The hills send down a buttress to the north; against it the Susquehanna
flows swift and straight for a little space, vainly chafing. Just where
the high ridge breaks sharp and steep to the river's edge there is a
grassy level, lulled by the sound of pleasant waters; there sleep the
dead of Abingdon.
Here is a fair and noble prospect, which in Italy or in California had
been world-famed; a beauty generous and gracious--valley, upland and
hill and curving river. The hills are checkered to squares, cleared
fields and green-black woods; inevitably the mind goes out to those who
wrought here when the forest was unbroken, and so comes back to read on
the headstones the names of the quiet dead: Hill, Barton, Clark, Green,
Camp, Hunt, Catlin, Giles, Sherwood, Tracy, Jewett, Lane, Gibson, Holmes,
Yates, Hopkins, Goodenow, Griswold, Steele. Something stirs at your
hair-roots--these are the names of the English. A few sturdy Dutch
names--Boyce, Steenburg, Van Lear--and a lonely French Mercereau; the
rest are unmixed English.
Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in
Abingdon; Abingdon is given over to fiery Dissenters--the Old-World word
comes unbidden into your mouth. But you were not so far wrong; in
prosperous Vesper, to westward, every one who pretends to be any one
attends services at Saint Adalbert's, a church noted for its gracious
and satisfying architecture. In Vesper the name of Henry VIII is revered
and his example followed.
But the inquiring mind, seeking among the living bearers of these old
names, suffers check and disillusion. There are no traditions. Their
title deeds trace back to Coxe's Manor, Nichols Patent, the Barton Tract,
the Flint Purchase, Boston Ten Townships; but in-dwellers of the land
know nothing of who or why was Coxe, or where stood his Manor House; have
no memory of the Bostonians.
In Vesper there are genealogists who might tell you such things; old
records that might prove them; old families, enjoying wealth and
distinction without perceptible cause, with others of the ruling caste
who may have some knowledge of these matters. Such grants were not
uncommon in the Duke of York, his Province. In that good duke's day, and
later, following the pleasant fashion set by that Pope who divided his
world equally between Spain and Portugal, valleys and mountains were
tossed to supple courtiers by men named Charles, James, William, or
George, kings by the grace of God; the goodly land, the common wealth and
birth-right of the unborn, was granted in princedom parcels to king's
favorites, king's minions, to favorites of king's minions, for services
often enough unspecified.
The toilers of Abingdon--of other Abingdons, perhaps--know none of these
things. Winter has pushed them hard, summer been all too brief; life has
been crowded with a feverish instancy of work. There is a vague memory
of the Sullivan Expedition; once a year the early settlers, as a
community enterprise, had brought salt from Syracuse; the forest had
been rafted down the river; the rest is silence.
Perhaps this good old English stock, familiar for a thousand years with
oppression and gentility, wonted to immemorial fraud, schooled by
generations of cheerful teachers to speak no evil of dignities, to see
everything for the best in the best of possible worlds, found no
injustice in the granting of these broad manors--or, at least, no novelty
worthy of mention to their sons. There is no whisper of ancient wrong; no
hint or rankling of any irrevocable injustice.
Doubtless some of these land grants were made, at a later day, to
soldiers of the Revolution. But the children of the Revolution maintain a
not unbecoming unreticence as to all things Revolutionary; from their
silence in this regard, as from the name of Manor, we may make safe
inference. Doubtless many of the royalist estates were confiscated at
that time. Doubtless, again, our Government, to encourage settlement,
sold land in such large parcels in early days. Incurious Abingdon cares
for none of these things. Singular Abingdon! And yet are these folk,
indeed, so singular among citizens? So unseeing a people? Consider that,
within the memory of men living, the wisdom of America has made free gift
to the railroads, to encourage their building, of so much land as goes to
the making of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; a notable encouragement!
History does not remark upon this little transaction, however. In some
piecemeal fashion, a sentence here, a phrase elsewhere, with scores or
hundreds of pages intervening, History does, indeed, make yawning
allusion to some such trivial circumstance; refraining from comment in
the most well-bred manner imaginable. It is only the ill-affected, the
malcontents, who dwell upon such details. Is this not, indeed, a most
beautiful world, and ours the land of opportunity, progress, education?
Let our faces, then, be ever glad and shining. Let us tune ourselves with
the Infinite; let a golden thread run through all our days; no frowns, no
grouches, no scolding--no, no! No ingratitude for all the bounties of
Providence. Let us, then, be up and doing.--Doing, certainly; but why not
think a little too?
Why is thinking in such disfavor? Why is thinking, about subjects and
things, the one crime never forgiven by respectability? We have given
away our resources, what should have been our common wealth; we have
squandered our land, wasted our forests. "Such trifles are not my
business," interrupts History, rather feverish of manner; "my duty to
record and magnify the affairs of the great."--Allow me, madam; we have
given away our coal, the wealth of the past; our oil, the wealth of
to-day; except we do presently think to some purpose, we shall give away
our stored electricity, the wealth of the future--our water power which
should, which must, remain ours and our children's. "_Socialist_!"
shrieks History.
The youth of Abingdon speak glibly of Shepherd Kings, Constitution of
Lycurgus, Thermopylae, Consul Duilius, or the Licinian Laws; the more
advanced are even as far down as Elizabeth. For the rich and unmatched
history of their own land, they have but a shallow patter of that; no
guess at its high meaning, no hint of a possible destiny apart from glory
and greed and war, a future and opportunity "too high for hate, too great
for rivalry." The history of America is the story of the pioneer and the
story of the immigrant. The students are taught nothing of the one or
the other--except for the case of certain immigrant pioneers, enskied
and sainted, who never left the hearing of the sea; a sturdy and
stout-hearted folk enough, but something press-agented.
Outside of school the student hears no mention of living immigrant or
pioneer save in terms of gibe and sneer and taunt. The color and high
romance of his own township is a thing undreamed of, as vague and
shapeless as the foundations of Enoch, the city of Cain. And for his own
farmstead, though for the first time on earth a man made here a home;
though valor blazed the path; though he laid the foundation of that house
in hope and in love set up the gates of it, none knows the name of that
man or of his bolder mate. There are no traditions--and no ballads.
A seven-mile stretch of the river follows the outlines of a sickle, or,
if you are not familiar with sickles, of a handmade figure five. Abingdon
lies at the sickle point, prosperous Vesper at the end of the handle;
Vesper, the county seat, abode of lawyers and doctors--some bankers, too.
Home also of retired business men, of retired farmers; home of old
families, hereditary county officials, legislators.
Overarched with maples, the old road parallels the river bend, a mile
away. The broad and fertile bottom land within the loop of this figure
five is divided into three great farms--"gentlemen's estates." The
gentlemen are absentees all.
A most desirable neighborhood; the only traces of democracy on the river
road are the schoolhouse and the cemetery. Malvern and Brookfield were
owned respectively by two generals, gallant soldiers of the Civil War,
successful lawyers, since, of New York City. Stately, high-columned
Colonial houses, far back from the road; the clustered tenant houses, the
vast barns, long red tobacco sheds--all are eloquent of a time when
lumber was the cheapest factor of living.
The one description serves for the two farms. These men had been boys
together, their careers the same; they had married sisters. But the red
tobacco sheds of Malvern were only three hundred feet long--this general
had left a leg at Malvern Hill--while the Brookfield sheds stretched full
five hundred feet. At Brookfield, too, were the great racing-stables,
of fabulous acreage; disused now and falling to decay. One hundred and
sixty thoroughbreds had sheltered here of old, with an army of grooms
and trainers. There had been a race-track--an oval mile at first, a
kite-shaped mile in later days. Year by year now sees the stables torn
down and carted away for other uses, but the strong-built paddocks
remain to witness the greatness of days departed.
Nearest to Vesper, on the smallest of the three farms, stood the largest
of the three houses--The Meadows; better known as the Mitchell House.
McClintock, a foreigner from Philadelphia, married a Mitchell in '67. A
good family, highly connected, the Mitchells; brilliant, free-handed,
great travelers; something wildish, the younger men--boys will be boys.
In a silent, undemonstrative manner of his own McClintock gathered the
loose money in and about Vesper; a shrewd bargainer, ungiven to
merrymakings; one who knew how to keep dollars at work. It is worthy of
note that no after hint of ill dealing attached to these years. In his
own bleak way the man dealt justly; not without a prudent liberality as
well. For debtors deserving, industrious, and honest, he observed a
careful and exact kindness, passing by his dues cheerfully, to take
them at a more convenient season. Where death had been, long sickness,
unmerited misfortune--he did not stop there; advancing further sums for a
tiding-over, after careful consideration of needs and opportunities,
coupled with a reasonable expectation of repayment; cheerfully taking any
security at hand, taking the security of character as cheerfully when he
felt himself justified; in good time exacting his dues to the last
penny--still cheerfully. Not heartless, either; in cases of extreme
distress--more than once or twice--McClintock had both written off the
obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but
not unkindly fashion; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this;
a dry, passionless, pertinacious man.
McClintock bought the Mitchell House in the seventies--boys still
continuing to be boyish--and there, a decade later, his wife died,
childless.
McClintock disposed of his takings unobserved, holding Mitchell House
only, and slipped away to New York or elsewhere. The rents of Mitchell
House were absorbed by a shadowy, almost mythical agent, whose name
you always forgot until you hunted up the spidery signature on the
receipts given by the bank for your rent money.
Except for a curious circumstance connected with Mitchell House,
McClintock had been quite forgotten of Vesper and Abingdon. The great
house was much in demand as a summer residence; those old oak-walled
rooms were spacious and comfortable, if not artistic; the house was
admirably kept up. It was in the most desirable neighborhood; there was
fishing and boating; the situation was "sightly." We borrow the last word
from the hill folk, the presentee landlords; the producers, or, to put
it quite bluntly, the workers.
As the years slipped by, it crept into common knowledge that not every
one could obtain a lease of Mitchell House. Applicants, Vesperian or
"foreigners," were kept waiting; almost as if the invisible agent were
examining into their eligibility. And it began to be observed that
leaseholders were invariably light, frivolous, pleasure-loving people,
such as kept the big house crowded with youth and folly, to company youth
of its own. Such lessees were like to make agriculture a mockery; the
Mitchell Place, as a farm, became a hissing, and a proverb, and an
astonishment: a circumstance so singularly at variance with remembered
thrift of the reputed owner as to keep green that owner's name. Nor was
that all. As youth became mature and wise, in the sad heartrending
fashion youth has, or flitted to new hearths, in that other heartbreaking
way of youth, it was noted that leases were not to be renewed on any
terms; and the new tenants, in turn, were ever such light and unthrift
folk as the old, always with tall sons and gay daughters--as if the
mythical agent or his ghostly principal had set apart that old house
to mirth and joy and laughter, to youth and love. It was remembered then,
on certain struggling hill farms, that old McClintock had been childless;
and certain hill babies were cuddled the closer for that.
Then, thirty years later, or forty--some such matter--McClintock slipped
back to Vesper unheralded--very many times a millionaire; incidentally a
hopeless invalid, sentenced for life to a wheeled chair; Vesper's most
successful citizen.
Silent, uncomplaining, unapproachable, and grim, he kept to his rooms in
the Iroquois, oldest of Vesper's highly modern hotels; or was wheeled
abroad by his one attendant, who was valet, confidant, factotum, and
friend--Cornelius Van Lear, withered, parchment-faced, and brown,
strikingly like Rameses II as to appearance and garrulity. It was to Van
Lear that Vesper owed the known history of those forty years of
McClintock's. Closely questioned, the trusted confidant had once yielded
to cajolery.
"We've been away," said Van Lear.
It was remarked that the inexplicable Mitchell House policy remained in
force in the years since McClintock's return; witness the present
incumbent, frivolous Thompson, foreigner from Buffalo--him and his house
parties! It was Mitchell House still, mauger the McClintock millions and
a half-century of possession. Whether this clinging to the old name was
tribute to the free-handed Mitchells or evidence of fine old English
firmness is a matter not yet determined.
The free-handed Mitchells themselves, as a family, were no more. They had
scattered, married or died, lost their money, gone to work, or otherwise
disappeared. Vesper kept knowledge of but two of them: Lawyer Oscar,
solid, steady, highly respectable, already in the way of becoming Squire
Mitchell, and like to better the Mitchell tradition of prosperity--a warm
man, a getting-on man, not to mention that he was the older nephew and
probable heir to the McClintock millions; and Oscar's cousin, Stanley,
youngest nephew of the millions, who, three years ago, had defied
McClintock to his face. Stan Mitchell had always been wild, even as a
boy, they said; they remembered now.
It seemed that McClintock had commanded young Stan to break his
engagement to that Selden girl--the schoolma'am at Brookfield,
my dear--one of the hill people. There had been a terrible scene.
Earl Dawson was staying at the Iroquois and his door happened to be
open a little.
"Then you'll get none of my money!" said the old gentleman.
"To hell with your money!" Stan said, and slammed the door.
He was always a dreadful boy, my dear! So violent and headstrong! Always
picking on my poor Johnny at school; Johnny came home once with the most
dreadful bruise over his eye--Stanley's work.
So young Stan flung away to the West three years ago. The Selden girl
still teaches the Brookfield District; Stan Mitchell writes to her, the
mail carrier says. No-o; not so bad-looking, exactly--in that common sort
of way!