THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOGLEE SCHOOL-MASTER," "THE END OF THE WORLD," ETC
1888
TO ONE WHO KNOWS WITH ME A LOVE-STORY, NOW MORE THAN FIFTEEN YEARS IN
LENGTH, AND BETTER A HUNDREDFOLD THAN ANY I SHALL EVER BE ABLE TO WRITE,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED, ON AN ANNIVERSARY.
MARCH 18TH, 1873.
PREFACE.
A novel should be the truest of books. It partakes in a certain sense of
the nature of both history and art. It needs to be true to human nature
in its permanent and essential qualities, and it should truthfully
represent some specific and temporary manifestation of human nature: that
is, some form of society. It has been objected that I have copied life
too closely, but it seems to me that the work to be done just now, is to
represent the forms and spirit of our own life, and thus free ourselves
from habitual imitation of that which is foreign. I have wished to make
my stories of value as a contribution to the history of civilization in
America. If it be urged that this is not the highest function, I reply
that it is just now the most necessary function of this kind of
literature. Of the value of these stories as works of art, others must
judge; but I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have at least
rendered one substantial though humble service to our literature, if I
have portrayed correctly certain forms of American life and manners.
BROOKLYN, March, 1873.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
WORDS BEFOREHAND
CHAPTER I. The Autocrat of the Stage-Coach
CHAPTER II. The Sod Tavern
CHAPTER III. Land and Love
CHAPTER IV. Albert and Katy
CHAPTER V. Corner Lots
CHAPTER VI. Little Katy's Lover
CHAPTER VII. Catching and Getting Caught
CHAPTER VIII. Isabel Marlay
CHAPTER IX. Lovers and Lovers
CHAPTER X. Plausaby, Esq., takes a Fatherly Interest
CHAPTER XI. About Several Things
CHAPTER XII. An Adventure
CHAPTER XIII. A Shelter
CHAPTER XIV. The Inhabitant
CHAPTER XV. An Episode
CHAPTER XVI. The Return
CHAPTER XVII. Sawney and his Old Love
CHAPTER XVIII. A Collision
CHAPTER XIX. Standing Guard in Vain
CHAPTER XX. Sawney and Westcott
CHAPTER XXI. Rowing
CHAPTER XXII. Sailing
CHAPTER XXIII. Sinking
CHAPTER XXIV. Dragging
CHAPTER XXV. Afterwards
CHAPTER XXVI. The Mystery
CHAPTER XXVII. The Arrest
CHAPTER XXVIII. The Tempter
CHAPTER XXIX. The Trial
CHAPTER XXX. The Penitentiary
CHAPTER XXXI. Mr. Lurton
CHAPTER XXXII. A Confession
CHAPTER XXXIII. Death
CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Lurton's Courtship
CHAPTER XXXV. Unbarred
CHAPTER XXXVI. Isabel
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last
WORDS AFTERWARDS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK BEARD
The Superior Being
Mr. Minorkey and the Fat Gentleman
Plausaby sells Lots
"By George! He! he! he!"
Mrs. Plausaby
The Inhabitant
A Pinch of Snuff
Mrs. Ferret
One Savage Blow full in the Face
"What on Airth's the Matter?"
His Unselfish Love found a Melancholy Recompense
The Editor of "The Windmill"
"Git up and Foller!"
THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE.
WORDS BEFOREHAND.
Metropolisville is nothing but a memory now. If Jonah's gourd had not
been a little too much used already, it would serve an excellent turn
just here in the way of an apt figure of speech illustrating the growth,
the wilting, and the withering of Metropolisville. The last time I saw
the place the grass grew green where once stood the City Hall, the
corn-stalks waved their banners on the very site of the old store--I ask
pardon, the "Emporium"--of Jackson, Jones & Co., and what had been the
square, staring white court-house--not a Temple but a Barn of
Justice--had long since fallen to base uses. The walls which had echoed
with forensic grandiloquence were now forced to hear only the bleating of
silly sheep. The church, the school-house, and the City Hotel had been
moved away bodily. The village grew, as hundreds of other frontier
villages had grown, in the flush times; it died, as so many others died,
of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution
of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other
Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble
to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if
the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human
lives--of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is
history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of
value on account of its temples and statues, but on account of its men
and women. And though the "Main street" of Metropolisville is now a
country road where the dog-fennel blooms almost undisturbed by comers and
goers, though the plowshare remorselessly turns over the earth in places
where corner lots were once sold for a hundred dollars the front foot,
and though the lot once sacredly set apart (on the map) as "Depot Ground"
is now nothing but a potato-patch, yet there are hearts on which the
brief history of Metropolisville has left traces ineffaceable by sunshine
or storm, in time or eternity.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH.
"Git up!"
No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than
did Whisky Jim, as he drew the lines over his four bay horses in the
streets of Red Owl Landing, a village two years old, boasting three
thousand inhabitants, and a certain prospect of having four thousand a
month later.
Even ministers, poets, and writers of unworldly romances are sometimes
influenced by mercenary considerations. But stage-drivers are entirely
consecrated to their high calling. Here was Whisky Jim, in the very
streets of Red Owl, in the spring of the year 1856, when money was worth
five and six per cent a month on bond and mortgage, when corner lots
doubled in value over night, when everybody was frantically trying to
swindle everybody else--here was Whisky Jim, with the infatuation of a
life-long devotion to horse-flesh, utterly oblivious to the chances of
robbing green emigrants which a season of speculation affords. He was
secure from the infection. You might have shown him a gold-mine under the
very feet of his wheel-horses, and he could not have worked it
twenty-four hours. He had an itching palm, which could be satisfied with
nothing but the "ribbons" drawn over the backs of a four-in-hand.
"_Git_ up!"
The coach moved away--slowly at first--from the front door of the large,
rectangular, unpainted Red Owl Hotel, dragging its wheels heavily through
the soft turf of a Main street from which the cotton-wood trees had been
cut down, but in which the stumps were still standing, and which remained
as innocent of all pavement as when, three years before, the chief whose
name it bore, loaded his worldly goods upon the back of his oldest and
ugliest wife, slung his gun over his shoulder, and started mournfully
away from the home of his fathers, which he, shiftless fellow, had
bargained away to the white man for an annuity of powder and blankets,
and a little money, to be quickly spent for whisky. And yet, I might add
digressively, there is comfort in the saddest situations. Even the
venerable Red Owl bidding adieu to the home of his ancestors found solace
in the sweet hope of returning under favorable circumstances to scalp the
white man's wife and children.
"Git up, thair! G'lang!" The long whip swung round and cracked
threateningly over the haunches of the leaders, making them start
suddenly as the coach went round a corner and dipped into a hole at the
same instant, nearly throwing the driver, and the passenger who was
enjoying the outride with him, from their seats.
"What a hole!" said the passenger, a studious-looking young man, with an
entomologist's tin collecting-box slung over his shoulders.
The driver drew a long breath, moistened his lips, and said in a cool and
aggravatingly deliberate fashion:
"That air blamed pollywog puddle sold las' week fer tew thaousand."
[Illustration: THE SUPERIOR BEING.]
"Dollars?" asked the young man.
Jim gave him an annihilating look, and queried: "Didn' think I meant tew
thaousand acorns, did ye?"
"It's an awful price," said the abashed passenger, speaking as one might
in the presence of a superior being.
Jim was silent awhile, and then resumed in the same slow tone, but with
something of condescension mixed with it:
"Think so, do ye? Mebbe so, stranger. Fool what bought that tadpole lake
done middlin' well in disposin' of it, how-sumdever."
Here the Superior Being came to a dead pause, and waited to be
questioned.
"How's that?" asked the young man.
After a proper interval of meditation, Jim said: "Sol' it this week. Tuck
jest twice what he invested in his frog-fishery."
"Four thousand?" said the passenger with an inquisitive and surprised
rising inflection.
"Hey?" said Jim, looking at him solemnly. "Tew times tew use to be four
when I larnt the rewl of three in old Varmount. Mebbe 'taint so in the
country you come from, where they call a pail a bucket."
The passenger kept still awhile. The manner of the Superior Being chilled
him a little. But Whisky Jim graciously broke the silence himself.
"Sell nex' week fer six."
The young man's mind had already left the subject under discussion, and
it took some little effort of recollection to bring it back.
"How long will it keep on going up?" he asked.
"Tell it teches the top. Come daown then like a spile-driver in a hurry.
Higher it goes, the wuss it'll mash anybody what happens to stan'
percisely under it."
"When will it reach the top?"
The Superior Being turned his eyes full upon the student, who blushed a
little under the half-sneer of his look.
"Yaou tell! Thunder, stranger, that's jest what everybody'd pay money tew
find out. Everybody means to git aout in time, but--thunder!--every piece
of perrary in this territory's a deadfall. Somebody'll git catched in
every one of them air traps. Gee up! G'lang! _Git_ up, won't you? Hey?"
And this last sentence was ornamented with another magnificent
writing-master flourish of the whip-lash, and emphasized by an explosive
crack at the end, which started the four horses off in a swinging gallop,
from which Jim did not allow them to settle back into a walk until they
had reached the high prairie land in the rear of the town.
"What are those people living in tents for?" asked the student as he
pointed back to Red Owl, now considerably below them, and which presented
a panorama of balloon-frame houses, mostly innocent of paint, with a
sprinkling of tents pitched here and there among the trees; on lots not
yet redeemed from virgin wildness, but which possessed the remarkable
quality of "fetching" prices that would have done honor to well-located
land in Philadelphia.
"What they live that a-way fer? Hey? Mos'ly 'cause they can't live no
other." Then, after a long pause, the Superior Being resumed in a tone of
half-soliloquy: "A'n't a bed nur a board in the hull city of Red Owl to
be had for payin' nur coaxin'. Beds is aces. Houses is trumps. Landlords
is got high, low, Jack, and the game in ther hands. Looky there! A
bran-new lot of fools fresh from the factory." And he pointed to the old
steamboat "Ben Bolt," which was just coming up to the landing with deck
and guards black with eager immigrants of all classes.
But Albert Charlton, the student, did not look back any longer. It marks
an epoch in a man's life when he first catches sight of a prairie
landscape, especially if that landscape be one of those great rolling
ones to be seen nowhere so well as in Minnesota. Charlton had crossed
Illinois from Chicago to Dunleith in the night-time, and so had missed
the flat prairies. His sense of sublimity was keen, and, besides his
natural love for such scenes, he had a hobbyist passion for virgin nature
superadded.
"What a magnificent country!" he cried.
"Talkin' sense!" muttered Jim. "Never seed so good a place fer stagin'
in my day."
For every man sees through his own eyes. To the emigrants whose white-top
"prairie schooners" wound slowly along the road, these grass-grown hills
and those far-away meadowy valleys were only so many places where good
farms could be opened without the trouble of cutting off the trees. It
was not landscape, but simply land where one might raise thirty or forty
bushels of spring wheat to the acre, without any danger of "fevernager;"
to the keen-witted speculator looking sharply after corner stakes, at a
little distance from the road, it was just so many quarter sections,
"eighties," and "forties," to be bought low and sold high whenever
opportunity offered; to Jim it was a good country for staging, except a
few "blamed sloughs where the bottom had fell out." But the enthusiastic
eyes of young Albert Charlton despised all sordid and "culinary uses" of
the earth; to him this limitless vista of waving wild grass, these green
meadows and treeless hills dotted everywhere with purple and yellow
flowers, was a sight of Nature in her noblest mood. Such rolling hills
behind hills! If those _rolls_ could be called hills! After an hour the
coach had gradually ascended to the summit of the "divide" between Purple
River on the one side and Big Gun River on the other, and the rows of
willows and cotton-woods that hung over the water's edge--the only trees
under the whole sky--marked distinctly the meandering lines of the two
streams. Albert Charlton shouted and laughed; he stood up beside Jim, and
cried out that it was a paradise.
"Mebbe 'tis," sneered Jim, "Anyway, it's got more'n one devil into it.
_Gil_--lang!"
And under the inspiration of the scenery, Albert, with the impulsiveness
of a young man, unfolded to Whisky Jim all the beauties of his own
theories: how a man should live naturally and let other creatures live;
how much better a man was without flesh-eating; how wrong it was to
speculate, and that a speculator gave nothing in return; and that it was
not best to wear flannels, seeing one should harden his body to endure
cold and all that; and how a man should let his beard grow, not use
tobacco nor coffee nor whisky, should get up at four o'clock in the
morning and go to bed early.
"Looky here, mister!" said the Superior Being, after a while. "I wouldn't
naow, ef I was you!"
"Wouldn't what?"
"Wouldn't fetch no sich notions into this ked'ntry. Can't afford tew.
'Taint no land of idees. It's the ked'ntry of corner lots. Idees is in
the way--don't pay no interest. Haint had time to build a 'sylum fer
people with idees yet, in this territory. Ef you must have 'em, why let
me _rec_-ommend Bost'n. Drove hack there wunst, myself." Then after a
pause he proceeded with the deliberation of a judge: "It's the best
village I ever lay eyes on fer idees, is Bost'n. Thicker'n hops! Grow
single and in bunches. Have s'cieties there fer idees. Used to make money
outen the fellows with idees, cartin 'em round to anniversaries and sich.
Ef you only wear a nice slick plug-hat there, you kin believe anything
you choose or not, and be a gentleman all the same. The more you believe
or don't believe in Bost'n, the more gentleman you be. The
don't-believers is just as good as the believers. Idees inside the head,
and plug-hats outside. But idees out here! I tell you, here it's nothin'
but per-cent." The Superior Being puckered his lips and whistled. "_Git_
up, will you! G'lang! Better try Bost'n."
Perhaps Albert Charlton, the student passenger, was a little offended
with the liberty the driver had taken in rebuking his theories. He was
full of "idees," and his fundamental idea was of course his belief in
the equality and universal brotherhood of men. In theory he recognized
no social distinctions. But the most democratic of democrats in theory
is just a little bit of an aristocrat in feeling--he doesn't like to be
patted on the back by the hostler; much less does he like to be
reprimanded by a stage-driver. And Charlton was all the more sensitive
from a certain vague consciousness that he himself had let down the bars
of his dignity by unfolding his theories so gushingly to Whisky Jim.
What did Jim know--what _could_ a man who said "idees" know--about the
great world-reforming thoughts that engaged his attention? But when
dignity is once fallen, all the king's oxen and all the king's men can't
stand it on its legs again. In such a strait, one must flee from him who
saw the fall.
Albert Charlton therefore determined that he would change to the inside
of the coach when an opportunity should offer, and leave the Superior
Being to sit "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality."