Soon their happiness shall see.”
[Illustration: 0185]
The stanza embodies their highest aspirations; and really, when one
comes to consider the whole matter, one could hardly formulate a more
satisfactory walk of life; only it is a walk, not a race, and some
people (outside a country town) look to go through life at a faster
pace. “In the way our fathers trod”--that is the sound motto of the
country town, and the man who tries to get out of the old ruts is looked
upon with suspicion by the sensible people to whom he may allude as old
rutters or even old rotters.
A middle-aged inhabitant of a town nearly twice as large as our
Mallingham was greatly impressed with this truth by an incident which
had just come under his notice when I had occasion to call upon him some
time ago. He told me that he had been visited by a former townsman of
his, but one whom he had not seen for more than fifteen years.
“No, you wouldn't remember Joseph Starkie, old Sol Starkie's son,” he
said to me in the course of his narrative. “It was before you came to
county. Queer restless chap was Joe always.”
“Is he any relation to the Starkie who invented the magnetic lathe that
is used everywhere in the States?” I inquired.
“I shouldn't wonder,” he replied, as if making a sad admission. “Yes, I
believe he said something about it when he was with me. He was just that
sort of chap--so restless and dissatisfied always--wanting to do things
differently from how they had always been done. His father was a most
respectable man, however, in the hardware line, and Joe was too much for
him: he packed him off to an uncle in the States, and there he has been
ever since, he told me. “Sad--very sad! His father had quite a nice
little business here, and if Joe had only settled down reasonably he
might have succeeded to it and done well.”
“It strikes me that he has done pretty well elsewhere,” said I. “His
name is well known in every machine shop in the States.”
“Is that so? Well, maybe so; but that's not like having a comfortable
place at home. Why, he might even have had a seat at the Town Council or
the Water Board in time. When he came in here to-day I knew him at once;
but I wasn't too eager with him until I saw from his way that he hadn't
come to borrow money, as I feared at first. He wanted to inquire about
some of his old associates, and he knew that I could tell him. 'Where's
Johnnie Vance?' he asked. 'I looked in at his old office just now and
no one seemed disposed to tell me.' I shook my head and pointed up the
road. He saw what I meant. 'Jail?' he whispered. 'Jail? What was the
trouble?' 'Embezzlement,' I told him. 'Well, well, who would have
thought it?' he said. 'And maybe you can tell me if Willie Rossiter is
still in his old crib,' he asked. I shook my head. 'Don't tell me that
he's in jail too,' he cried. 'No, no--at least, not exactly. I want to
be fair to every one. It's not jail, only the asylum.' 'What!' he said.
'Willie Rossiter--the asylum? How did it come about--an accident?' It
went against my grain to tell him that it was drink, but he pressed me
and I had to do it; and then he went on to talk about the old town for
some time, but I could see that he had another friend to ask about. He
pretended to be at the point of going and then suddenly to remember that
there was somebody else. Jimmy Gray--it was Jimmy Gray. 'By the bye,'
he said, 'I wonder if old Jimmy Gray is still knocking about.' I smiled.
'No, he's not doing much knocking about just now,' I told him. 'Not
dead?' he asked. 'Oh no,' said I; 'only he has just taken rooms in the
Bridgend Hotel.' 'What! the workhouse?' he cried. 'The workhouse
indeed,' said I. 'And nobody would have known anything about it if he
hadn't made a fool of himself writing to the Board of Guardians
complaining that he had been kept waiting for a quarter of an hour when
he had applied for admission.' That was the last of his inquiries after
his old friends. But they had all been restless chaps like himself--not
settling down to anything properly. Still, he didn't ask me to lend him
any money, and that was something.”
I could scarcely fail to see that this exemplary citizen felt keenly the
value of the dramatist's suggestion, that it is very dangerous for a man
to fall out of line with the rest of the community. Social laws exist
for the community, not for the individual. At the same time, I was not
so firmly convinced as my friend seemed to be that Mr. Starkie's career
could be pointed to as a notable instance of the peril of marching out
of the way our fathers trod. He had declined to yield to the influences
of the magnet that “hung in the hardware shop” of his father, and had so
forsaken the two hundred a year and the obscurity of his native town
for the million dollars which he had earned by his inventions in
Pennsylvania, to say nothing of the fame which accrues to an inventor
who knows how to put his inventions on the market; so that there might
really be some people ready to assert that Joe Starkie's restlessness
suggested that a divergence from the scheme of the Red-man on the
warpath, who is careful to step into the footprints of the man who
goes before him, may now and again be advisable. I did not say so to
my exemplary citizen, however; for the fame of Joe Starkie had not yet
reached the place of his nativity, and the exemplary citizen might have
asked me what about Joe Starkie's old friends who were now sojourning in
various public institutions, and he would not have been satisfied
with my replying to the effect that they had stayed at home, and were
suffering for it.