CONCLUSION.
Madame left Perfection City alone and unattended. No one knew that she
was going, and no one knew whither she went. Her spirit, however, still
hovered over the city of her founding and made itself most potently
felt. She sold all her rights in the place, and since these included the
land, horses, and implements, as well as most of the houses, the
Pioneers awoke in early winter to find themselves homeless and
houseless, cast upon the bleak world again. In a tempest of indignation,
Sister Mary Winkle and her husband departed out of the place, and after
them the Carpenters. The going of the Wrights was highly characteristic.
They had managed to save a waggon and a pair of horses out of the
general wreck, along with a few of the most primitive household
necessaries. These, with his wife and daughter, Brother Wright packed
into his waggon and started for Union Mills. At the store there he
bought a rifle, a bowie-knife, and a plentiful supply of ammunition. He
came out of the store looking like a buccaneer ready equipped for
Central America. Mary Winkle raised her hands in speechless horror.
“I say, pa, be yer goin’ to be a jay-hawker?” asked Willette, grinning
with delight.
Wright got into the waggon in grim silence.
“What _are_ you going to be?” asked Sister Mary recovering her speech at
last.
“I’m going to be a man, Mrs. Wright, and not a blamed fool any longer.
Guess I’ll pre-empt some land near the Cherokee Reservation, and stick
to it and get the fruits of my toil, anyhow.”
“Your principles——” stammered his wife.
“Damn principles, Mrs. Wright. I’ve had about enough of them. Common
sense is what I want, and so do you. I guess a spell of that will come
handy now.”
Thus they journeyed out of sight, but a legend came floating back from
near the Cherokee lands that at a difficult ford Wright was attacked by
a couple of robbers, whereupon he took up that new rifle of his and
fired so uncommonly straight that one man fell into the river, and the
other ran away.
Brother Green remained at his forge, for blacksmiths were much in
request on the prairie, and such a one as he was hard to find. The new
owner of Perfection City offered him good inducements to stay, so he
stayed. He is still there shoeing horses and mending ploughs. The name
has been changed to Mountainburg, in order to emphasise the existence of
the rising ground over Weddell’s Gully. Brother Green is almost the
oldest inhabitant now, and sometimes he thinks of that far-off English
village where he was born, and it looks brighter and more beautiful to
him as the years roll him away from it. He thinks too of the grass-grown
grave in the church-yard where the jackdaws caw overhead, and it seems
to him that when his last day’s work shall be done he would rest more
peacefully beside that mound than in any other spot beneath the broad
canopy of heaven.
Brother Dummy decided not to leave when the rest of the Pioneers
scattered. He preferred to stay where he was and rent a bit of land from
the new owner. By and by he was enabled to buy his bit outright. For
there came a letter addressed to “The Pioneers of Perfection City” and
containing a draft for five hundred dollars “for the hire of one horse”
from an ever grateful friend. And Brother Dummy was given this money by
the united wish of Olive, Ezra, Brother Green, and Uncle David, the last
of the Pioneers, because, as they said, he was the only one who didn’t
know why it had been sent, and he was the only one who had not suffered
through that episode that had so nearly wrecked their lives.
On a cold winter’s day, when the snow lay in patches on the black
prairie, Olive and her husband and Uncle David set out from Perfection
City. She was pale and thin, and looked very ill as she stood leaning
against the door-way of her dismantled home.
“I wish I could feel sorry at leaving the prairie, but I can’t. I never
want to see Perfection City again, but I’m sorry for my little home, and
I would like to see my garden blossom again.” So spoke Olive to Uncle
David, standing beside her with shawls on his arm.
“Wal, now,” replied he sadly, “we came here full o’ the notion o’
teachin’ folks things, but it ’pears like as if it wasn’t so much other
folks out here as needed teachin’ as jes’ our own selves. We hev hed a
hard lesson to learn, Ollie, my little gal, but I reckon we’ve pretty
well learned it by now. It mos’ likely comes to the same thing, on’y
it’s a sight more comfortin’ to human pride to set up as a teacher than
to sit down as a learner. We was as certain as anything we had a bran’
new truth to teach to the world, an’ we was goin’ to show ’em how they’d
been doin’ wrong in everything ’fore we come to set ’em right. We was
jes’ bustin’ with pride and vanity, that’s what we was. We had foun’ a
new road to Kingdom Come, we had. ’Twasn’t no road at all, on’y a coon
track leadin’ into a swamp. Guess we’ll foller the road other folks has
trod before, an’ if we can fill up a slough or help anyone over the
rough bits as is scattered plentiful all the way, that’ll do for us.
Ain’t that your ’pinion, Ezry?”
“Yes, Uncle, we made a mistake. We thought the great thing to do was to
reform the ways of the world. We forgot that the human heart needed
reforming first of all,” said Ezra, looking sadly at his poor
wan-cheeked little wife.
“And if the heart is right it doesn’t matter about the rest, does it,
dear?” said Olive, looking timidly at him.
He was sad and down-hearted and the eager enthusiasm was gone out of his
manner. Ezra was much older-looking than he should have been, if life be
reckoned by solar time alone. He had been aged by a lapse of mental time
and suffering of which the almanac can take no heed. His wife saw and
understood how he was, at this moment, realizing the downfall of his
young hopes and beliefs, that was why he gazed so sadly across the
desolate fields.
“We take nothing away with us except sad experience,” he said as he
lifted her into the waggon and drove off.
“And our love, dear, which nothing can ever destroy,” she whispered,
pressing his hand.
He stooped and kissed her. There were tears in his eyes. But they made a
mistake. They took something else with them. Something that came tearing
over the prairie with tongue out and tail stiff-stretched and nose to
the ground—Diana, who had been turned over to Napoleon Pompey to have
and to hold, but he could not hold her when she saw the waggon going
off, therefore he could not have her. She caught them up when they were
two miles off, and Olive let the dog clamber all over her, regardless of
wet paws, and lick her face, so delighted were they to meet again.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.