CONCLUSION.
It has been ten years since we buried Mateel beside her husband in
Fairview churchyard, and built monuments over their graves. I have been
rid of my tiresome business so many years that I seem never to have been
in it at all, and I can scarcely remember the time when Agnes was not my
wife. Damon Barker lives with us in the stone house in Twin Mounds,
which has been rebuilt and remodelled so often that it, too, enjoys a
new condition, and I sometimes fear we do not think so much of Jo and
Mateel as we ought, or of the Rev. John Westlock and the poor woman who
died of a broken heart; for somehow we cannot help thinking of them all
as having lived a long while ago, so many changes have taken place since
they were among us. Many of the people who lived in Fairview and Twin
Mounds when they did are dead; others have moved away, and so many
strangers have arrived that it seems like a new country, and one in
which those who occupy our graves never lived.
In looking through Jo Erring’s room at the jail after his death, we
found a will bequeathing his property to me, a certain amount to be paid
yearly to Mateel, and the mill I have since leased to such advantage
that it has been the source of a great deal of profit. If I have not
mentioned it before, it may be interesting to know that my father’s wild
land, of which he owned a large quantity, has greatly increased in
value, and I was thinking only a few days ago that I was worth
considerable money, and that my income was ample to support me without
work of any kind. In addition, Mrs. Deming died possessed of some
property, which came into the possession of Agnes, and with Barker’s
money we are quite an aristocratic family.
Big Adam operates the mill on Bull River, under lease, and I have
understood that in a few years he will be in condition to buy it
outright. I am sincerely glad of this, for he is a very worthy man, and
has had a wife and children of his own these five or six years. It is
said of Big Adam and his wife that they are the happiest couple in all
that country, and I often go there to witness how contented and
fortunate the good fellow is after his hard life. Not long ago I was
sitting with him in the mill after dark, and when I told him how much
satisfaction his happiness afforded me, he made the old reply of pulling
an imaginary cork, and pouring out liquor in distinct gurgles. His
bandit father was killed a few years ago in attempting to rob a railroad
train, but Big Adam still occasionally tells that his father gave up his
life in the early settlement of the West; in short, that he was killed
by the Indians.
There has been little change in Mr. Biggs, or Smoky Hill, except that
both have grown older, and improved a little. I drove over to that
country not long ago in quest of a servant girl, remembering that Mr.
Biggs had said that it produced good ones, and learned that two or three
of his sons were very idle and bad, and made their mother and their
neighbors a great deal of trouble. Mr. Biggs himself is a great deal in
town, as he has opened a kind of office there for the sale of land,
although I suspect that it is no more than an excuse to keep away from
home. I hear from him frequently with reference to the management of
children, for there have been several occasions to mention the subject;
but for all that it is notorious that he has not the slightest control
of his own. I have heard that his oldest son beat him on one of his
visits to the farm, for he is much larger than his father, and of a very
ugly disposition, in spite of the circumstance that he wore braid on his
clothes until he was seven or eight years old.
I have never yet seen Mrs. Biggs, for her husband appealed to me a good
many years ago never to visit his house if I respected him, as it did
not correctly represent him. Agnes goes out occasionally to quell an
insurrection among the children, who have the greatest respect for her,
and she tells me that I may hope to see Mrs. Biggs soon, as she cannot
possibly live much longer, and that we shall be expected to attend the
funeral.
I think at least a half dozen of Theodore Meek’s boys have married, and
settled around him on the Fairview prairie, and their children are as
much at home in the old house as in the new ones. When I was last there
I could scarcely get into the house for them, and my impression was that
the boys had married well, for they were all very prosperous and very
contented. Their nearest neighbors were the Winter boys, who have
developed into honorable and worthy citizens. Their father has been in
heaven some years, and they seem to be very proud of the reputation he
left in Fairview, and take good care of their mother, who manages their
house, as they have never married.
The Rev. John Westlock has never been heard of since the stormy night
when I saw him turn a corner in a Twin Mounds street and disappear; and
if he is alive this night I do not know it, no more than I know he is
dead. I have published advertisements in a great many widely circulated
newspapers, asking him to let me know of his whereabouts, and soliciting
information of an old and broken man of his description; I have made
several journeys in answer to these advertisements, but the men I found
were not at all like him, and I have come to believe that he is dead;
but if he is not, and this should meet his eye, I trust that his
stubborn heart will relent, and that he will consent to finish his days
in peace under my roof.
Rev. Goode Shepherd and his wife returned to their old home in the East
a few months after the death of their child, and twice since they have
journeyed to Fairview to visit her grave. Their devotion to her memory
is very touching, and it has always been a comfort to me to know that
the minister still believes that Jo has been forgiven, and that the
blessed Saviour blotted out with a tear the record of his desperate
crime at the ford.
I hope the place where Jo and Mateel are buried is very pretty, for I
have spent a great deal of time in attempts to make it quietly
attractive, and my heart has always been in the work. While everything
else has changed, Fairview church is just the same, and every night when
the wind blows furiously, I imagine that the great bell is tolling a
muffled requiem for their unfortunate history from the rickety tower;
every bright day I think that the birds are singing softly over their
graves, and in their quiet corner of the yard, close by the path leading
toward the old house where they first met, there is a willow that weeps
for them in summer, and tenderly covers their graves with its leaves in
winter. I think it was planted by Theodore Meek, in whose family there
was always so much love and content; and I am sure that whenever the
good man visits his own dead, he sends a message upward for Jo Erring
and Mateel.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Mateel and Joe had retired=> Mateel and Jo had retired {pg 140}
am sorry this has happened=> I am sorry this has happened {pg 254}
thoughful=> thoughtful {pg 285}
drive another away=> drive another way {pg 317}
he continuued=> he continued {pg 332}
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of a Country Town, by Edgar Watson Howe