=Appletons’
Town and Country
Library=
No. 212
PERFECTION CITY
PERFECTION CITY
BY
MRS. ORPEN
AUTHOR OF MARGARETA COLBERG, MR. ADOLF, THE CHRONICLES OF THE SID, ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1897,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.— HOME-COMING OF THE BRIDE 1
II.— UNCLE DAVID 11
III.— SISTER MARY WINKLE 21
IV.— MADAME MOROZOFF-SMITH 27
V.— CORN PLANTING 43
VI.— NON-RESISTANCE 54
VII.— WILLETTE 66
VIII.— MR. PERSEUS 84
IX.— FIRST LESSONS 101
X.— PRACTICAL COMMUNISM 111
XI.— A CHANCE MEETING 125
XII.— THE PRAIRIE FIRE 141
XIII.— THE RESCUE 156
XIV.— COTTERELL “WANTED” 170
XV.— IN QUEST OF NEWS 185
XVI.— HORSE-THIEVES 204
XVII.— A LIFE AT STAKE 219
XVIII.— LYNCH-LAW 237
XIX.— OLIVE MISSING 251
XX.— MADAME’S SYMPATHY 263
XXI.— THE MESSAGE 277
XXII.— OLIVE’S SECOND HOME-COMING 293
XXIII.— CONCLUSION 305
PERFECTION CITY.
CHAPTER I.
HOME-COMING OF THE BRIDE.
“This road isn’t called Perfection Road, is it?” she asked jerkily, as
she held tight hold of the edge of the waggon to prevent herself from
being pitched head foremost off the seat. She would have laid her head
against her companion’s shoulder only that it was square and hard, and
she was afraid of getting her temple “stove in,” as the sailors say, by
the terrific bumps caused by the wheels going over a big stone or down
into a deep rut. She was a bride, and he was bringing her to their new
home on the Kansas Prairie.
“My poor little pet,” he said tenderly, “it is very rough here. We are
going down into Cotton Wood Creek, and these stones were cast up by the
last freshet which pretty well washed the road away.”
They plunged headlong into the muddy waters of the Creek, and the little
bride would have felt frightened only that “he” was by her side, for the
waggon creaked and groaned with the strain, and the horses snorted
uneasily, feeling their way carefully through the rushing torrent. The
Creek was safely passed, and they slowly toiled up the long hill out of
the bottom-lands, and pulled up when once more on the high prairie.
“There is our home, dearie,” he said, pointing with his whip to some
scattered houses a couple of miles away. And being a bridegroom he
kissed her.
“So that is Perfection City, is it?” said she, shading her eyes with her
hand, for the afternoon sun sent level rays into her face. “You know,
Ezra, it is such a funny name, I always feel inclined to laugh when I
say it. And how I shall ever dare to put it at the top of my letters as
a real address when I write to the girls at the College at Smyrna, is
more than I know.”
“Then don’t write it,” replied Ezra, a trifle sternly. “It will hurt our
feelings very much if you laugh at it. You know it means a great deal to
all of us.”
“Then I’ll never laugh at it,” said the little bride.
“Which is our house?” she asked a moment later.
“The one half way up the slope.”
“Oh, that is nice. I like looking down across things. I shouldn’t like
to live in a valley and always have to look up, you know.”
“The large building is the Academy,” said Ezra. “That is where we hold
our meetings and gather together for all the best purposes of our little
community-life.”
“Is it there that Madame Morozoff-Smith lives?” asked his wife.
“Her house is the one just opposite.”
“Oh, that big one! It is quite the largest in the village—the City, I
mean.”
Ezra did not make any reply to this remark. He had never realised that
Madame’s house was indeed the largest in their Community, and now he
felt vexed that this fact should have been the first his wife noted.
A small boy with shining black face and shining white teeth, along with
a yellow puppy, welcomed them.
“This is Napoleon Pompey,” said Ezra, with much decorum presenting the
small darkie who grinned and bobbed his head. “And this is Diana,”
pointing to the puppy that had come up to the bars along with the negro.
Diana jumped upon her new mistress and left two black dust marks on her
dress. Dust is black in London and on the western prairie, nowhere else.
“Oh, you dirty dog,” said the little bride, who was a very natty body.
“You’ll have to get used to dirt in all degrees out here, Ollie,” said
her husband as he led her to the door. She looked like a little girl as
she stood beside him, for he was tall and angular and long of leg. A
sloping plank with battens nailed across it led to the door, there were
no steps. As the pair entered, Napoleon Pompey and Diana took the horses
and waggon to the stable and began respectively to unharness and worry
them.
“What a dear little house! It is just like a toy! And do look at the
saws hanging on the walls beside the covers of the pots! Oh, won’t it be
so nice and free living here! I shall feel like an explorer in a far
country. And how funny to have nail-kegs for seats, and oh, you dear old
darling!”
Olive jumped up and kissed her big husband.
“Things are rough now, dearie,” he said with infinite tenderness,
looking at her with loving admiration, “but by and by we shall have
everything very nice.”
“But I think it is just as nice as it can be now.”
“This is our room,” said he, opening a door to the right.
“Why, if you haven’t gone and got a rocking-chair!” exclaimed Olive,
glancing around the small apartment.
“I made it for you myself in spare time,” answered Ezra, pleased that
she had noticed the chair the first thing: he had often wondered, when
working at that rocking-chair, whether she would be pleased with it.
“You see,” he continued, “we have to work only five days a week for the
Community. All the rest of our time is at our own disposal, and by and
by, when we are flourishing, four days for the Community will suffice.”
“Do you like working for other people and not being paid?” asked Olive.
“I do not consider it as working for other people without pay,” replied
her husband, with some quickness. “We each work for the general good,
and if I happen to plant corn that someone else will eat, then some
other member of the Community raises potatoes that I shall eat.”
“There, there, don’t be cross,” said the little wife, noting the flush
that had risen to his brow as he spoke. “I am sure it is nice, and I
shall like it when I understand it all. At any rate we shall be very
happy whatever happens, and I like my dear little house, and please, I
am very thirsty, can I have a drink?”
He brought her some water in a tin dipper with a long handle, and she
did not make a face, but drank the water gratefully. She determined in
her own mind, however, to have a glass tumbler the very next day, but
she was new to the prairie, and she did not get the tumbler the next
day, nor the next week, nor for many, many long months.
“What time are we to have breakfast?” she asked, when taking over the
household from Napoleon Pompey and Diana, who had run the establishment
while her husband had been to fetch her from Ohio.
“Yo’ kin eat when yo’ like,” said Napoleon Pompey, desiring to be all
that was polite to his new mistress.
“But I want to know what time you have breakfast?” repeated Olive with
persistence.
“We uns got ter be hout on der lan’ ploughin’ afore sun-up,” said
Napoleon Pompey concisely.
“Dear me! Why, that is before six o’clock!” exclaimed Olive.
“I calkerlate,” said Napoleon Pompey affably.
Ezra did not want Olive to think she was bound to get up and prepare the
working-man’s breakfast.
“You are not used to that sort of hard work, dearie. We can do very well
with cold corn-bread.”
“Of all things the most stoggy and hopelessly uninviting,” interrupted
his wife. “No, Ezra, I won’t have any of the people out here think I am
a little fool that can’t do any useful work. I have my pride as well as
other folks. I shall cook your breakfast to-morrow and every day
afterwards, and I shall cook it well, see if I don’t.”
“I am sure of that,” said her husband with the confidence of a
bridegroom.
The house of which the young bride had just taken possession was by no
means an ordinary prairie house. Far from it. It had pretensions to
comfort which the true prairie house should never possess, and it lacked
the few elements of picturesqueness with which the genuine article is
sometimes endowed. The plan on which it was built was of the
simplest—the same that children adopt in building their doll’s
houses—four sides and a sloping roof, all of wood from top to bottom. It
was not a log-house, which has a few broken lines to rest the eye of the
beholder and present possibilities to the artist, it was a frame house,
that is, the straightest, stiffest, squarest, most hopelessly
unpicturesque object that it is possible to imagine, and to make matters
worse it was painted a glaring white from eave to foundation. There was
not a broken line or a broken tint anywhere to refresh the eye, and it
stood on the high prairie, as if hurled into a glaring world by a
Titan’s hand.
The prairie is fertile, and in the eye of a farmer may possess the
beauty of usefulness, but otherwise it is hideous. The long rolling
billows of grass present no character, while the trees are confined to
the river valleys where they find refuge from prairie fires, and can
therefore lead a sufficiently undisturbed existence to reach quite a
respectable height. A couple of small locust trees, not three feet high,
were all that did duty as shade-giving plants near Olive’s house, which
accordingly faced the world and its storms entirely on its own
individual merits. Judged by prairie standard the house was “tip-top.”
It possessed no less than four rooms, while the regular settler’s cabin
was wont to indulge in only a single comprehensive apartment, which was
kitchen, parlour and bedroom all in one. The two lower rooms were the
kitchen, which was fairly large, and a smaller one off it, reserved for
the private use of the young wife. The kitchen looked like a ship’s
cabin, only that it had more light than usually penetrates into a ship’s
cabin. In fact it was very light, for there were two large windows, one
to the north and one to the south, geometrically opposite each other.
These two windows, so exactly facing each other, were fairly typical of
the house itself, which was the embodiment of mathematical accuracy. The
building was placed exactly east and west, as if it had been a carefully
oriented church. There was a door on the south side, exactly in the
middle, and a window on either side of the door, placed accurately in
the centre of the space left between the side of the door and the end of
the house. Over these two windows were two others exactly one half their
size, giving light to the loft, and exactly in the centre of the
roof-ridge was a black stove-pipe.
The average prairie man is a genius in the way of doing without things.
He can live in a house of the smallest dimensions, containing the
minimum of utensils. In fact, his idea of a house is that it should be a
miner’s tent solidified into substantiality. The miner in a
newly-prospected gold-field is a person who spends his days in a hole,
and has no belongings but the clothes on his back and the shovel in his
hand. He lives on his expectations. The regular prairie settler, would
arrive in the spring, camp in his waggon, stick grains of corn under the
sod, and think himself lucky if he could raise both the corn and a
loghut, fourteen by twelve feet, before the cold weather set in. Those
who have passed through such a severe school prune down their
requirements. Therefore the house to which Ezra Weston brought his
little bride was rightly considered to be a model of luxury, or in
prairie phraseology to be “powerful full o’ truck.”
The kitchen certainly was full. The stove, black and business-like,
stood near the partition wall, and on it rested a couple of huge iron
pots with covers. Chairs there were none, as Olive had remarked, but
boxes and nail-kegs did as well and were useful in holding things. There
was a large wooden table, very strongly made, on one side, and a set of
shelves in one corner. The walls and ceiling, which were of wood closely
jointed, added to the ship-like appearance of the room, but the presence
of two large saws and a horse-collar which hung above them made a
considerable deduction from the nautical character of the apartment.
This model dwelling stood in the midst of a large tract of fenced-in
land. Part of this was already under cultivation and showed a dark
purple surface to the heavens, betokening newly turned up prairie sod
full of the natural plant foods stored there for thousands of ages.
These were now about to be recklessly used up by the ordinary system of
prairie farming, which consisted of taking everything out of the land
and of putting nothing back into it. A sort of road, that is to say a
beaten track with deep channels on either side, led from the house to
the bars, which did duty as gate to the premises. These bars were
precisely what the name implies, bars of wood lying on supports made for
them between posts, and they were simply let down whenever horses or
other animals had to pass in or out, and were climbed over by active
children too lazy to let them down or rather, perhaps, too lazy to put
them up again.
On one side of the bars stretching out at an angle was an orchard just
planted with trees that probably would be worth having twenty years
hence, and further away was another field consisting simply of fenced-in
prairie grass. The fields, and indeed everything else, were square, and
every fence that did not run north and south, ran east and west. The
whole place seemed under a despotism of compass and measuring chain.
Indeed, the prairie itself was under the same iron rule: and by the
authorities had been plotted out into squares of a mile each way called
“sections,” of which persons could buy of the Government quarter
sections or multiples of a quarter section at a low rate. Fortunately
for humanity this conspiracy to turn the world into a surveyor’s map was
to some extent defeated by the rivers and streams, which ran as Heaven
and the water-sheds decreed, and not as the officials at Washington
desired. This fact, and this alone, has in some measure saved the
prairie from the awful fate of mathematical damnation.