THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN.
THE
STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN
BY E. W. HOWE
AUTHOR OF “A MOONLIGHT BOY,” “THE MYSTERY OF THE
LOCKS,” ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1883 AND 1884
BY E. W. HOWE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE.
Should “The Story of a Country Town” find readers, it may be interesting
to them to know that it was written entirely at night, after the writer
had finished a hard day’s work as editor and publisher of a small
evening newspaper. I do not think a line of it was written while the sun
was shining, but in almost every chapter there are recollections of the
midnight bell.
No one can possibly find more fault with it than I have found myself. A
hundred times I have been on the point of burning the manuscript, and
never attempting it again; for I was always tired while working at it,
and always dissatisfied after concluding an evening’s work. I offer this
as a general apology for its many defects, and can only hope it will
meet with the charity it deserves.
I believe that when I began the story I had some sort of an idea that I
might be able to write an acceptable work of fiction, but I have changed
it so often, and worried about it so much, that at its conclusion I have
no idea whether it is very bad, or only indifferent. I think that
originally I had some hope that it might enable me to get rid of my
weary newspaper work, and help me to more ease than I have ever known,
but I am so tired now that I am incapable of exercising my judgment
with reference to it. If it prove a success or a failure I shall not be
surprised, for I have no opinion of my own on the subject.
For several years I have felt that I would like an opportunity to
address a larger audience than my newspaper’s circulation affords, but I
find now that I am very timid about it, and worry a great deal for fear
the verdict will not be favorable. A gentleman who once looked over a
portion of the manuscript said his first impression was that it was the
work of a tired man, and that the pen seemed to drag heavily in making
the words. I fear this will be the verdict of the people, and that they
will say I should have given up my newspaper writing before attempting
it. The reason I did not do this was that I had no confidence in my
ability to become an acceptable historian of a country town, therefore I
worked harder than I should during the day, and went wearily at the
story at night.
Should inquiry be made as to whether any part of the story be true, I
could only reply that I have never known anyone who did not furnish some
suggestion or idea in the construction of the book, as I have never
lived in a town that did not afford some material for the description of
Twin Mounds. I meet Jo Errings every day, and frequently lead them up to
denounce their particular Clinton Bragg; I have known several John
Westlocks, and I am afraid that Mateel Shepherds are more numerous than
is desirable. I have known troops of Mrs. John Westlocks, for in the
country where I was brought up all the women were pale, timid, and
overworked; I hope that Agnes Deming can be duplicated in every
community, and I believe that Big Adams are numerous everywhere; but I
must confess that I never knew but one Little Biggs, though his wife may
be seen hurrying out of the way, should you decide to look for her, in
every third or fourth house.
I hope there will be general sympathy for Jo Erring. In writing the
history of this creature of my fancy, I have almost come to believe that
I have an uncle of that name, and that he lived and died as I have
narrated. Sometimes I think of him wandering in the cave, crying, “Help!
Help! I am lost!” and his voice is very pitiful and distressed. At other
times he has come into my room and sat beside me as I wrote. I have been
with him to the cave on a stormy night, and heard the beginning of the
few sweet chords of music he describes, but which were immediately
broken into by the furious uproar of devils; sometimes I think I have
found him in every-day life, and that he is still listening at night to
the horrible noise of his skeleton. If some one should confess to me
that he is Jo Erring in every particular except that when the keeper of
the Twin Mounds jail gave him opportunity he ran away, I believe I
should be his friend.
In our part of the country there was a strange man answering to the
description of Damon Barker, and I often visited him when a boy, but he
lived in a hovel on the prairie, which was dirty beyond description. He
had boxes filled with strange wearing-apparel, and brass pistols
without number, and he told me stories; but he ran a nursery instead of
a mill, though I have heard that he had a sister. I originally intended
to make these two central figures in the story, but Jo Erring wandered
into my mind, and I am afraid I have made sad work of him.
E. W. H.
ATCHISON, KANSAS, Sept. 4, 1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. FAIRVIEW 1
II. THE HELL QUESTION AND THE REV. JOHN WESTLOCK 12
III. THE HOUSE OF ERRING 23
IV. THE RELIGION OF FAIRVIEW 32
V. THE SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH 38
VI. DAMON BARKER 48
VII. A NEW DISPENSATION 57
VIII. THE SMOKY HILL SECRET 69
IX. THE CHARITY OF SILENCE 87
X. JO ERRING MAKES A FULL CONFESSION 99
XI. WITH REFERENCE TO A MAN WHO WAS SENT
WEST TO GROW UP WITH THE COUNTRY OR GET KILLED 112
XII. LOVE’S YOUNG LESSON 123
XIII. THE FLOCK OF THE GOODE SHEPHERD 134
XIV. I AM SURPRISED 148
XV. THE COUNTRY TOWN 154
XVI. MORE OF THE VILLAGE OF TWIN MOUNDS 165
XVII. THE FELLOW 177
XVIII. THE MILL AT ERRING’S FORD 185
XIX. THE FALL OF REV. JOHN WESTLOCK 202
XX. TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE 212
XXI. THE PECULIARITIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 228
XXII. A SKELETON IN THE HOUSE AT ERRING’S FORD 244
XXIII. THE SHADOW IN THE SMOKY HILLS 264
XXIV. A LETTER FROM JO 279
XXV. THE SEA GIVES UP ITS DEAD 285
XXVI. BARKER’S STORY 296
XXVII. THE LIGHT GOES OUT FOREVER 309
XXVIII. TOO LATE 326
XXIX. THE SKELETON AGAIN 337
XXX. A LETTER FROM MR. BIGGS 350
XXXI. KILLED AT THE FORD 355
XXXII. THE TWIN MOUNDS JAIL 368
XXXIII. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 382
XXXIV. THE GRAVE BY THE PATH 392
XXXV. THE HISTORY OF A MISTAKE 398
XXXVI. CONCLUSION 410
THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN.
CHAPTER I.
FAIRVIEW.
Ours was the prairie district out West, where we had gone to grow up
with the country.
I believe that nearly every farmer for miles around moved to the
neighborhood at the same time, and that my father’s wagons headed the
procession. I have heard that most of them gathered about him on the
way, and as he preached from his wagon wherever night overtook him, and
held camp-meetings on Sundays, he attracted a following of men
travelling the same road who did not know themselves where they were
going, although a few of the number started with him, among them my
mother’s father and his family. When he came to a place that suited him,
he picked out the land he wanted--which any man was free to do at that
time--and the others settled about him.
In the dusty tramp of civilization westward--which seems to have always
been justified by a tradition that men grow up by reason of it--our
section was not a favorite, and remained new and unsettled after
counties and States farther west had grown old. Every one who came there
seemed favorably impressed with the steady fertility of the soil, and
expressed surprise that the lands were not all occupied; but no one in
the great outside world talked about it, and no one wrote about it, so
that those who were looking for homes went to the west or the north,
where others were going.
There were cheap lands farther on, where the people raised a crop one
year, and were supported by charity the next; where towns sprang up on
credit, and farms were opened with borrowed money; where the people were
apparently content, for our locality did not seem to be far enough west,
nor far enough north, to suit them; where no sooner was one stranger’s
money exhausted than another arrived to take his place; where men
mortgaged their possessions at full value, and thought themselves rich,
notwithstanding, so great was their faith in the country; where he who
was deepest in debt was the leading citizen, and where bankruptcy caught
them all at last. On these lands the dusty travellers settled, where
there were churches, school-houses, and bridges--but little rain--and
railroads to carry out the crops should any be raised; and when any one
stopped in our neighborhood, he was too poor and tired to follow the
others.
I became early impressed with the fact that our people seemed to be
miserable and discontented, and frequently wondered that they did not
load their effects on wagons again, and move away from a place which
made all the men surly and rough, and the women pale and fretful.
Although I had never been to the country they had left, except as a baby
in arms, I was unfavorably impressed with it, thinking it must have been
a very poor one that such a lot of people left it and considered their
condition bettered by the change, for they never talked of going back,
and were therefore probably better satisfied than they had ever been
before. A road ran by our house, and when I first began to think about
it at all, I thought that the covered wagons travelling it carried
people moving from the country from which those in our neighborhood
came, and the wagons were so numerous that I was led to believe that at
least half the people of the world had tried to live there, and moved
away after an unfortunate experience.
On the highest and bleakest point in the county, where the winds were
plenty in winter because they were not needed, and scarce in summer for
an opposite reason, the meeting-house was built, in a corner of my
father’s field. This was called Fairview, and so the neighborhood was
known. There was a graveyard around it, and cornfields next to that, but
not a tree or shrub attempted its ornament, and as the building stood on
the main road where the movers’ wagons passed, I thought that, next to
their ambition to get away from the country which had been left by those
in Fairview, the movers were anxious to get away from Fairview church,
and avoid the possibility of being buried in its ugly shadow, for they
always seemed to drive faster after passing it.
High up in a steeple which rocked with every wind was a great bell, the
gift of a missionary society, and when there was a storm this tolled
with fitful and uncertain strokes, as if the ghosts from the grave lot
had crawled up there, and were counting the number to be buried the
coming year, keeping the people awake for miles around. Sometimes, when
the wind was particularly high, there were a great number of strokes on
the bell in quick succession, which the pious said was an alarm to the
wicked, sounded by the devil, a warning relating to the conflagration
which could never be put out, else Fairview would never have been built.
When any one died it was the custom to toll the bell once for every year
of the deceased’s age, and as deaths usually occur at night, we were
frequently wakened from sleep by its deep and solemn tones. When I was
yet a very little boy I occasionally went with my father to toll the
bell when news came that some one was dead, for we lived nearer the
place than any of the others, and when the strokes ran up to forty and
fifty it was very dreary work, and I sat alone in the church wondering
who would ring for me, and how many strokes could be counted by those
who were shivering at home in their beds.
The house was built the first year of the settlement, and the
understanding was that my father contributed the little money necessary,
and superintended the work, in which he was assisted by any one who
volunteered his labor. It was his original intention to build it alone,
and the little help he received only irritated him, as it was not worth
the boast that he had raised a temple to the Lord single-handed. All the
carpenter’s work, and all the plasterer’s work, he performed without
assistance except from members of his own household, but I believe the
people turned out to the raising, and helped put up the frames.
Regularly after its completion he occupied the rough pulpit (which he
built with especial reference to his own size), and every Lord’s Day
morning and evening preached a religion to the people which I think
added to their other discomforts, for it was hard and unforgiving. There
were two or three kinds of Baptists among the people of Fairview when
the house was completed, and a few Presbyterians, but they all became
Methodists without revolt or question when my father announced in his
first preaching that Fairview would be of that denomination.
He did not solicit them to join him, though he probably intimated in a
way which admitted of no discussion that the few heretics yet remaining
out in the world had better save themselves before it was too late. It
did not seem to occur to him that men and women who had grown up in a
certain faith renounced it with difficulty; it was enough that they were
wrong, and that he was forgiving enough to throw open the doors of the
accepted church. If they were humiliated, he was glad of it, for that
was necessary to condone their transgression; if they had arguments to
excuse it, he did not care to hear them, as he had taken God into
partnership, and built Fairview, and people who worshipped there would
be expected to throw aside all doctrinal nonsense.
* * * * *
As I shall have something to do with this narrative, there may be a
curiosity on the part of the reader to know who I am. I state, then,
that I am the only son of the Rev. John Westlock--and the only child,
unless a little girl born a year before me, and whom I have heard my
mother speak of tenderly as pretty and blue-eyed, is to be called up
from her grave and counted; and I have the best of reason for believing
(the evidence being my father’s word, a man whose integrity was never
doubted) that he moved to the place where my recollection begins, to do
good and grow up with the country. Whether my father remarked it in my
presence--he seldom said anything to me--I do not now remember, but I
believe to this day, in the absence of anything to the contrary, that
the circuit he rode in the country which he had left was poor, and paid
him but rarely for his services, which induced him to quit preaching as
a business, and resolve to evangelize in the West on his own account, at
the same time putting himself in the way of growing up with the country,
an idea probably new at that time, and very significant.
In the great Bible which was always lying open on a table in our house,
between the Old and the New Testament, my name and the date of my birth
were recorded in bold handwriting, immediately following the information
that Helen Elizabeth Westlock arrived by the mercy of God on the 19th of
July, and departed in like manner on the 3d of April; and I did not
know, until I was old enough to read for myself, that I had been
christened Abram Nedrow Westlock, as I had always been called Ned, and
had often wondered if any of the prophets were of that name, for my
father, and my mother, and my uncle Jo (my mother’s only brother, who
had lived at our house most of his life), and my grandmother, and my
grandfather, were all named for some of the people I had heard referred
to when the big Bible was read. But when I found Abram before the
Nedrow, I knew that I had not been neglected. This discovery caused me
to ask my mother so many questions that I learned in addition that the
Nedrow part of the name referred to a preacher of my father’s
denomination, and not to a prophet, and that my father admired him and
named me for him because he had once preached all day at a camp-meeting,
and then spent most of the following night in prayer. I therefore
concluded that it was intended that I should be pious, and early began
to search the Scriptures for the name of Abram, that I might know in
what manner he had distinguished himself.
The first thing I can remember, and this only indistinctly, was
connected with the removal of our effects from an old house to a new
one, and that the book on which I usually sat at the table was mislaid
during the day, which made it necessary for me to stand during the
progress of the evening meal. I began to cry when this announcement was
made, whereupon my father said in a stern way that I was now too old to
cry, and that I must never do it again. I remarked it that day, if I
never did before, that he was a large, fierce-looking man, whom it would
likely be dangerous to trifle with, and that a full set of black
whiskers, and a blacker frown, completely covered his face; from that
time I began to remember events, and they will appear as this narrative
progresses.
Of my youth before this time I have little knowledge except that my
mother said once in my presence that I was a very pretty baby, but that
I had now got bravely over it, and that as a child I was known in all
the country round as a great baby to cry, being possessed of a stout
pair of lungs, which I used on the slightest occasion. This, coupled
with an observation from my uncle Jo that when he first saw me, an hour
or two after birth, I looked like a fish-worm, was all I could find out
about my earlier history, and the investigation was so unsatisfactory
that I gave it up.
Once I heard my father say, when he was in a good humor, that when the
nurse employed for my arrival announced that I was a boy, my mother
cried hysterically for half an hour, as she desired a blue-eyed girl to
replace the one she had buried, and when I heard my mother tell a few
weeks afterwards, in a burst of confidence, to a number of women who
happened to be there, that my father stormed for an hour because I was
born at all, I concluded that I had never been very welcome, and
regretted that I had ever come into the world. They both wanted a
girl--when the event was inevitable--to help about the house, as Jo was
thought to be all the help necessary in the field, and in the earlier
days of my life I remember feeling that I was out of place because I did
not wear dresses, and wash dishes, thus saving the pittance paid a
farmer’s daughter during the busy season.
The only remarkable thing I ever did in my life--I may as well mention
it here, and be rid of it--was to learn to read letters when I was five
years old, and as the ability to read even print was by no means a
common accomplishment in Fairview, this circumstance gave me great
notoriety. I no doubt learned to read from curiosity as to what the
books and papers scattered about were for, as no one took the pains to
teach me, for I remember that they were all greatly surprised when I
began to spell words, and pronounce them, and I am certain I was never
encouraged in it.
It was the custom when my father went to the nearest post-office to
bring back with him the mail of the entire neighborhood, and it was my
business to deliver the letters and papers at the different houses. If I
carried letters, I was requested to read them, and the surprise which I
created in this direction was so pronounced that it was generally said
that in time I should certainly become a great man, and be invited to
teach school. If I came to a word which I did not understand I invented
one to take its place, or an entire sentence, for but few of the people
could read the letters themselves, and never detected the deception.
This occupation gave me my first impression of the country where the
people had lived before they came to Fairview, and as there was much in
the letters of hard work and pinching poverty, I believed that the
writers lived in a heavily timbered country, where it was necessary to
dig up trees to get room for planting. Another thing I noticed was that
they all seemed to be dissatisfied and anxious to get away, and when in
course of time I began to write answers to the letters I was surprised
to learn that the people of Fairview were satisfied, and that they were
well pleased with the change.
I had never thought this before, for they all seemed as miserable as was
possible, and wondered about it a great deal. This gave me fresh reason
for believing that the country which our people had left was a very
unfavored one, and when I saw the wagons in the road I thought that at
last the writers of the letters I had been reading had arrived and would
settle on some of the great tracts of prairie which could be seen in
every direction, but they turned the bend in the road and went on as if
a look at Fairview had frightened them, and they were going back another
way.
It seems to me now that between the time I began to remember and the
time I went out with my father and Jo to work, or went alone through the
field to attend the school in the church, about a year elapsed, and that
I was very much alone during the interval, for ours was a busy family,
and none of them had time to look after me. My father and Jo went to the
fields, or away with the teams, at a very early hour in the morning, and
usually did not return until night, and my mother was always busy about
the house, so that if I kept out of mischief no more was expected of me.
I think it was during this year (it may have been two years, but
certainly not a longer period) that I learned to read, for I had nothing
else to do and no companions, and from looking at the pictures in the
books I began to wonder what the little characters surrounding them
meant.
In this I was assisted by Jo, who seemed to know everything, and by slow
degrees I put the letters together to make words, and understood them.
Sometimes in the middle of the day I slipped out into the field to ask
him the meaning of something mysterious I had encountered, and although
he would good-naturedly inform me, I noticed that he and my father
worked without speaking, and that I seemed to be an annoyance, so I
scampered back to my loneliness again.
During this time, too, I first noticed that my father was not like other
men who came to our house, for he was always grave and quiet, and had
little to say at any time. It was a relief to me to hear him ask
blessings at the table, and pray morning and evening, for I seldom heard
his voice at any other time. I believe I regarded his quiet manner only
as an evidence that he was more pious than others of his class, for I
could make nothing else out of it, but often regretted that his religion
did not permit him to notice me more, or to take me with him when he
went away in the wagon. Once I asked my mother why he was always so
stern and silent, and if it was because we had offended him, to which
she replied all in a tremble that she did not know herself, and I
thought that she studied a great deal about him, too. My mother was as
timid in his presence as I was, and during the day, if I came upon her
suddenly, she looked frightened, thinking it was he, but when she found
it was not, her composure returned again. Neither of us had reason to be
afraid of him, I am certain of that, but as we never seemed able to
please him (though he never said so), we were in constant dread of
displeasing him more than ever, or of causing him to become more silent
and dissatisfied, and to give up the short prayers in which we were
graciously mentioned for a blessing.
The house where we lived, and into which we moved on the day when my
recollection begins, was the largest in the settlement; a square house
of two stories, painted so white that after night it looked like a
ghost. It was built on lower ground than Fairview church, though the
location was sightly, and not far away ran a stream fringed with
thickets of brush, where I found the panting cattle and sheep on hot
days, and thought they gave me more of a welcome than my father and Jo
did in the field; for they were not busy, but idle like me, and I hoped
it was rather a relief to them to look at me in mild-eyed wonder.
Beyond the little stream and the pasture was the great dusty road, and
in my loneliness I often sat on the high fence beside it to watch for
the coming of the movers’ wagons, and to look curiously at those stowed
away under the cover bows, tumbled together with luggage and effects of
every kind. If one of the drivers asked me how far it was to the country
town I supposed he had heard of my wonderful learning, and took great
pains to describe the road, as I had heard my father do a hundred times
in response to similar inquiries from movers. Sometimes I climbed up to
the driver’s seat, and drove with him out to the prairie, and I always
noticed that the women and children riding behind were poorly dressed,
and tired looking, and I wondered if only the unfortunate travelled our
way, for only that kind of people lived in Fairview, and I had never
seen any other kind in the road.
When I think of the years I lived in Fairview, I imagine that the sun
was never bright there (although I am certain that it was), and I cannot
relieve my mind of the impression that the cold, changing shadow of the
gray church has spread during my long absence and enveloped all the
houses where the people lived. When I see Fairview in my fancy now, it
is always from a high place, and looking down upon it the shadow is
denser around the house where I lived than anywhere else, so that I feel
to this day that should I visit it, and receive permission from the new
owners to walk through the rooms, I should find the walls damp and
mouldy because the bright sun and the free air of Heaven had deserted
them as a curse.