman," exclaimed Aunt Martha, when she was
under full sail, "that woman, because she has two bookcases in the front
room and reads the book-reviews in the _Delineator_, thinks that she is
cultured. When her folks first came to town they were as poor as Job's
turkey, which was not to their discredit--everyone was poor in those
days. The old man Neal was as honest an old Mick as you'd meet in a
day's journey, or at a fair, and he used to run a lemonade and peanut
stand down by the bank corner. But his girls, who were raised on it,
until they began teaching school, used to refer to the peanut stand as
'papa's hobby,' pretend that he only ran it for recreation, and say:
'Now _why_ do you suppose papa enjoys it?--We just can't get him to give
it up!' And now Julia is president of the Woman's Federation, has
stomach trouble, has had two operations, and is suffering untold agonies
with acute culturitis. And yet," Aunt Martha would say through a
beatific smile, "she's a good-enough woman in many ways, and I wouldn't
say anything against her for the world."
Once Miss Larrabee, the society editor, brought back this from a visit
to Aunt Martha: "I know, my dear, that your paper says there are no
cliques and crowds in society in this town, and that it is so
democratic. But you and I know the truth. We know about society in this
town. We know that if there ever was a town that looked like a side of
bacon--streak of lean and streak of fat all the way down--it is this
blessed place. Crowds?--why, I've lived here over fifty years and it was
always crowds. 'Way back in the days when the boys used to pick us up
and carry us across Elm Creek when we went to dances, there were crowds.
The girls who crossed on the boys' backs weren't considered quite proper
by the girls who were carried over in the boys' arms. And they didn't
dance in the same set."
Miss Larrabee says she looked into the elder woman's eyes to find which
crowd Aunt Martha belonged to, when she flashed out:
"Oh, child, you needn't look at me--I did both; it depended on who was
looking! But, as I was saying, if anyone knows about society in this
town, I do. I went to every dance in town for the first twenty-five
years, and I have made potato salad to pay the salary of every Methodist
preacher for the past thirty years, and I ought to know what I'm talking
about." There was fire enough to twinkle in her old eyes as she spoke.
"Beginning at the bottom, one may say that the base of society is the
little tads, ranging down from what your paper calls the Amalgamated
Hand-holders, to the trundle-bed trash just out of their kissing games.
It's funny to watch the little tads grow up and pair off and see how
bravely they try to keep in the swim. I've seen ten grandchildren get
out and I've a great-grandchild whose mother will be pushing her out
before she is old enough to know anything. When young people get married
they all say they're not going to be old-marriedy, and they hang on to
the dances and little hops until the first baby comes. Then they don't
get out to the dances much, but they join a card club."
In her dissertation on the social progress of young married people, Aunt
Martha explained that after the second year the couple go only to the
big dances where everyone is invited, but they pay more attention to
cards. The young mother begins going to afternoon parties, and has the
other young married couples in for dinner. Then, before they know it,
they are invited out to receptions and parties, where little tads
preside at the punch-bowls and wait on table, and are seen and not
heard. Aunt Martha continued:
"By the time the second baby comes they take one of two shoots--either
go in for church socials or edge into a whist club. In this town, I
think, on the whole, that the Congregational Whist Club is younger and
gayer than the Presbyterian Whist Club, but in most towns the
Episcopalians have the really fashionable club. Of course, these clubs
never call themselves by the church names, but they are generally made
up along church lines--except we poor Methodists and Baptists--we have
to divide ourselves out among the others to keep the preacher from going
after us."
Aunt Martha's eyes danced with the mischief in her heart as she went on:
"Now, if after the second baby comes, the young parents begin to feel
like saving money, and being someone at the bank, they join the church
and go in for church socials, which don't take so much time or money as
the whist clubs and receptions. The babies keep coming and the young
people keep on improving their home, moving from the little house to the
big house; the young man's name begins to creep into lists of directors
at the bank, and they are invited out to the big parties, and she goes
to all the stand-up and 'gabble-gobble-and-git' receptions. As they grow
older, they are asked with the preachers and widows for the first night
of a series of parties at a house to get them out of the way and over
with before the young folks come later in the week. When they get to a
point where the young folks laugh and clap their hands at little pudgy
daddy when he dances 'Old Dan Tucker' at the big parties in the brick
houses, it's all up with them--they are old married folks, and the next
step takes them to the old folks' whist club, where the bankers' wives
and the insurance widows run things. That is the inner sanctuary, the
holy of holies in the society of this town."
After a pause Aunt Martha added: "You'd think, to hear these chosen
people talk, that the benighted souls who go to missionary teas, Woman's
Relief Corps chicken-pie suppers, and get up bean-dinners for the church
on election day, live on another planet. Yet I guess we're all made of
the same kind of mud.
"That reminds me of the Winthrops. When they came here, back in the
sixties, it happened to be Fourth of July, and the band was out playing
in the grove by the depot. Mrs. Winthrop got off the train quite grandly
and bowed and waved her hand to the band, and the Judge walked over and
gave the band leader five dollars. They said afterward that they felt
deeply touched to find a raw Western town so appreciative of the coming
of an old New England family, that it greeted them with a band. Before
Mrs. Winthrop had been here three weeks she called on me, 'as one of the
first ladies of the town,' she said, to organise and see if we couldn't
break up the habit of the hired girls eating at the table with the
family." Aunt Martha smiled and her eyes glittered as she added: "After
they organised, the titled aristocracy of this town did their own work
and sent the washing out for a year or more."
The talk drifted back to the old days, and Aunt Martha got out her
photograph-album and showed Miss Larrabee the pictures of those whom she
called "the rude forefathers of the village," in their quaint old
costumes of war-times. In the book were baby pictures of middle-aged
men and women, and youthful pictures of the old men and women of
the town. But most interesting of all to Miss Larrabee were the
daguerreotypes--quaint old portraits in their little black boxes, framed
in plush and gilt. The old woman brought out picture after picture--her
husband's among the others, in a broad beaver hat with a high choker
taken back in Brattleboro before he came to Kansas. She looked at it for
a long minute, and then said gaily to Miss Larrabee: "He was a handsome
boy--quite the beau of the State when we were married--Judge of the
District Court at twenty-four." She held the case in her hand and went
on opening the others. She came to one showing a moustached and goateed
youth in a captain's uniform--a slim, straight, soldierly figure. As she
passed it to Miss Larrabee Aunt Martha looked sidewise at her, saying:
"You wouldn't know him now. Yet you see him every day, I suppose." After
the girl shook her head, the elder woman continued: "Well, that's Jim
Purdy, taken the day he left for the army." She sighed as she said: "Let
me see, I guess I haven't happened to run across Jim for ten years or
more, but he didn't look much like this then. Poor old Jim, they tell me
he's not having the best time in the world. Someway, all the old-timers
that are living seem to be hard up, or in bad health, or unhappy. It
doesn't seem right, after what they've done and what they've gone
through. But I guess it's the way of life. It's the way life gets even
with us for letting us outlive the others. Compensation--as Emerson
says."
[Illustration: "Jim Purdy, taken the day he left for the army"]
Miss Larrabee came down the lilac-bordered walk from the stately old
brick house, carrying a great bouquet of sweet peas and nasturtiums and
poppies and phlox, a fleeting memory of some association she had in her
mind of Uncle Jimmy Purdy and Aunt Martha kept tantalising her. She
could not get it out of the background of her consciousness, and yet it
refused to form itself into a tangible conception. It was associated
vaguely with her own grandmother, as though, infinite ages ago, her
grandmother had said something that had lodged the idea in the girl's
head.
When the occasion made itself, Miss Larrabee asked her grandmother the
question that puzzled her, and learned that Martha Perkins and Jim Purdy
were lovers before the war, and that she was wearing his ring when he
went away--thinking he would be back in a few weeks with the Rebellion
put down. In his first fight he was shot in the head and was in the
hospital for a year, demented; when he was put back in the ranks he was
captured and his name given out among the killed. In prison his dementia
returned and he stayed there two years. Then for a year after his
exchange he followed the Union Army like a dumb creature, and not until
two years after the close of the war did the poor fellow drift home
again, as one from the dead--all uncertain of the past and unfitted for
the future.
And his sweetheart drank her cup alone. The old settlers say that she
never flinched nor shrank, but for years, even after her marriage to the
Judge, the young woman kept a little grave covered with flowers, that
bore the simple words: "Martha, aged five months and three days." They
say that she did not lose her courage and that she bent her head for no
one. But the war brought her neighbours so many sorrows that Martha's
trouble was forgotten, the years passed and only the old people of the
community know about the little grave beside the Judge's and their
little boy's. Jimmy Purdy grew into a smooth-faced, unwrinkled, rather
blank-eyed old man, clerking in the bookstore for a time, serving as
City Clerk for twenty years, and later living at the Palace Hotel on his
pension. He worshipped Aunt Martha's children and her children's
children, but he never saw her except when they met in some casual way.
She was married when he came back from the war, and if he ever knew her
agony he never spoke of it. Whenever he talked of the events before the
war, his face wore a troubled, baffled look, and he did not seem to
remember things clearly. He was a simple old man with a boyish face and
heart who was confused by the world growing old around him.
One day they found him dead in his bed. And Miss Larrabee hurried out to
Aunt Martha's to get the facts about his life for the paper. It was a
bright October morning as she went up the walk to the old brick house,
and she heard someone playing on the piano, rolling the chords after the
grandiose manner of pianists fifty years ago. A voice seemed to be
singing an old ballad. As the girl mounted the steps the voice came more
distinctly to her. It was quavering and unsure, but with a moan of
passion the words came forth:
"As I lay my heart on your dead heart,--Douglas, Douglas, Douglas,
tender and true----"
Suddenly the voice choked in a groan. As she stood by the open door Miss
Larrabee could see in the darkened room the figure of an old woman
racked with sobs on a great mahogany sofa, and on the floor beside her
lay a daguerreotype, glinting its gilt and glass through the gloom.
The girl tiptoed across the porch, down the steps through the garden and
out of the gate.
IX
Our Loathed but Esteemed Contemporary
No one remembers a time when there were not two newspapers in our
town--generally quarrelling with each other. Though musicians and
doctors and barbers are always jealous of their business rivals, and
though they show their envy more or less to their discredit, editors are
so jealous of one another, and so shameless about it, that the
profession has been made a joke. Certainly in our town there is a
deep-seated belief that if one paper takes one side of any question,
even so fair a proposition as street-paving, the other will take the
opposing side.
Of course, our paper has not been contrary; but we have noticed a good
many times--every one in the office has noticed it, the boys and girls
in the back-office, and the boys and girls in the front-office--that
whenever we take a stand for anything, say for closing the stores at
six o'clock, the General swings the _Statesman_ into line against it. If
he has done it once he has done it fifty times in the last ten years;
and, though we have often felt impelled to oppose some of the schemes
which he has brought forward, it has been because they were bad for the
town, and perhaps because, even though they did seem plausible, we knew
that the unscrupulous gang that was behind these schemes would in some
way turn them into a money-making plot to rob the people. We never could
see that justification in the _Statesman_'s position. To us it seemed
merely pigheadedness. But the passing years are teaching us to
appreciate the General better, and each added year is seeming to make us
more tolerant of his shortcomings.
Counting in the three years he was in the army, he has been running the
_Statesman_ for forty-five years, and for thirty-five years he was
master of the field. For thirty years this town was known as General A.
Jackson Durham's town. He ran the county Republican conventions, and
controlled the five counties next to ours, so that, though he could
never go to Congress himself, on account of his accumulation of enemies,
he always named the successful candidate from the district, and for a
generation held undisturbed the selection of post-masters within his
sphere of influence. In State politics he was more powerful than any
Congressman he ever made. Often he came down to the State Convention
with blood in his eye after the political scalp of some politician who
had displeased him, and the fight he made and the disturbance he
started, gave him the name of Old Bull Durham. On such occasions, he
would throw back his head, shut his eyes and roar his wrath at his
opponents in a most disquieting manner, and when he returned home,
whether he had won or lost his fight, his paper would bristle for two or
three weeks with rage, and his editorial page would be full of lurid
articles written in short exclamatory sentences, pocked with italics,
capital letters and black-faced lines.
[Illustration: He advertised the fact that he was a good hater by
showing callers at his office his barrel]