THE ROLLCALL
Nothing is too late
Until the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
--Longfellow.
The twilight had fallen on the prairie. Grass River, running bank full
from the heavy May rains, lay like a band of molten silver glistening in
the after-sunset light. The draw, once choked with wild plum bushes in the
first days of the struggle in the wilderness, was the outlet now to the
little lake that nestled in the heart of the Aydelot grove. The odors of
early summer came faintly on the soft twilight breeze. Somewhere among the
cottonwoods a bird called a tender good-night to its mate. Upon the low
swell the lights were beginning to twinkle from the windows of the Aydelot
home, and the sounds of voices and of hurrying footsteps told of something
unusual going on within. Asher Aydelot, driving down the old Grass River
trail, saw from far away the windows of his home beginning to glow like
beacons in the twilight. Beyond it was the glimmer of the waters of the
river and before it spread the mile-long grove, dim and shadowy in the
mist-folds rising up from the prairie.
"A man can win a kingdom in the West, I told my mother one spring evening
long ago," he murmured as his eyes took in the view. "It's surely more
like a kingdom now than it was when we came down this trail a quarter of a
century ago. Twenty-five good years of life, but it's worth the effort,
and we are just now at the opening of our best years. A man's real
usefulness begins at fifty. This is more like a kingdom, too, than it was
ten years ago when those old hulks of wrecks that strew the prairie down
the river were banks, and hotels, and opera houses, and factories of
boomed-up Cloverdale. We are doing something for the land. I hope our boy
will make up his mind to want to keep it when his time comes."
He lifted his head bravely, as if to throw off all doubt, and tightening
the reins on his horses he swung away down the trail toward the home
lights shining in the gathering gloom.
As he neared the house Thaine Aydelot leaped from the side porch and
hurried toward him. Climbing into the moving wagon, he put one hand
affectionately on his father's shoulder.
"Don't you know whose birthday this is?" he inquired with serious
countenance, "and you've not spoken to me all day."
"I know my boy is nineteen today and expects to have a birthday party here
tonight, and that I left him asleep when I started to town this forenoon
about nine o'clock."
"Nine cats! You left at six sharp to go with John Jacobs over to Wolf
Creek after what you never got, judging from this empty wagon. And I had
half of the feeding done when you left the house here. I saw you when I
was out by the old stone corral looking after the pigs, but they squealed
so loud you could not hear me telling you good-by."
"All pigs squeal alike to me," Asher began, but Thaine choked him to
silence.
"Hurry up and get togged out for the party," he urged. "The Benningtons
will be over early. Jo's been here all day. I'll take care of the horses.
Hike!"
"Be sure to rub them down. They had to pull hard today," Asher called back
as he went up the walk toward the house.
"Oh, fiddle! Always take care of a horse like it was a prize poodle. Farms
like he was decorating chinaware. Good enough dad, but too particular. Me
for the State University and the professional or military life. This ranch
is all right for Asher Aydelot, but it's pretty blamed slow for T. A. And
Jo Bennington doesn't like a farm either," he added with a smile.
In the superiority of his youth Thaine fumed at his father's commands, but
failed not to obey them. He was just nineteen, as tall as his father, and
brawny with the strength of the outdoors life of the prairie ranch.
Strength of character was not expressed in his face so much as the promise
of strength with the right conditions for its development in future days.
His features were his mother's set in masculine lines, with the same
abundant dark hair, the same lustrous dark eyes, the same straight nose
and well-formed chin. The same imperious will of all the Thaines to do as
he chose was his heritage, too, and he walked the prairies like a king.
"The real story of the plains is the story of the second generation; the
real romance here will be Thaine Aydelot's romance, for he was born
here."
So Virginia Aydelot had declared on the day she had gone to visit the
Bennington baby, Josephine, and coming home had met Asher with little
Thaine beside Mercy Pennington's grave. Sorrow for the dead had become a
tender memory that day, and joy in the living made life full of hope.
In Virginia's mind a pretty romance was begun in which Thaine and
Josephine were central figures. For mothers will evermore weave romances
for their children so long as the memory of their own romance lives.
The time of the second generation came swiftly, even before the wilderness
of the father's day had been driven entirely from the prairie. Some
compensation for the loss of eastern advantages belonged to the simple
life of the plains children. If they lacked the culture of city society
they were also without its frivolity and temptations. What the prairies
denied them in luxuries they matched with a resourcefulness to meet their
needs. Something of the breadth of the landscape and of the free sweeping
winds of heaven gave them breadth and power to look the world squarely in
the face, and to measure it at its true value, when their hour for action
came.
The Grass River children could ride like Plains Indians. They could cut a
steer out of a herd and prevent or escape a stampede. They had no fear of
distance, nor storm, nor prairie fire, nor blizzard. Because their
opportunities were few, they squandered them the less. Matched against the
city-bred young folks their talents differed in kind, not in number, nor
in character-value.
Tonight the Aydelots were to give a party in honor of Thaine's birthday,
and the farmhouse was dressed for the occasion. Thaine had been busy all
day carrying furniture in or out, mowing the front lawn where the old
double fireguard once lay, and fixing a seat under the white honeysuckle
trellis, "for the afflicted ones," he declared to pretty Jo Bennington.
Jo's blush was becoming. Thaine felt sure that he must be in love with
her. All the other boys were, too, he knew that well enough.
"What's going on in the dining room?" Asher asked, as he sat at supper
with Virginia in the kitchen.
"The decorating committee is fixing it up for dancing. Bo Peep is coming
with his fiddle and there'll be a sound of revelry by night."
"Who's the decorating committee?" Asher inquired.
"Jo Bennington is helping Thaine, and our new hired girl, Rosie Gimpke,
from over on Little Wolf. She came this morning just after you left,"
Virginia replied. "She acts and looks like she'd never had a kind word
spoken to her."
"Rosie Gimpke must be Hans Wyker's granddaughter. There's a nest of them
over on Little Wolf. They give John Jacobs no end of trouble, but you must
have help," Asher said thoughtfully.
Virginia's mind was not on hired help, however, as the sound of laughter
came from the dining room.
"The bridal wreath and snowballs make it look like a wedding was expected
in there," she declared.
"Will the Arnolds and the Archibalds be up? Have you heard from the
Spoopendykes and the Gilliwigs?" Asher inquired with a smile.
"Oh, Asher! What a change since the days when we invented parties for our
lonely evenings here! What has become of the old prairie?"
"It's out there still, under the wheat fields. We have driven the
wilderness back; plowed a fireguard around the whole valley; tempered the
hot winds by windbreaks and groves."
"It seems impossible that there ever was a one-room sod cabin here, and
only you and I and Jim and faithful old Pilot in all the valley."
"Since so many things have come true it may be that many more will also by
the time Thaine is as old as I was when I came out here and thought the
Lord had forgotten all about this prairie until I reminded Him of it. We
can almost forget the hard work and the waiting for results," Asher said.
"Oh, we don't want to forget," Virginia replied. "Not a season's joy or
sorrow but had its uses for us. Do you remember that first supper here and
the sunflowers in the old tin can?"
"Yes, and Jim sitting outside so lonely. What a blessing Leigh has been to
his life. There they come now."
The next moment Jim's tall form filled the doorway.
"Good evening, folks. I can't resist the habit of the sod shack days to
come right into the kitchen. I understand that we forty-niners are to have
an old settlers' reunion while the young folks dance," he said.
There were lines of care on his face now, suggesting a bodily weariness
that might never grow less. The old hopefulness and purpose seemed fading
away. But the kindly light of the eyes had not disappeared, nor the direct
gaze of an honest man whose judgment might bring him to tragedy, while his
sense of honor was still sublime.
"Come in, Jim. Where are Pryor and Leigh? Did you take it you were all we
expected?" Asher asked.
"Leigh went in the front door like a Christian. As to Pryor," he
hesitated a moment. "I'll tell you later about him."
"Take this chair. I must help the children," Virginia said cordially as
she rose and left the kitchen.
Leigh Shirley was coming from the front hall as she entered the dining
room, and Virginia paused a moment to look at her. Something about Leigh
made most people want more than a glance. Tonight, as she stood in the
doorway, Virginia could think of nothing but the pink roses that grew in
the rose garden of the old Thaine mansion house of her girlhood. A vision
swept across her memory of Asher Aydelot--just Thaine's age then--of a
moonlit night, sweet with the odor of many blossoms, and the tinkling
waters of the fountain in the rose garden, and herself a happy young
girl.
Leigh's fair face was set in the golden brown shadows of her hair. On
either side of her square white forehead the sunny ripples kept the only
memory of the golden curls of babyhood. The darker eyebrows and heavy
lashes and the deep violet-blue eyes, the pink bloom of the cheeks, and
the resolute mouth gave to Leigh's face all the charm of the sweet young
girl. But the deeper charm that claimed the steady gaze lay in the spirit
back of the face, in the self-reliance and penetrating power, combined
with something of the artist's dreams; and swayed altogether by genuine
good nature and good will.
Tonight she wore a simple white gown revealing her white throat and the
line of her neck and shoulder. White flowers nestled in the folds of her
hair, and the whole effect enhanced the dainty coloring of cheeks and
lips. Leigh had an artist's eye in dress and knew by instinct what to
wear. She had an artist's hand also, as her mother had had before her,
and was far more skilled in the painting of prairie landscapes than any of
the Grass River folk dreamed of.
Thaine was busy on the top of the stepladder and did not see Leigh as she
came in. Jo Bennington, who was holding sprays of spirea for him to
festoon above the window, stared at Leigh until Thaine, waiting for the
flowers, turned to see the pink-cheeked living picture framed against the
shadows of the hall behind her.
"I thought you were coming early to help us. This Gimpke girl doesn't know
how to do a thing," Jo exclaimed.
If her voice was a trifle high-pitched it was not out of keeping with her
brilliant coloring and dashing manners. Even the thoughtless rebuke of the
Gimpke girl seemed excusable from her lips, and Rosie Gimpke looked at her
with unblinking eyes.
"You can put on my apron and finish, but don't change a thing, now mind.
I'll go and dress. I brought my whole wardrobe over early in the week," Jo
rattled on, and thrusting her gingham apron into Leigh's hands she dashed
through the hall toward the stairway.
Rosie Gimpke, the tow-headed image of her mother, Gretchen Wyker, stared
at Leigh, who smiled back at her. Rosie was stupid and ignorant, but she
knew the difference between Jo Bennington's frown and Leigh Shirley's
smile. A saving thing, the smile of good will, and worth its cost in any
market.
"Shall I help you too, or shall Rosie and I look after the refreshments?"
Virginia asked as she greeted Leigh.
"No, run along and get dressed. Rosie knows just how to fix things in the
kitchen, and I never need anybody else if Leigh can help me," Thaine
declared. "How is this, Leigh?"
Leigh gave a quick glance and answered: "Too heavy everywhere? Can we fix
it right?" "You bet we can. I'm not going to have a thing wrong tonight,"
Thaine answered her. "But Jo fixed it, and you know Jo."
Leigh made no reply, but went about the rearrangement with swift artistic
skill; while Jo, who had changed her mind about being in a hurry, slipped
down stairs to the dining room again. At the doorway she discovered the
undoing of her work. For a minute or two she watched the pair, then passed
unnoticed up stairs again. Leigh Shirley was the only girl who ever dared
to oppose Jo, and she did it so quietly and completely that Jo could only
ignore her. She could not retaliate.
"Jo Bennington, you are the prettiest girl in Kansas, and I claim the
first dance and the last, and some in-betweens, right now," Thaine
declared when she appeared again.
Jo was tall and graceful and imperious in her manner. The oldest and
handsomest child in a large family, she had had her own way at home and
with her associates all her life. Her world was made to give way to her
from the beginning, until nothing seemed possible or popular without her
sanction. Tonight her heavy black hair was coiled in braids about her
head, her black eyes were full of youthful glow and her cheeks were like
June roses. She wore a pink lawn dress vastly becoming to her style, and a
string of old-fashioned pearl beads was wound through her dark braids.
"You'd better make amends for spoiling all my pretty work as you and Leigh
have done," she said in reply to Thaine's frank compliment. "I'll make it
a few more dances, for you do dance better than any of the other boys--"
"Except Todd Stewart, Junior," the owner of the name, who had just come
in, declared. "There is to be a birthday party and an old settlers'
meeting, and maybe a French duel or two before midnight. I remember when I
was the only kid in the Grass River Valley. There were others at first,
but I always thought the grasshoppers or Darley Champers ate 'em. And Jo
is the first white girl baby born in captivity here. We'll lead the
opening of this ball or shoot up the ranch. You can have Jo for the last
dance, Thaine, my son, but me first."
"Oh, that's fine," Jo declared as Thaine was about to protest. "Serves
you right for spoiling my decorations. But, Thaine, I claim you for
the in-betweens and the last. Let's take one more look at the
refreshments--that Gimpke girl may have them all in a mess by this time."
There was a rush for the kitchen, where Leigh Shirley was already showing
Rosie how to keep the table of dishes in order.
Meanwhile, Asher Aydelot had gone out to the seat Thaine had put up under
the honeysuckle trellis.
"It is early for the crowd, Virgie. Come here and watch Boanerges
Peeperville tuning up," Asher Aydelot said as Virginia stood on the
veranda a little later.
She came out to the seat under a bower of sweet white honeysuckle and sat
down beside her husband.
"The same Bo Peep of the old Virginia days, only he was a half-grown boy
then," she said, watching the Negro bending above his violin. "How
faithfully he has served Dr. Carey all these years. He's past forty now.
Asher, we are all getting along."
"With a boy nineteen tonight, how can it be otherwise?" Asher replied.
"But when the Careyville crowd gets here I'm going to ask you for a dance,
anyhow, Miss Thaine."
Virginia stood in the moonlight and looked out over the prairie slumbering
in a silver-broidered robe of evening mist.
"How fast the years have gone. Do you remember the night in the old Thaine
home in Virginia when you were our guest--too sick to dance?" she asked.
Asher caught her arm and drew her to the seat beside him.
"I remember the jessamine vines and the arbor at the end of the rose
garden."
"We are not old until we forget our own romance days," Virginia said. "You
were my hero that night. You are my hero still."
"Even with a son as old now as I was that night? The real romance of the
prairie, you've said it often, Virgie, is Thaine Aydelot's romance.
There's little chance for the rest of us."
The coming of the guests just then called the host and hostess to the
parlor, and the evening's festivities began.
In the building of the Aydelot home there was a memory of the old
farmhouse beside the National pike road in Ohio and the old Thaine mansion
house of the South. The picture the mirage had revealed to Virginia
Aydelot on the afternoon when she rode the long lonely miles from
Wykerton with John Jacob's message of hope in her keeping--that wonderful
mirage picture had grown toward a reality with the slowly winning years.
Tonight, with the lighted rooms and the music of the violin, and the sound
of laughter and the rhythm of dancing feet, and outside the May moonlight
on the veranda with its vine-draped columns, and the big elm trees
throwing long shadows down the lawn, with the odor of plowed fields and
blossoming grain and shrub mingled with the perfume floating from the
creamy catalpa blooms in the shadowy grove, all made a picture not
unworthy to hang beside the painting of an Ohio landscape or an old
Virginia mansion.
"Here's where the forty-niners get the best of it," Jim Shirley declared,
as the older men gathered about the veranda steps. "We're dead certain of
ourselves now. We're not like those youngsters in there with their battles
before 'em."
"There hasn't been such a gathering as this in ten years. Not since the
night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down
our throats through a goosequill," Cyrus Bennington declared.
"See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot's grove.
Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!" Todd Stewart directed
the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight.
"That's the Cloverdale Farmers' Company's elevator. Looks like a
lighthouse stretching up in that sea of wheat."
"There are plenty of derelicts in that sea as well as some human derelicts
left afloat," Jim said, with a laugh. "Let's take the census."
"Begin with Darley Champers," Asher suggested.
"Not present. Who got his excuse?" Jim inquired.
"He sent it by me," Horace Carey spoke up. "Business still keeping him
busy. He's a humane man."
"Up to a point he is," John Jacobs broke in. "Let's be fair. He is a
large-sized boomer and a small-sized rascal. A few deals won't bear the
light of day, but mainly they are inside the law. I've let him handle all
but my grazing land around Wykerton. He's done well by me. But he's been
at his line a quarter of a century and he'll end where he began--in a real
estate office over in Wykerton, trying to get something for nothing and
calling it business."
"Horace Carey?" Jim Shirley called next.
"Here," Carey replied.
"With a big H," Todd Stewart declared. "Same doctor of the old school. Why
don't you get married or take a trip to India, Doctor? Not that we aren't
satisfied all over with you as you are, though, and wouldn't hear to your
doing either one. You belong to all of us now."
"I may have a call to a bigger practice some day, a service that will make
you proud of your former honorable townsman. At present I'm satisfied,"
Carey said, with a smile.
Four years later the men remembered this reply and the attractive face of
the speaker, the sound of his voice, and the whole magnetic presence of
the man.
"John Jacobs?" Shirley called next.
"The merchant prince of Careyville," Asher Aydelot declared. "The
money-loaning Shylock. Didn't let the boom so much as turn one hair black
or white. Land owner and stock raiser of the Wolf Creek Valley and hater
of saloons seven days in the week. Whatever it may mean in New York and
Cincinnati and Chicago, being a Jew means being a gentleman in this corner
of Kansas," Asher was running on, till John Jacobs threw a chair cushion
at his head and Jim called out:
"Cyrus Bennington."
"Busted by the boom. Lived at the public crib ever since. Held every
little county office possible to get, asking now for your votes this fall
for County Treasurer. Will end his days seeking an election and go at last
to be with the elected," Cyrus Bennington frankly described himself.
"Not so bad yet as Todd Stewart," Todd declared. "He lost everything in
the boom except his old Scotch Presbyterian faith. Now head clerk in J.
Jacobs' dry goods and general merchandise store. Had the good sense,
though, this old Todd did, to send his son back to the land and make a
farmer out of him, and the second generation of Stewarts in this valley
promises to make it yet. Why don't you revert to the soil, too,
Bennington?"
"Todd is doing well with his leases," Asher Aydelot declared. "He'll be a
landowner yet."
"My family, especially the girls, object to living on a farm," Cyrus
Bennington said gravely. "They have notions of city life I can't overcome.
Jo especially dislikes the country and Jo runs things round the Bennington
place."
"James Shirley, Esquire," Jim announced and added quickly:
"The biggest sucker in the booming gang. Lost his farm to the Champers
Company. Holds a garden patch and homestead only, where once the
Cloverdale Ranch smiled. All under mortgage also to other capitalists.
Boys, I'd be ready to give up if it wasn't for my little girl. What's the
use in a man as big as I am, with no lung power, keeping at it?" There was
a sad hopelessness in Shirley's tone.
"No, no!" the men chorused in one voice. "Go on, Jim, go on!"
"Asher Aydelot." Jim pretended it was the rollcall they demanded.
"Gentlemen," John Jacobs began seriously. But at that moment Leigh
Shirley, followed by Rosie Gimpke, came from the side door with a tray of
glasses and a pitcher of lemonade.
"Gentlemen, a toast to the man who stuck to the soil and couldn't be
blasted to financial ruin by a boom, the wheat king of these prairies. Our
host, Asher Aydelot."
"The clod-hopper, Buckeye farmer," Jim added affectionately, and they
drank to Asher's health.
"Lord bless you, Aydelot. You said the money was in the soil, not on top
of it. I remember you looked like a prophet when you said it," Cyrus
Bennington declared. "But I was wild to get rich quick and let my soil go.
I never look at Aydelot's spreading acres of wheat increasing in area
every year without wondering why the Lord let me be such a fool."
"Well, you've spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a
county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot
sunshine," Asher insisted.
"You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot,"
John Jacobs asserted. "It is the store that really breaks a man down."
"Not in his nerve, nor in pocketbook," Todd Stewart added. "Here's a
toast, now, to the second generation, and especially to Thaine Aydelot,
son of the Sunflower Ranch. Nineteen years old tonight."
"What is Thaine going to follow, Asher?" someone inquired. "I suppose
you'll be making a gentleman out of him, since he's your only child."
"My father tried to make a gentleman out of me and failed, as you see,"
Asher replied.
"Tragic failure," Jim groaned.
"Seriously, Aydelot, what's Thaine to do?" The query came from Dr. Carey;
the company awaited the answer.
"He isn't wanting to follow anything right now. He has a notion that the
earth is following him," Asher said with a smile. "And having handled
Aydelots all my life, I'm letting him alone a little with the hope that at
last he'll come back to the soil as I did. He goes to the Kansas
University this fall and he has all sorts of notions, even a craving for
military glory. I can't blame him. I had the same disease once. I don't
believe in any wild oats business. I hope Thaine will be a gentleman, but
I don't wonder that a green country boy who has looked out all his life on
open prairies and lonely distances should have a longing for city
pavements and the busy haunts of men. How well he will make his way and
what he will let these things fit him to do depends somewhat on how well
grounded the farm life and home life have made him. The old French Aydelot
blood had something of the wanderlust in it. I hope that trait may not
reappear in Thaine. But where's Pryor Gaines in this rollcall? We are
getting away from the subject before the house."
Jim Shirley's handsome face grew sorrowful.
"He was not affected by the boom. He has been the same man in spirit and
fortune for twenty-five years. But we are going to lose him. That's why
he's not here tonight," Jim hurried on as the others were about to
interrupt him. "He won't say good-by to anybody. You can understand why.
He's going to start for China tomorrow morning--missionary! It's the last
of Pryor Gaines for us. I promised not to tell till he was gone. I've lied
to him. That's all. But you'll not tell on me nor let him know. He says
he's 'called.' And when a preacher gets that in his blood there's no
stopping him."
At that moment Virginia Aydelot and a group of matrons came thronging
out.
"Come in for the Virginia Reel," they demanded. "The young folks are
having refreshments on the side porch and Bo Peep wants us to dance for
him."
"May I have the honor?" Horace Carey said, bowing to Virginia Aydelot.
"With pleasure, Horace," Virginia replied with a smile.
As they led the way to the dining room, Dr. Carey said:
"I congratulate you tonight, Virginia, on your son, your kingly husband,
and your busy, useful life. You've won the West, you two."
"Not yet," Virginia replied. "Not until our son proves himself. He's a
farmer's boy now. Wait five years till he is the age his father was when
he came out here. The test of victory is the second generation."
Bo Peep's fiddle began its song and the still young middle-aged guests
with their host and hostess kept time to its rhythm.