IN QUEST OF NEWS.
Olive was early astir the next morning, in order to see her husband off
and also to provide him with food in ample abundance to last him for the
trip. He carried a plentiful store of dried beef, a portable commodity
much in request on the prairie. The old trappers had showed the settlers
how to make it, and the trappers had acquired the art from the Indians.
Dried beef is precisely what its name indicates. It is raw beef,
somewhat salted, and then dried in the sun until it is like a piece of
solid leather. It has to be cut into thin slices across the grain before
the stoutest teeth can make the slightest impression upon it. It may be
also cooked in a batter of eggs for the dainty, but has only to be
sliced up with a jack-knife to be eaten by the average teamster on the
prairie. Besides the dried meat and plenty of corn-bread, Ezra had milk
in a bottle and one of Olive’s wedding presents to eat, namely, a tin of
peaches. He travelled therefore in extreme luxury. He set off along with
Brother Dummy just as the sun was rising, and the canvas covers of the
waggons showed for a long time as two moving white specks as they slowly
crept across the blackened landscape, finally disappearing behind the
Mounds some twelve miles to the west of Perfection City.
Olive remained alone at home with Napoleon Pompey and Diana to keep her
company, until Ezra should return in four days’ time. It was only with
great reluctance that he had consented to this. He did not at all like
the idea of her remaining alone in the house. As usual, when it came to
Olive doing what the ordinary prairie settler’s wife did as a matter of
course, Ezra’s love took fright. He urged her to go and stay at Madame’s
house, she would be more than welcome, he declared, in fact it seemed to
him almost necessary that she should go, and he insisted strongly upon
the plan. Olive was as strongly opposed to it. Why couldn’t she stay in
her own house? She would much prefer it, so as to be on hand to feed the
chickens and milk the cows and generally see to things. Besides, she
felt quite sure she would be vastly in Madame’s way. Ezra combated this
position vigorously. Olive could not be in anyone’s way, even if she
tried. Moreover, was not Madame a communist like the rest of them, and
she would be only too pleased to take Olive into her home as she had
already done into her heart. His spouse made no comment, except a mental
one, to this argument, but reiterated her preference for staying at
home. It would only be three days or four at most, and she would be very
busy. Ezra hinted at possible danger if it were known she was alone in
the house.
“But I won’t be alone: there is Napoleon Pompey for one and Diana for
two. Surely between so stout a pair nothing on earth can happen to me,”
she said, smiling at his anxious face.
“I don’t feel easy about you,” said Ezra, looking at her with mournful
eyes. “I never left you alone before, and it suddenly seems to me a most
portentous thing.”
“Why, you dear silly old thing!” exclaimed Olive, “I do believe you’ll
have omens next, and will look into tea-cups to see if it is a
propitious moment for the success of this undertaking. I never knew you
‘take on’ like this before.”
“I never did so, but it is all because I love you, dear. I quite
understand what it means, to be foolish with love. I used not to know
what it was. I wonder do women ever feel the same as we men do?”
“Women, my dear, are sent into this world for the express purpose of
making men do what they ought and not be silly,” said Olive severely.
“Now I know you’ll have the feed for the horses all right, but remember
the feed for yourself is in this basket, everything you’ll want, and
there is salt for the boiled eggs.”
When the hurry of getting the waggons off was over, Olive sat down to
think, and immediately there rose up before her the image of a hunted
man flying for his life. In some ways it was a relief that Ezra was
gone, she would not have to be constantly making an effort to hide the
real anxiety in her mind. Then she thought of Ezra and of his great and
boundless devotion to her, and the words Madame had spoken in her wrath
rose up before her and rebuked her. Were they true? Had she hidden her
real nature from her husband before her marriage? She had never meant to
do so, but in their long pre-nuptial conversations it had not appeared
to her that she and Ezra were so different in their views of life and
its duties as perhaps was now the case. He certainly had told her of the
experiment of Perfection City, and she had accepted him and the
experiment together because they were indissoluble. She of herself would
never have initiated the communistic idea; but then there was nothing
wonderful in that, woman never do initiate anything, they only follow
some man’s lead with more or less enthusiasm and intelligence.
Were she to have expressed her own private predilection, it certainly
would have been for a little home of her own on the usual lines, which
little home it would have been her pride and her pleasure to make as
beautiful as she could. Olive did not possess a large and speculative
mind, capable of vast dreamy projects, whose limitless possibilities
were in imagination not checked by small practical obstacles. On the
contrary, it was the tendency of her intellect to perceive those
obstacles with startling clearness, and to demonstrate, by a few biting
truisms, the impossibility of turning the dreamy vastnesses to use. She
was neither hard-headed nor dull-headed, but hers was a practical
nature, very much jarred by idle vapourings, and above all she was kept
in the straight path of common sense by her keen appreciation of the
ridiculous.
This faculty enabled her to perceive how often reformers run off the
track of common sense, and while pinning their faith to one particular
little tenet which they constitute the corner-stone of their philosophy,
lose sight of the whole world beyond. Olive possessed in a high degree
the sense of proportion, which in a true reformer is generally absent.
When Ezra with his cultivated mind and really fine intellect, talked to
her of the reforming of the present type of civilization, and briefly
sketched out what he hoped would be the result of the introduction of
the communistic idea into life, she could not help remarking that he
used very much the same expressions, and seemed animated by very much
the same hopes, as those indulged in by one of the dietetic reformers
she knew in Smyrna, who promised all the glories of the golden age to
mankind if the human race would only give up the baneful practices of
eating meat and of cooking vegetables!
And every few minutes, across the mirror of her reflections, there came
a shadow of a desperate man spurring on a jaded horse. Olive could not
shake off a sense of impending disaster, but unlike Ezra, who attributed
his melancholy to his great love for Olive and a vague, unreasoning
dread of something happening to her in his absence, she knew quite well
what she feared and why.
As the morning wore on, Olive began to feel it impossible to remain
quietly at home in the midst of her anxiety. She must go out and hear
what news there was, or at all events she must learn if there was any
news. Resolved not to hold any communication with Madame other than what
was publicly necessary—for between the two there was now maintained a
sort of armed neutrality—she decided to call at the blacksmith’s, as
Brother Green was in the way of most of the gossip, if gossip is a term
that could be rightly applied to the feeble and intermittent stream of
prairie news that trickled through the smithy. Brother Green was a
silent, self-absorbed man who worked steadily and brought much personal
devotion into the project of Perfection City. He was a lonely man, a
widower, and to judge by appearances a disappointed man as well. He was
surprised to see Sister Olive, and very pleased, but could not shake
hands as he was very dirty, and she looked so brightly clean. Having
wiped a wooden bench with his leather apron and again with the sleeve of
his shirt, he invited her to be seated. Brother Green was welding some
iron, and Olive waited until the operation was concluded and the
plough-hook made before she talked to him. Meanwhile she watched with
interest the white glowing fire and the pulpy white-hot iron-bar,
helplessly bending over at the end like a piece of half boiled molasses
candy.
“I felt so lonesome, I thought I would come out and talk to someone,”
she said, by way of excuse for a first visit. “Diana isn’t a bit of
company when you feel really lonesome. Ezra is gone for four days, did
you know?”
Diana had cocked one ear at the mention of her name, but had speedily
uncocked it again on becoming satisfied that nothing in the way of
excitement was at hand.
“Yes, I suppose you do feel lonely,” said Brother Green slowly, as he
seated himself on his anvil and crossed his brawny arms. “I’ve been used
to it for so long, I have almost forgotten how anything else feels.”
Olive looked kindly at him. “Are you ever homesick, and do you ever wish
you had stayed in England? It must be very different from here.”
“Very,” said Brother Green gazing with a far-away sort of look through
the large forge door out over the shimmering prairie. He suddenly seemed
to see rolling hills with oak woods tufting their slopes, and a deep
valley, where blue curling smoke ascended in high spirals, and a church
steeple rose from among elms, and jackdaws croaked around the steeple.
He put his head a little on one side, almost as if he would catch more
distinctly the hoarse croak of the jackdaws, or maybe the first sound of
the bell which hung in the steeple and used to ring on Sundays.
“Yes,” he said, as this picture faded away and the prairie returned in
its place, “there can’t be much greater differences in the world than
between Perfection City and the little village in Sussex, where I was
born.”
“Which do you like best, Brother Green?” asked Olive a little
thoughtlessly.
“I don’t expect ever to be as unhappy again as I was in that pretty
little village,” said Brother Green, and Olive remembered that she had
been told he had lost a young wife in his youth. She felt sorry for him,
and regretted having touched upon an old wound that still could throb
with pain.
“Have you heard any news lately? Has anybody been to the forge? You are
always the first to hear news,” said she quickly, desiring to change the
subject.
“A man from down south passed this morning.”
“Did he?” said Olive anxiously, “what did he say?”
“He said the fire was just bellowing its way towards Fort Scott, and had
done a good deal of damage one way or another. It was one of the hottest
they ever had and the hardest to stop. It crossed one of the South Fork
Creeks and got into the broken land round Osage.”
“We had a very narrow escape ourselves,” said Olive, feeling remarkably
little interest in the fire. “Did he say anything else? Who was he?”
“A stranger, I never saw him before. No, he didn’t say anything else,
except to tell me that he calkerlated Britishers were mos’ly fools and
couldn’t do a day’s work ’gain ’Mericans, no matter what it were,
rail-splitting or tobacco-chawin’.”
Brother Green gave a deep gentle laugh, like the distant boom of a
waterfall hidden among trees.
“Don’t you think these prairie folk are most conceited?” asked Olive, in
some scorn.
“No, not more than other people, Sister,” replied Brother Green somewhat
unexpectedly, “they only say what they think with remarkable frankness.”
“But that is conceit,” persisted Olive.
“I am not certain that it is more conceited to say what you think, than
to think your thoughts in silence, and be consumed with a vast contempt
for all the world. We are a conceited people too.”
“I thought the English prided themselves on not being conceited,” said
Olive.
“We pride ourselves on showing no feeling of conceit and if possible on
showing no feeling on any other subject either. If an Englishman’s heart
were skinned, I think it would weigh up pretty much the same as an
American’s. The difference lies in the tongue only.”
“Is that so?” said Olive.
“Yes, this morning, for instance, that man informed me that he was a
better man than I, and that his country could lick mine. Well, in my
heart I knew he was wrong on both points, and that the precise contrary
was the fact. As far as essentials go, I think we were pretty equal in
the contest of conceit.”
“But you didn’t tell him what you thought,” remarked Olive.
“No, that was the difference of tongue, not of heart,” replied Brother
Green.
“I didn’t know you were so severe in your criticisms and judgments. I
wonder much what you really think of Perfection City,” said Olive,
looking at him curiously. She had never particularly noticed him
hitherto, and had not realized that he could have a store of knowledge
of many things which lay far outside her experience.
“I think Perfection City will do good,” said Brother Green with
conviction.
“Do you, and why?” asked Olive.
“Any honest human effort to benefit the world and raise mankind does
good,” said Brother Green.
“But people have done such different things and all from a desire to do
what seemed to them good,” objected Olive with feminine vagueness.
“I consider they have done good if their purpose was single-hearted,”
maintained Brother Green.
“They didn’t succeed in doing what they aimed at very often, at all
events,” observed Olive, “something quite different came out of their
endeavours from what they had expected.”
“Nevertheless, if they honestly tried, then that very trying was of
itself good.”
“Do you think Perfection City will do the good the Pioneers expect, or
will something quite different come out of it too?”
“I think Perfection City will be the means of teaching a valuable
lesson,” said Brother Green cordially.
“Do you think it is any use to try to change the world and its ideas?”
“If anyone has a truth let him preach it fearlessly. Who can foretell
the moment when the world will listen and when it is ready to profit by
your example.”
Olive longed to ask him what he thought of Madame, but dared not do so.
She felt a little afraid before this simple-minded man, with his
fervent, childlike faith and his sad and lonely life. Belief in
Perfection City might be his only comfort now, shut off as he was from
the joys of home and family, she would do nothing to lessen his belief
and make him more lonely still. For what is more lonely than the heart
out of which a faith has departed never to return? So she bade him
good-bye, and then seeing Aunt Ruby’s chimney giving off the cheerful
smoke of habitation, she turned her steps thither. Olive walked slowly
along, for it was very hot indeed with a dry suffocating heat that made
exertion somewhat irksome, and Diana, the discreet, followed dutifully
behind her.
Aunt Ruby, as has been already hinted, had surrounded herself with a
large family of chickens of all ages, to whose wants it was her great
duty to attend. She had a rare hand for chickens, and could pick up the
most spasmodic specimen and turn it upside down and examine it for the
gapes without hurting it in the least. Her driving of the hens to roost
was an exhibition of the talent of generalship worthy of a wider field.
No screamings nor scurryings, no rushings madly hither and thither, took
place, and above all no sticks were used in the ceremony: Aunt Ruby
merely took her skirts gently at the side in each hand, and said “Shoo!
Shoo!” in a soothing voice, while at the same time she slightly
oscillated the folds of her skirt. The hens appeared hypnotized by the
action, and no matter how eagerly they might be pursuing the afternoon
fly, they would at once settle down into a conversational chuck-a-chu
and begin forthwith to meander towards the hen-roost.
Aunt Ruby’s numerous hens and chickens were all in the yard and around
the wood-pile, seeking in an aimless over-fed fashion after chance
insects, when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, the devil was upon
them according to the gallinaceous imagination. The devil was possessed
of four paws, a most terrifying bark, and a mouth that seemed to the
affrighted birds to be on the point of devouring each one especially and
individually. The dog flew hither and thither, and so did the chickens,
and so did the tail-feathers.
“Diana! Bad dog, down, down!” screamed Olive, rushing to the rescue,
while Aunt Ruby with shrill cry and a broom-stick appeared in the
door-way. Never before or since did a more tempestuous guest appear at
Aunt Ruby’s house. Full a quarter of an hour of gentle “shoo-shooings”
to the hens, interspersed with smart whippings to Diana, elapsed before
quiet was restored, and the ladies could even begin their visit
together. Even then there was a sort of nervous tension on Aunt Ruby’s
part, which prevented her thorough enjoyment of the opportunity for a
gossip. Her attention was distracted by Diana, who lay with lamb-like
docility at Olive’s feet and slept the sleep of the just.
“I wouldn’t keep a dawg roun’ nohow,” said Aunt Ruby eyeing the
delinquent sternly. “I’d mos’ as lief hev a rattlesnake. I shouldn’t
never sleep easy in my bed won’erin’ an’ won’erin’ what the pesky
crittur ’ud do nex’.”
“I know that Diana is very naughty now, but she is only a puppy, and
she’ll get sense by and bye, and it is so nice to have something that is
your own and loves you, and doesn’t care for any body else, you know,”
observed Olive somewhat rashly.
“Wal, I reckon you’ll hev a sight o’ trouble ’long o’ that dawg ’fore
you learn it the rights o’ people, let alone teachin’ it community
idees,” said Aunt Ruby.
“No, you can’t teach a dog communistic notions, thank goodness,”
observed Olive, patting the sinful Diana.
“Reckon you ain’t partic’ler sot on the idees of Perfection City,” said
the old lady, looking at her visitor with bright twinkling eyes. “I
allow there be a p’int or two we’ll hev to consider over agin at
’Sembly. We are gettin’ on too fas’ fur this here prairie folk, they
hain’t got the sense to un’erstan’ all o’ our highest principles. Guess
while there’s Injuns roun’ we hed better jes’ hol’ back a mite ’bout
non-resistance.”
“Oh,” said Olive, who had never given any attention to this point, being
as indifferent as the wives of strong men usually are. “I never heard a
word about Indians. Are there any about?”
“Not as I hearn on special. But there’s Injuns and worse nor Injuns in
the world, an’ I reckon we’d better take that p’int up at ’Sembly and
see if we can’t do su’thin’ to make things a bit straight,” said Aunt
Ruby in language that was vaguely enough expressed to serve in the
highest walks of diplomacy.
“Oh, I dare say,” replied Olive carelessly, “some very excellent reason
could be devised to excuse a departure from any one of the Perfection
City principles, which seem more difficult to manage in practice than on
paper. They are all pretty new, and of course can’t be expected to be as
useful in all the difficult circumstances of life as principles which
have stood the test of time.”
“Dear me, suz!” exclaimed Aunt Ruby admiringly. “How gran’ you kin talk!
Deal sight finer nor Brother Wright. Why don’t you hold forth in
’Sembly? I’d liefer hear you nor any on ’em. I’m jes’ ’bout tired o’
listenin’ to Brother Wright. Lard! how he do love to hear his own voice!
Hens is jes’ like that too, they’ll talk an’ talk till you’re mos’
crazy, an’ they hain’t nothin’ to say, on’y jes’ to cackle an’ hear
themselves talk.”
Olive agreed with Aunt Ruby, but hardly dared to express her opinion in
all its force. Therefore she turned the conversation by inquiring had
she ever heard anything about lynch-law and about its being put into
practice in their neighbourhood?
“Course I hev, an’ hearn o’ hangin’ too.”
“Do Perfection City principles uphold hanging?” asked Olive.
“Guess not,” was the reply.
“No matter if it was for murder?”
“Wal, I don’t see as we could ever be called upon to settle that p’int,
’cause no ’Fectionist could ever be a murderer no how,” said Aunt Ruby.
“But suppose an outsider who had shot a man, even if it was not a real
bad murder, came to us for protection, would they help him, do you
think?” asked Olive.
“Wal, I never hearn that debated at the ’Sembly, but I reckon Perfection
City don’t lay out to hide folks as has killed a feller critter. It
don’t ’pear to me as how we was called upon to min’ anyone ’cept our own
selves, an’ we hed best keep clear ’way o’ them sort o’ folks. That’s
pretty nigh my ’pinion, an’ I guess it’s mos’ folks too as hes a mite o’
common sense.”
Olive was fain to confess to herself that in all probability Aunt Ruby
did fairly express the collective opinion of Perfection City. They had
only enough righteousness for themselves, and, like a ship already short
of provisions, could not help another vessel, even though it might be
flying the Union Jack upside down and showing all the other flags of
acute distress recognized in the naval code of signals. Had Aunt Ruby
heard of anything concerning a horse-thief who was supposed to be
somewhere around, inquired Olive with a view to eliciting information,
but she only elicited feminine alarms in overwhelming abundance.
“Do tell! Land o’ liberty! Was there horse-thieves ’bout? What a pity
Brother Ezry an’ Brother Dummy was both gone jes’ now: they might meet
in ’Sembly right away an’ discuss the p’int o’ non-resistance an’ buy
revolvers next time anyone went to Union Mills. Horse-thieves was mos’
as bad as Injuns, an’ if it was lawful an’ right to defen’ yourself
’gainst Injuns as was ign’rant savages as never hed Christian teachin’,
it couldn’t be wrong to look a’ter your hosses as was bought an’ paid
for by ’Fection City money.”
Aunt Ruby was so convinced and loquacious upon this subject and upon the
aspect of the case as presented to her mind by her terrors, that Olive
heartily regretted her question, and began to try and do away with the
effects of it as far as possible. It was only a vague report she
averred, and Olive herself had not the slightest idea that there were
horse-thieves about. Upon the strength of this assurance Aunt Ruby,
somewhat comforted, allowed her attention to be engaged by other topics
of conversation. She was much distressed that she could not persuade her
visitor to stay all the rest of the day and have a real good
soul-satisfying talk, but Olive declared she must go home and see to her
own chickens, an argument that appealed very strongly to Aunt Ruby’s
maternal instincts.
A difficulty arose as to how Diana was to be decently conducted out
through the yard.
“I’d mos’ as soon hev to conten’ with a roarin’ lion as that pup,”
remarked Aunt Ruby as the difficulty presented itself to her mind in an
acute form.
“If I could get her past without seeing the hens and chickens she would
be all right,” said Olive, who of course had no whip, regarding
meditatively the dog, who of course had no collar.
“Wal, that ’ud do, I guess, sort o’ take her out o’ the way o’
temptation,” said Aunt Ruby, surveying Diana with an anxious eye. “I kin
give you an ole caliker skirt o’ mine, an’ you kin tie up her head in
that reg’lar tight, so as she wouldn’t see ne’er a hen this side o’
Christmas, ’less you took it off.”
This seemed a hopeful arrangement; so the “caliker skirt” was brought,
and the misguided Diana, under the impression that a brand new game was
on foot, allowed her head to be hidden in the folds of the skirt. Olive
then led her to the door, but Diana objected, not seeing where the joke
came in for her; and as soon as she found that she was ignominiously
tied into the dreadful skirt, her rage was boundless. In an instant she
wrenched herself free from Olive’s guiding hand. She then commenced a
wild career around the yard backwards, swaying this way and that in the
most ghastly and unlooked-for manner.
The hens and chickens no sooner beheld this portent than with one
universal squawk of horror they betook themselves to places of safety
under the corn-crib and into the cracks of the wood-pile, whence they
could not again be coaxed for many hours. Diana meanwhile continued her
fearsome course and ere long came into violent contact with the
chicken-tub, a large receptacle with loose wooden cover where various
sorts of food suitable for fowls were collected together, first thinned
with water and then thickened into a glutinous mass by intermixture of
corn-meal. Into this tub Diana sat with extreme violence and then rolled
over. Olive caught her as she was emerging from the chicken-tub and by
uncovering her eyes restored her to reason. Aunt Ruby, speechless with
indignation, and Olive, equally speechless with laughter, then set to
work with two big spoons to scrape the chicken food from the ground and
from the hind quarters of the dog. Diana, now at peace with all the
world, wagged her tail benevolently during this process, and soon
specked Olive over with corn-meal, potatoes, scraps of peelings, and
bits of greens, until she looked as if she had been out in a snow-storm
as severe in character as it was diversified in composition. When this
job was over Aunt Ruby arose and straightened her old back with a groan.
“Wal, I guess I would a deal sight sooner hev a rattlesnake to look
a’ter than a dawg,” she observed.
Olive, apologetic, departed along with the unrepentant Diana, and
together they returned homewards.