I was proud of the speed of the team, and Barker was at first very nervous at the pace at which I drove, but finding I was a careful driver, he leaned contentedly back, and repeatedly said the drive was a pleasant ending to the agreeable evening at Jo’s house. When we arrived at the mill, he invited us in, and as Agnes had never been at his house, and had often expressed a curiosity to see it, we accepted the invitation, though it was two or three o’clock in the morning. As I expected, there was still fire in the great box stove in his room, for it seemed never to go out, and with a little stirring and fuel it was soon roaring. We walked through all the rooms, Barker carrying the light, and appearing to be pleased and contented. I told Agnes of the delightful stories Barker had related to Jo and me in the big room with the heavy shutters, and even insisted that he tell another one, to give Agnes an idea of his talent in that direction, but he laughingly replied that it was late, and that they would prove very dull, now that we were older.
“I have another story to tell you, though,” he said, after some reflection, “but it is not quite ready, and as it is a story for men, it is fortunate that you are almost a man. In good time I will tell it to you, and, if you choose, you may repeat it to Agnes.”
While we were warming ourselves at the fire for completing the ride, I questioned him about it, but it seemed to be of no importance, for he laughed gayly, and would only say that when he was ready he would remind me of it.
After spending an hour there we started for Theodore Meek’s and although I repeatedly informed Agnes that she was the best and prettiest girl in the world, and that I was very much in love with her, she was not at all serious, seeming to regard it as a part of the gayety of the night, and after reaching the house, and having a laugh all around with the family (who got up to hear about the wedding), we went to bed just as day began to appear in the east.
THERE was one thing I noticed of Twin Mounds which is probably true of every other country town—it was constantly threatened either with great prosperity or great danger, but whether the event threatening the prosperity or the danger came to pass, the town progressed about the same. There was no perceptible effect from any of the events the people were certain would prove either very disastrous or of great benefit, from which I am led to believe that no one is familiar with the art of town-building, although I have never known a man who did not profess to know all there is worth knowing about the science. Towns seem to be the natural accretion of years, and although the people in Twin Mounds often related how desperate were their struggles with adversity, the facts probably are that the place would have been fully as large as it was three years after Jo’s marriage without the great number of public meetings for public purposes, and the endless worry of individuals with reference to it.
There was a very general impression that manufactories were needed, and this was talked about so much, and so many inducements were offered, that the people became discouraged, believing that the average manufacturer had a wicked heart and a hollow head to thus wrong Twin Mounds in the face of his own interest, therefore we were very much surprised to learn once, after all hope had been abandoned, that a quiet man was building a woollen mill down the river, which he completed and afterwards operated without the help of the committees which had been appointed to aid in such matters of public weal. The trouble was that the man lived in Twin Mounds, whereas we had been expecting a man and money to come from a distant point for that purpose, and had never thought of looking about home, but spent a great deal of money in sending committees away to make arrangements for a woollen mill. This circumstance, although humiliating, proved a good thing, for it taught the people that, if the town were to be built up at all, it must be by its own citizens, which knowledge was afterwards used to good advantage.
The people were always miserable by reason of predictions that, unless impossible amounts of money were given to certain enterprises, the town would be ruined, and although they always gave, no sooner was one fund exhausted than it became necessary to raise another. It was said during the collection of each amount that it would never be necessary again to give to this sort of charity (as the enterprise then in hand would insure the future of Twin Mounds), but there was never an end to the ridiculous business, and we were always in a state of dreariness on this account, as the men demanding the charity for insignificant enterprises loudly threatened to go to the rival towns, and permit the grass to grow in our streets. In thinking of the matter since, I have thought that Twin Mounds would have been a much better town but for the fact that it was always expecting improbable disaster, but which never came, for the people were thus prevented from exercising their energy, if they had any.
I never formed a good opinion of a man there that I was not finally told something to his discredit by another citizen, causing me to regard him with great suspicion, and if I said a good word for any of them, it was proved beyond question immediately that he was a very unscrupulous, a very ridiculous, a very weak, and a very worthless man. There were no friendships among them, and they all hated each other in secret, there being much quiet satisfaction when one of them failed. There seemed to be no regular aristocracy, either, for I heard so frequently how ignorant and awkward the prominent citizens were when they first came, that I finally found them all out. If Dr. Medicine told me what an unpromising lout the present magnificent Honorable Legal was when he first arrived, and how much difficulty he had in getting him introduced into respectable society, I was certain to meet Honorable Legal soon after, and hear him recite a similar experience with reference to Dr. Medicine. One of the stories, and I found afterwards that it was true, was that a man of ordinary worth, who seemed to be prosperous, had collected his money of a railroad company in the country he had moved from, because of an injury to his first wife, and that his second was enabled to go elegantly dressed because of the misfortune of the first. Thus it went on until I was familiar with the poor origin of all of them, and perhaps this was one reason why we did not respect one another more.
It was a popular expression that every one favorably mentioned was the “worst overrated man in America,” and the only real ability any of them ever displayed was in looking up the previous history of each other, which they carried on with great vigor, and frequently with alarming results. I began to believe in course of time that it was fortunate that the discreditable part of my history was well known, for it was the sooner forgotten, because it was not necessary to look up old records to find it out, and thus was not made worse than it really was.
Very few of the Twin Mounds men had positive opinions of their own, as they seemed to have got them second-handed from some source, and none of them was original or natural in his methods of conducting business, or in his habits. Two or three times a year most of them visited a city a good many miles away, where they spent a great deal of money they could not afford, to create an impression that they were accustomed to what they supposed was good society, and where they met men who filled their ideas of greatness. These they mimicked, each one choosing a different example; so it happened that the men of Twin Mounds were very ridiculous. There was a lawyer, I remember, who had met somewhere a distinguished member of his profession, who shook hands (Ho! ho!) with everybody, and (Ha! ha!) patronizingly wanted to know how they were getting along. It was not his natural way, and as he only adopted it because he believed it would make him popular, it became him very poorly. Perhaps it was very effective with the man the habit had been copied from, but it was very absurd with our citizen, whose pretence was that every man he shook hands with (and he shook hands cordially with everybody) was not getting along as well as he in his great compassion desired.
Another one, who carried on a business which one busy day would have exhausted, had heard of a man who achieved commercial greatness by finding fault (I am sure the man was mistaken, for no one ever made money in such a ridiculous way), and I never heard of anything that suited him. This he regarded as business shrewdness, and he finally became very sour in disposition because he was generally regarded as a fool instead of a prophet. Still another, naturally full of fool’s gab, carried on a bank in awful silence because he had heard that still water runs deep, though I have seen ponds of perfectly still water which were very shallow.
As I grew older, and began to notice more, I thought that every man in Twin Mounds had reason to feel humiliated that he had not accomplished more, but most of them were as conceited as though there was nothing left in the world worthy of their attention. Their small business affairs, their quarrels over the Bible, and an occasional term in the town council, or a mention for the legislature or a county office, satisfied them, and they were as content as men who really amounted to something.
Although I believe there never was a more virtuous community, the men pretended to believe that their associates were great libertines, and many of the women were scandalized in an unjust and cruel manner. The men rather took a pride in reputations of this sort, for they never had any other, and, although pretending to deny it, they really hoped the people would continue to accuse them. I have known citizens of this description to stay out late at night, and take aimless rides into the country, to create the impression that they were having clandestine meetings with the first ladies of the town. The people watched each other so closely that there was no opportunity to be other than honest and circumspect in this particular, even if they had been differently inclined, and since the men were always looking for amours, but never found them, and believed that others were notoriously successful, they must have had a very contemptible opinion of themselves when they thought about the matter candidly.
I often heard from Jo, and frequently met him, and he always seemed to be happy and prosperous. The debt on the mill was being gradually reduced through his sturdy efforts, and in the middle of the second year of his marriage, he had built an addition to his house which made it very complete. His business was prosperous, because he gave it a great deal of intelligent attention, and he became widely known as one of the promising young men of that part of the country, for nobody worked so hard as he did, nor to so much purpose, and the business principles he had adopted were excellent. The product of his mill was called the “Erring’s Ford” brand, we having agreed on the name together because it was odd, and because it celebrated a hope which had been ridiculed by the Fairview folks, and we printed large bills announcing its superiority, which were distributed so well that wherever I went I was reminded of my skill as a printer, and Jo’s superiority as a miller.
At long intervals he came to our house with his pretty wife, and I always thought they were very happy, as I have no doubt they were. I do not remember that I thought much of them during the three years I am now passing rapidly over, except that Jo had made himself the equal of his wife, which was a pleasant reflection to me because he had begun so far behind her, and with the utmost friendship for Mateel, I was always pleased when Jo appeared to better advantage than she did, or when I thought that if a stranger should judge between them, the impression would be that Jo was the superior one of the two.
I had the impression that Jo was an excellent husband, for he was always thinking of what would please Mateel, and when they were together he was as gentle and gallant as he had been when they were lovers, which I have heard is very unusual. Mateel was a good wife, but I do not know that I ever heard her say a kind word for her husband, although others talked about him a great deal. She thought, no doubt, that his excellences were understood, and did not need to be mentioned. I thought of this circumstance then, because I believed it would have been no more than natural for her to say that Jo had succeeded well, or that he had bravely won her, but she never did, although she seemed pleased when I complimented her husband, as though it was an expression of a hope that if he were not so rich then as she desired, he might be in the future.
Usually when Jo and Mateel came to Twin Mounds, Agnes came with them, as it was their custom to drive over on Saturday, and back in the evening of the next day, and with so many of her old friends around her, my mother perceptibly revived, but when they had gone away, she resumed her old melancholy, and pined away in the room where she watched at night. If they offered to take her home with them, she refused, and never went out, except occasionally to ride with me, and then I thought it was more to admire the speed of “Dan” and “Dave” than because she cared to leave the house.
Although the Rev. John Westlock was never heard of, the light was always burning in his old room at night, and his deserted wife was always waiting to forgive him. I think she never for a moment gave up the hope that he would come back; for, winter and summer alike, she waited for him every night, and was weaker the next day because he did not come. The fear began to oppress me that some morning we should find her dead at her post, and I proposed to get some one to stay with her at night, but she would not hear of it, thinking, no doubt, that when he came he would much prefer to find her alone. Thus the months went by, and at the close of every one I found that her head was whiter and her step more feeble.
I saw Lytle Biggs nearly every week, and Big Adam often came there with products of the farm to sell, and he always came in to see me, usually having the information to impart that another relative had been killed by the Indians, or that his old mistress “jawed” him more than ever. If he found it necessary to stay in the town over night, which was sometimes the case, I took him home with me, and treated him with so much consideration in other ways that he soon became my greatest friend.
From him I learned that Agnes only came home during the two vacations of the year, and that her mother was about the same with respect to visions of poisoning and smothering, which humiliated them all very much except Big Adam, who said he considered it an honor for the people to believe that he would poison his mistress if he had opportunity, for they all knew she deserved it. Mrs. Biggs and the children had changed but little, except that the children had grown larger and more unruly, and their mother more shrivelled than formerly. Big Adam was quite a novelty in Twin Mounds, by reason of his great size and hoarse voice, and a crowd always gathered at the office when he was there in the evening, to hear him tell about the great farm he was expected to cultivate alone.
Although I was always hoping he would kill himself with dissipation, Clinton Bragg continued to be only about as worthless as when I had first known him, and there was no change in his manner except that he made up with every old wreck who came to town, and induced him by treats to listen to his brags about himself. Bragg came from a place somewhere in the East which was given over to the manufacture of knives and forks, and the three or four proprietors of the works comprised the aristocracy. These, lacking better company, associated occasionally with the small tradesmen and professional men of the town, which led them to talk a great deal of the excellent society in which they moved, and judging them by their representative in Twin Mounds, they became very unpopular wherever they went, by reason of this unpleasant egotism. His father, a hard-working but ignorant man, by close attention to the business of keeping a keg house, had risen to the dignity of a merchant, and was reputed to be well-to-do, although, as is usually the case, I doubt if he had half the money with which he was credited.
Bragg considered this fork-making community as the greatest the world had ever produced, and made himself very disagreeable in talking about it. Being a great liar naturally, and as no one in Twin Mounds knew differently, he used a citizen of the town where he had lived to traduce citizens of Twin Mounds, and if a lawyer lost a case, or won it, he told cheerful anecdotes of his brilliant friend Bighead, the leader of his profession in Forkston. No difference what happened in Twin Mounds, it reminded him of a friend of his in the town where knives were made, who always did whatever was in hand in a much more creditable manner.
When he was drinking, he went about inquiring who Alexander Bighead was, who Cornelius Deadhead was, who Elwyn Flathead was, who Godfrey Hardhead was, or who Isaac Jughead was. Nobody being able to inform him (none of them having ever been heard of outside of the community where they lived), Bragg would answer that Alexander Bighead was a great lawyer and a great drunkard, and that Cornelius Deadhead was as noted for his knowledge of medicine as he was noted for his intemperance; that Elwyn Flathead was a heavy trader, and a heavy drinker; that Godfrey Hardhead was frequently on the public platform, and frequently in the gutter; and that Isaac Jughead was as often on a spree as he was on the bench; which argument was intended to convey the impression that all talented men (Clinton Bragg included) drank more than was good for them.
Lytle Biggs, being a professional politician, was often in town, and as has been the case when he first met me, he was of the opinion that while I was a little delicate in asking him for the favor, I was burning with impatience to hear more of his philosophy. I had enjoyed it very much at first, and laughed a great deal at his oddities, and though it finally grew tiresome, I could not very well flatly tell him so. Hence he came in frequently when I was very busy, and when I knew he was not in a philosophical humor, but reasoning that I had grown to expect it, and had little other amusement, he consented to favor me with a few of his thoughts. Thus it came about that he walked in one evening when I was anxious to go home, and, seating himself, prepared to spend several hours with me, though I could see he regarded himself as a martyr to be compelled to instruct me in ordinary affairs which should be understood at a glance.
“Speaking of the newspaper business,” he said, of which we were not speaking at all, “I make considerable money advising the farmers to patronize the ‘Rural Home,’ than which, in my opinion, a greater literary thug never existed, but unfortunately for an oppressed people, the publisher of the ‘Home’ (his name is Litch; it should be Leech) pays liberal commissions, and I must live. I have a copy in my pocket; you may examine it when there is positively nothing else to do.”
He handed it to me, and although it was folded, I saw on the first page a picture of an animal so admirably proportioned that but little was wasted in legs, being solid meat with the exception of a small head and four pins to hold it up. By examining the note at the bottom, I found it was a pig, although I should not have suspected it in the absence of the statement, and that pairs of the breed could be had by addressing the publisher, and enclosing money order or draft for fifty dollars.
“If you should do yourself the injustice at some time in the future to look it over,” Mr. Biggs continued, indicating that I was not to look at it then, but to listen, “you would find it filled with all sorts of ingenious appeals for the farmer’s money, and that the editor claims to be poor, but honest, and oppressed by monopolies, like the rest of them. But what are the hard, uncomfortable facts?”
I looked at him as if to say that I did not know what the facts were, but had no doubt they were bad enough.
“The facts are that while the agricultural population is cooped up in hot school-houses drinking spring water, and attending Alliance meetings, the publisher of the ‘Rural’ is holding ice in his mouth at an elegant club, only changing this delightful occupation to gulp down expensive champagne. He lives in a villa, does this agricultural fraud of the name of Litch, and makes a fortune every year; and, although he earnestly advises the farmers’ wives and daughters to spend their spare time in churning the butter and gathering the eggs, to buy good books to improve themselves (P. S.—For which he is agent), he sends his own wife and daughters to spend their spare time in summer at cool places, where they may swim in the sea. That’s the kind of an oppressed citizen of a groaning government Litch is, and I happen to know that he is the friend of the monopolists he denounces, and that he is in their pay; that he is the tool of the thieves who manufacture worthless machinery for farmers; of the confidence men who advertise eggs, pigs and calves at a high price, and that he is the worst enemy of the farmers generally.”
I pretended to be very much surprised at this, though I was not.
“If you should be caught in a lonely place on a rainy day, with no other paper in your pocket than that, you would find a column of inquiries with reference to agricultural matters addressed to the editor (who is supposed to be informed, but who really gets all his information from the agricultural departments of the metropolitan papers), each one of which closes with a good word for ‘your noble,’ or ‘your brave,’ or ‘your widely circulated’ paper. The scoundrel writes them himself! And there is another column from ‘Aunt Sue.’ He is also ‘Aunt Sue.’ In short, he is everything except an honest man.”
Although I said nothing, I remembered that every farmer who moved to Twin Mounds found out the agricultural papers, and denounced them; in short, that everybody except the farmers knew what dreadful frauds they were.
“If I should talk as candidly and honestly to my friends of the plough as I talk to my friends of the pen,” Mr. Biggs continued, “I should advise them to take the papers which other people take; the papers which censure the farmer when he deserves it, instead of pandering to his ignorance, and forever rubbing him on the back as an honest but oppressed fellow, through no fault of his own. You cannot possibly do a man more harm than to assure him that whatever he does is right, and that whatever his enemy does is wrong, but this is what Litch does, and he is well paid for doing it. The farmer follows the furrow because he can make more at that than at anything else; he is no more oppressed than other men, except as his ignorance makes it possible, for there never was an age when it was not profitable to be sensible (the world being full of unscrupulous men), therefore the pretence that a man cannot be honest except he plough or sow for a living is not warranted by the facts. Getting up very early in the morning, and going about agricultural work all day in rough clothes, does not particularly tend to clear the conscience, but because politicians who occasionally have use for them have said these things, the farmers go on accepting them, stubbornly refusing to be undeceived, because it is unpleasant to acknowledge ignorance after you have once thought yourself very cunning. In my time, I have harangued a meeting of well-to-do farmers over the wrongs they were suffering at the hands of miserable tradesmen,—they call them middle-men,—who did not know one day whether they would be able to open their doors the next, and received earnest applause, after which I got ten dollars for a charter for an Alliance (which cost me at the rate of two dollars a thousand) without difficulty. It would not be a greater confidence game were I to borrow ten dollars of them to pay express charges on the body of a dead brother, giving as security a bogus bond, for the time a farmer spends attending Alliance meetings should be spent at home in reading an honest work entitled, ‘Thieves Exposed,’ or ‘The Numerous Devices Men Invent to Live without Work,’ but they rather enjoy my lectures on the beauties of combination for protection, and the cheapness of Alliance charters, for I never fail to relate how honest, how industrious, how intelligent, and how oppressed they are. If they want to pay big prices for such comforts, it is their misfortune; I must live, and if you say that I am a fraud, I reply that all men are frauds. The lawyers never go to law; the doctors never take medicine; the preachers seldom believe in religion, and I never farm. The different trades and professions are only respectable because little is known of them except by those interested in their profits, and I am no worse than the rest of them. Whoever will pay for being humbugged will find humbugs enough, and the only difference between me and other professional men is that I acknowledge that I am dishonest. My position on the reform question is briefly this (and I may add that it is the position of every man): I am against monopolies until I become a monopolist myself. I am at present engaged in the reform business that I may become a monopolist. If I should suddenly become rich, what would I do? This: Refer to Alliances as dangerous, and such demagogues as myself as suspicious loafers.”
Mr. Biggs seemed to greatly enjoy this denunciation of himself, and ripped out an oath or two expressive of contempt for his victims.
“Our friend Bilderby, for example, who writes letters for your paper on finance, and who professes to know all about money, in reality knows so little about his subject that he cannot earn a living, although he seems to be constantly worried with the fear that, from a mistaken financial policy, the government will come to ruin. In fact, Bilderby only gets time to write his letters on finance, and make excuses to his creditors. The fellow owes the doctor for nearly all his children; I am certain he has not paid for the younger ones. That is Bilderby’s way of being a humbug; I have a different way; you have another, and there are so many varieties, that every man is accommodated.”
Mr. Biggs was warming up, and unbuttoned his collar to talk with more freedom.
“I see occasional notices in your publication to the effect that Chugg, the groceryman, or whatever the name or the business may be, has just returned from the East, which is extremely dull, and that he is extremely glad to get back to the enterprising, the pushing, the promising, the noble, and the beautiful West. That is YOUR way of being a humbug, for in reality Chugg is glad to get back to the West because he is of some importance here, and none there. The East is full of hungry and ragged men who are superior in every way to the prominent citizen of the name of Chugg, and Chugg knows it, therefore he is glad to get back where he is looked upon as a superior creature. I have no hesitancy in saying privately that the people in this direction are not warranted in the belief that all the capable and energetic men have left the East, though it would be disastrous to say as much publicly. When I am in the East it occurs to me with great force that the miles of splendid business buildings I see on every hand must be occupied by talented and energetic men, and as we have no such buildings in the West, it follows that we have no such men. When I see towering manufactories—swarming with operatives who would be ornaments to the best society out here—I think that at least a few men of energy and capacity have been left to operate them, for ordinary men could not do it. I ride down the long avenues of private palaces, each one of them worth a township in the Smoky Hill country, and I am convinced that we are mistaken in the opinion that a man must live on the frontier in order to be energetic.”
I had a habit of scribbling with a pencil when idle, and as I picked up a piece of paper to amuse myself in this manner, Mr. Biggs caught my hand, and said, “No notes!” fearing I intended to publish his opinions. He then explained, as he had often done before, that he talked candidly to me for my own good, and that he would be ruined if I quoted him either in print or privately. Being assured that I had no such intention, he went on:—
“Haven’t you noticed that when a Western man gets a considerable sum of money together, he goes East to live? Well, what does it mean except that the good sense which enabled him to make money teaches him that the society there is preferable to ours? When we go away for recreation and pleasure, in what direction do we go? East, of course, because it rains oftener there than here; because the caves, the lakes, the falls, the sea, and the comforts are in that direction. If I should get rich, I would leave this country, because I know of another where I could live more comfortably. I stay here because it is to my interest; all of us do, and deserve no credit. It is rather humiliating to me than otherwise that I am compelled to live where living is cheap, because I cannot afford the luxuries. Men who are prosperous, or men who live in elegant houses, do not come West, but it is the unfortunate, the poor, the indigent, the sick—the lower classes, in short—who came here to grow up with the country, having failed to grow up with the country where they came from.”
My visitor got up at this, and without ceremony took his hat, and walked out, giving me to understand that I should feel greatly favored. I followed him soon afterward, and passing along the street, I heard him gayly talking to a crowd of men in front of one of the stores, but in a different strain—in fact, he seemed to feel guilty for what he had said, and was denying it.
MORE than three years had passed since Jo and Mateel were married, and I was alone on the last night of the year, thinking that the years were slipping away wonderfully fast of late, it seemed so short a time since we had lived in the country; since the Rev. John Westlock so strangely disappeared, and since I was a boy in distress at my own and Jo’s misfortunes. The good year was dying, and would soon pass peacefully into the dim past, after the watchers had tired of waiting, and gone to sleep. As is the case when an old man dies, the announcement is speedily followed by the birth of a babe, and so the race and the years are continued. As is now said of the dying year, so it will be said of all of us. At some time in the mysterious future—nobody knows when—the hand that writes this will be picking uneasily at the covering of a death-bed, and it will be whispered in the room, and in all the house, and down the streets, “He is dying; poor fellow, he is dead.” The eye that reads this—at some time in the future; nobody knows when—will become fixed, and it will be gently said “Dying; dead.” The front door will be black with crape for a few days, and the people will pass the house reverently and silently, but after a very little while the token of death will be removed, the house will be thrown open and aired, and laughter will be heard on the inside. Birds will sing merrily at the front door, and flowers appear, and happy children play about the house, and through it, as though nothing had happened. The dead man may have been dearly loved, but everything and everybody encourages his friends to forget him, and they laugh in the room where he died, and where his coffin sat through the long nights before the burial.
The relics of departed friends, which were at first carefully laid away, are in the course of months or years resurrected, and given to their successors. The hat worn by the pretty boy who died last year, or the year before, is worn to-day by the boy who came after him, and he plays with his toys, which were at first so sacred, as though they had been brought to the house for him. The mother who put the little hat away no doubt thought she would keep it for years, and look at it to imagine that her first-born was wearing it again, but time has softened her grief; friends told her he was better off, and she hoped so, and tried to convince herself that it was all for the best.
So it will be with the dying year; it was well loved while it lasted, and brought us many good gifts, but it will be speedily forgotten, and in twelve months we shall be equally indifferent as to its successor. One dies; another is born; so go the people and the years. There will be a birth and a death to-night, but it is not an uncommon circumstance: there will be a little mourning for the death, but a great deal of rejoicing and ringing of bells for the birth.
The fire in the room where I usually worked had gone out, and I had taken my papers to an inner room, where Martin had worked late, and which was yet warm. It must have been ten o’clock, and outside the snow was falling steadily, promising great drifts in the morning, as I could see by the rays thrown out into the darkness from the single light which burned in the room. Just after I had settled down comfortably in my chair, some one opened the front door, and stood on the inside, scraping the snow from his feet, and brushing it from his coat, which startled me, for I supposed the door to be locked. Outside of the circle of the lamp it was quite dark, and as the visitor came slowly toward me, brushing the snow from his clothing, I was still in doubt as to who it was, until he stood almost beside me, when I saw with surprise that it was Jo Erring.
“Of all the men in the world,” I said, getting up, and making a place for him by the fire, “you are the most welcome. I think you must be my New Year’s gift, for I am lonely to-night, and was wishing you were here.”
He held his hands up to the fire to warm them, but did not reply, and I noticed, when he looked at me, that his eyes were bloodshot and swollen.
“Is there anything the matter?” I asked.
Now that I was looking at him closely, I saw with alarm that tears were in his eyes. He made no effort to hide this, but looked at me as though he would speak, but could not, and with a face so pitiful that I became alarmed. He still held his hands up to the fire to warm them, and I expected him every moment to burst out crying.
“Jo, my old friend,” I said to him at last, laying my hand on his shoulder, “tell me the meaning of this. You distress and alarm me.”
Turning his face from the light, he remained a long while in deep study, and finally got up and walked to that part of the room which was the darkest, where he paced up and down a long time. I added wood to the fire, expecting him to sit down every moment and tell me his trouble, but he continued his walk, and wrapped his great coat about him, as though he was chilled to the heart. At last he turned suddenly, and came over into the light.
“For what I am about to say,” he said, sitting down, “may God forgive me, for it is a matter that concerns no one but myself, and should forever remain a secret with me. But I have thought of it so much, and am so distressed from thinking of it, that I must speak of it to you, or lose my reason. If I could show you the wickedness in my thoughts, you would run away from me in alarm, but if I could show you my heart, you would weep over the misery it contains. It is unmanly for me to tell you what I came here to tell, but I am so wretched that I walked here to-night through the storm for the sympathy I am sure you will give, and which I need so much. I have not slept for weeks, except when nature asserted itself in spite of my misery, but through all the long nights I have tumbled and tossed about, thinking of the matter in a different light at every turn, hoping to get some comfort out of it, but every new thought of it seems the worst of all. I came out of the house to-night to cool my hot head, and walking towards you caused me to resolve to come on, and freeze myself into forgetfulness. Mateel does not know where I am, and I must go back as I came, but I would rather walk alone in this storm than trust myself in a darkened room with my thoughts. I am sick to-night, for the first time in my life, but it is from thinking of the matter I came to tell you about, for it has taken such possession of me that even sleep is denied me.”
I was so distressed and alarmed that I could not say a word, but tried to appear natural by digging at the fire. After Jo had thought awhile, he continued:—
“I need not rehearse the story of my courtship and marriage—you are familiar with that, and you know that I have been very contented and happy, except that ever since I have known Mateel, I have noticed an indifference which often humiliated me, but which I have excused for a hundred reasons, and tried to think little of. The letter which I will shortly ask you to read explains it all, and it is this which has changed me into a wicked, worthless man, without hope or ambition. The letter was written by Mateel to Clinton Bragg, when she was his promised wife, before they came to Fairview, and I received it by mail, addressed in a strange hand, six weeks ago yesterday, on an evening when I was planning for the future, and when I was in unusual good spirits. That she had been engaged to Bragg I never knew, nor did I suspect it, for although I knew they were brought up in the same neighborhood, and had been children together, the thought never occurred to me that they had been lovers, for he is more fit for a hangman’s rope than for an honest woman’s regard. I know now that Mateel has never loved me as the letter indicates she loved the most contemptible man I ever knew; a hundred times I have wondered if there were no better lovers in the world than Mateel, but I have found that the trouble was that she had drained her heart dry in loving my enemy, and that there was none left for me. This is what has wounded my pride, and broken my spirits, and left me a useless wreck.”
He took from an inner pocket and handed me an envelope, and taking from it the letter, I began to read aloud.
“Read it to yourself,” he said. “I am familiar with it.”
The letter was closely written, and read as follows:—
“My Brave Lover,—I write to-night to tell you for the hundredth time how much I love you. When you are away from me, I have no other pleasure than this, for it brings you to me to receive my kisses and embraces. Once you came in the middle of the day following the night I wrote you, and if you come to-morrow, and sincerely believe and never forget what I have to say, this letter will have accomplished its mission.
“What I want to say is (and I write it after a great deal of serious deliberation) that if by an unlucky chance we should never be married, I should still love you as I do now, forever. I love you so much that I am anxious you should know that even though I believed you had forgotten me, and I became the wife of some one else, because all women are expected to marry, I should continue to think of you as I do now, the only man worthy of my love in all the world; and every night after my husband had gone to sleep, I would put my arms around him, and imagine that it was you, and that you would waken soon, and love me as I am sure you do this night.
“I want you to believe this, for it is written with absolute sincerity, and if my hope of the future should never be realized, please read this over, and over again, and feel that I am married only in penance for being unworthy of you. Wherever I am, and whatever my condition, I beg of you to remember that I love only you; that I will never love any one else, and that with my last breath I will tenderly speak your name.
“I do not believe God will be so cruel as to separate us, but if He should, the knowledge that you knew I continued to love you would make my loss easier to bear. If I should consent to be married, it would be to some one who cared for nothing but my promise to live with him; and if I could call him up from the future now to stand beside me, I would bravely tell him that I love only Clinton Bragg, and that though my mind may change, my heart never will.
“If I should be so unfortunate as to have a husband other than you, I would be dutiful and just to him, but my love I would reserve until I met you in heaven, when, realizing how perfect it is, you would accept it. Loving you always.
“Mateel.”
I folded the letter, and handed it back to him, and as it touched his fingers, he shuddered, as though overtaken by a chill.
“The very touch of it penetrates my marrow,” he said, after putting it away in his pocket as though it were red-hot; “but for all my dread of its infamous contents, I have read it a hundred times. If I am tossing about at night, unable to sleep from thinking of it, I cannot help making a light, and reading it again.”
“Did you ever talk to her about it?” I asked, and I am sure I was trembling all over; for I felt that Jo Erring, with all his prospects, was now a wreck and would never be himself again.
“Not about this, directly,” he answered, “but she has told me that she was engaged to Bragg. She treated it so coolly that I thought perhaps such things are common, and that I am unreasonable to feel as I do. I am not familiar with the ways of good society; it may be that love is only an amusement, to be indulged in with every agreeable person; it may be that a woman is none the less a true woman for having been caressed and fondled by different men, and that it is no fault for a young girl to spend half a night with a lover who is liable to be succeeded in a month by another, but if such is the social creed, something convinces me that society is wrong, and that my revolting manhood is right.”
He rose from his chair, and walked up and down in the dark part of the room again, and I could not help thinking of what Mr. Biggs had said: That every one has a private history.
“I do not know who broke the engagement,” he said, returning to the fire at last, “but I have evidence in this letter that it was not Mateel, therefore it is fair to suppose that the insolent dog who sent this, tired of the contract, and broke it off. The girl was heart-broken, no doubt, and was brought West with the hope that she would encounter an ignorant fellow with industrious habits, but no sensibility, who could comfortably support her until old age and death came to the relief of her heart, but who could never hope to have her love, for that she had given already, although it was not wanted. Through the cruel neglect of God I became the man who is expected to labor early and late that she may be made as comfortable as possible, in her affliction. I receive nothing in return for this except the knowledge that as another man did not want her love, I may have her to care for, as her family is not well-to-do, and somebody must do it.
“Whenever I knock at my heart’s door, it is opened by a skeleton hand, and this letter handed out to me; if ambition beckons to me now, the fleshless fingers of an inexorable devil hold me back; and instead of pushing on, I sit down and cry that I have been so disgraced through no fault of my own. They thought I was a rough country boy, lacking so delicate a thing as a heart, and that I would be content with a broken flower because it had once been very beautiful; I doubt if they thought of me at all, except that I was industrious and healthy, as all the consideration was for Mateel, who had been wounded and hurt.”
I listened to the wind blowing on the outside, and I thought it was more mournful than I had ever heard it before.
“I cannot tell you how much my marriage to Mateel would have done for me had this letter never been written, for I should have divined its existence though it had never fallen in my way. Before I read it I was as happy as it is possible for a man to be, though the fear often oppressed me that a dark shadow would fall across my path, for I had always been taught to believe that great sorrow followed great happiness. The shadow has come, and the devils are probably content with its black intensity. I was proud that the home I had provided for Mateel was better than any she had ever lived in before, and was kind and careful of her that she might bless the day we met; I was proud to be known as a progressing, growing man that her father might be proud of me, as he knew how hard my boyhood was, but I see now that they all regarded me as a convenience; a trusty packhorse of great endurance, and I know that my years of work for Mateel were not worthy of a man’s ambition. I can never tell you, though I would willingly if I could, how great is the burden I must bear from this time forward. Hope has been killed within me, except hope to die, and my ambition has been cruelly trampled upon and killed by a man I never wronged.”
He sat crouching before the fire, like a man who had been beaten without cause by superior numbers, and who felt humiliated because his oppressors had escaped, and he could not be avenged upon them.
“Until six weeks ago, Mateel was a perfect woman in my eyes, and the queen of my heart; but since that time I have begun to criticise her (to myself; she does not know it), and if I become an indifferent husband, the fault is her own. I cannot be the same as I was before, for I shall be inclined to look upon her simply as the convenience she undertook to become, instead of my wife. If she fails to be convenient—and I fear I shall be a hard critic—I cannot help observing it in my present state of mind, though I shall remark it only to myself. She has deliberately deceived me, but in spite of it I love her, and every night-wind brings me word that it is not returned. The very wheels in the mill give voice to her entreaty to Bragg to remember that she will never love me; every sound mocks me that my wife is proud of her love for another, and piteously begs that it may never be forgotten. Since reading the letter I have never kissed my wife, or put my arms about her, and I hope God may strike me dead if ever I do either again.”
He stood up in great excitement, as if calling on God to witness his oath; but, as if recalling something, he meekly sat down again, and continued in a subdued tone.
“I have apologized to her for my conduct, for she seems distressed about it, and promised that perhaps I would think better of it after a while, but I never shall; it is growing worse with me, and I tremble when I think of my future. I talk with her about the old affair with Bragg over and over again, hoping it was not so bad as I think. She is very truthful and candid, and reluctantly answers every question, however searching it may be, but the more I talk of it the worse it gets. Don’t imagine from what I have said that she was ever anything but a virtuous girl; but she once loved that man so madly that she denounced me before she had seen me. The fresh and innocent affection which I should have had was given to Bragg—he had the fragrance of the rose; I have the withered leaves, after he tired of its beauty, and tossed it away. You can imagine the scenes between two young people who passionately love each other, and who only delay marriage until a convenient time. If you cannot, I can; and it is this imagination which never leaves me. And to add to my wretchedness, Bragg throws himself in my way as often as possible, that I may contemplate the man who was worthy of the woman I am not. The time may come when I would give my life to take him by the throat, and if ever it does, there will be murder done, for with my hands once upon him I would tear him into bits.”
I did not know what to say in reply, for I could think of nothing that would comfort him; and though I knew he would never again need my friendship as he needed it then, this knowledge only confused me, and made me stammer when I attempted to put in a word. He seemed to have so thoroughly considered the matter that there was no defence, and stated it so candidly that I thought he only expected me to pity him.
“Jo,” I said, as the thought occurred to me, “you undoubtedly received this letter from Bragg; no one else would be malicious enough to send it. Are you certain he did not write it?”
A new hope sprang into his eyes, though I noticed that his hand paused on its way to the pocket which contained the letter, as though it was of no use to look. But he unfolded the letter with trembling hands, and studied it with great care, spending so much time over it that I hoped we should have occasion to go out and find the scoundrel, and beat him, but after Jo had finished his inspection, I saw that he was satisfied that the letter was written by Mateel.
“That it might be a forgery never occurred to me before,” he said, with a long sigh, “but it is genuine; there is no doubt.”
“I need not tell you, my dear old friend,” I said, “that I am sorry this has happened. I regret it so much that I am powerless to comfort you, if that were possible. Your tears have unmanned me.”
“I want to apologize to-night for my future,” he said, after a long silence, “for I no longer have ambition. I can never succeed now, and I want you to know why. If I do not advance in the future, I desire that my only friend know that I no longer care to advance; that I have no reason to wish for success, and that I am not trying. If I become a Fairview man, miserable and silent, without hope or ambition, I want you to know that I am not to blame. I have just such a business, and just such a home, as we pictured together when we were boys. I have proved to you that I did not over-estimate my strength, and if I do not progress now that I am a man, you will know that my strength has been broken. The home I built with so much care is distasteful to me; the business I own after such a struggle, I hate; and I want you to know that, while I have not tired of working, I no longer care to succeed. The one above all others who should have helped me has only brought me disgrace, and broken my heart. There was no contract between us, but when Mateel became my promised wife, I made a vow to accomplish what I have; I have succeeded, but she has succeeded in nothing except to bring me this letter and its humiliating contents. I would not be a successful man in the future if I could. Bragg will finally become a beggar, for he is a spendthrift and loafer, and I believe that she would use my means to help him. I would rather be poor than rich, for if I should die possessed of property, that scoundrel would overcome his former scruples and marry my widow. My ambition in the future will be to live long and die poor. I hope the Devil is satisfied. He has been after me a long while, and I have passed into his possession body and soul. But I must return home,” he said, as if remembering the hour. “Mateel does not know where I am, though I suspect she does not care, and is soundly sleeping.”
“How are you going?” I asked, as he got up, and began buttoning his great coat around him.
“As I came—on foot.”
He started to walk past me, and would have gone away had I not held him back.
“To-morrow is Saturday, and New Year,” I said. “It is a holiday, and I will go with you. Wait here until I come back.”
He consented without a word, and sat down, and I think did not change his position until I came back with the horses. It was an hour after midnight, and the cold was intense—a miserable night for such a ride, but I willingly undertook it, knowing it was a kindness to Jo, and that we could easily make the distance in an hour. When I told my mother that I was going to Fairview, she was not surprised, nor did she ask me any questions, and I was soon on the way, with Jo by my side.
When we drove up to the house at the mill, which we did after a cold ride without speaking a word, I saw a curtain pulled aside in a room where there was a light, and Mateel’s pale and frightened face peering out, but by the time she appeared at the door, and opened it, we had passed on to the stables, and were putting away the horses. I was chilled through with cold, but when we walked back toward the house, I am certain I shivered because I dreaded to see them meet, knowing how unhappy and how helpless both were. I opened the door, and we walked in together, Jo a little behind me, and we went direct to the fire, though I stopped and held out my hand to his frightened wife. She was very pale, and I knew she had been weeping, for her eyes were red and swollen. While she took my hat and coat, Jo took off his, and held his hands out to the fire as he had done when he came to see me in town. He had taken a hasty glance at his wife, and I thought her distress added to his own, as though now both were wretched, and nobody to blame for it.
“Jo, my husband,” she said, in a piteous, hesitating tone, and almost crying, “what has happened? You look so strange. I have been walking the floor since eight o’clock waiting for you. Is there anything the matter?”
As Jo did not reply, she looked at me for an answer, and I said he had business in town which occupied him until late; and that, knowing she would be worried, I had brought him home. But this did not satisfy her, and walking over to Jo, she stood beside him.
“Why don’t you speak to me? You have never treated me this way before.”
As she stood trembling beside him, I thought that surely Jo’s letter was a forgery, and that if she did not love her husband, a woman never did.
Looking up at her as though half ashamed, Jo said:—
“You know why I went out of the house to-night. It is nothing more than that; you say it is not serious.”
Mateel walked over to a chair near me—I thought she staggered as she went—and sat down, and her face was so pale and frightened that I felt sure Jo wronged her when he said she did not care. We sat there so long in silence that I began wondering who would first speak, and what would be said, and whether it would clear up this distressing matter. When I glanced at Mateel, I saw despair and helplessness written in her face, and determined to go to bed, and leave them alone, hoping they would talk it over, and forget it. Jo saw my intention, and motioned me back.
“You say it is not serious,” he said, glancing hurriedly at his wife, as if afraid that if he looked in her face, and saw its distress, his stubborn heart would relent so much so as to commit the unpardonable offense of taking her in his arms; “therefore you will not care that I have told Ned. I have talked to him more freely than to you. I went to town for that purpose.”
Had my life depended upon it, I could not have told which one I pitied most.
“As I know you to be a truthful woman,” he went on, after a long pause, “and you say it is not serious, I believe that you think so; but it is all the more unfortunate on that account, for it is a very grave matter to me. I can never explain to you fully why I take it so much to heart, because I should wound your feelings in doing it, but the change in me within six weeks will convince you that if I am unreasonable about it, I cannot help it, and that my pride has been humbled, and my spirit broken, by a circumstance for which you are probably not to blame, when everything is considered. It is unmanly in me to feel as I do, and I apologize to you that I have not manhood sufficient (if that is a reasonable excuse) to shake off a circumstance which will affect my future, but which you regard as trifling. I have loved you—and I do yet; it is nothing to me what those I do not care for have been—I have loved you with my whole heart, and I have never divided my affection with anyone, if I except an honest friendship for my sister’s son, and who was the sole companion of my wretched boyhood; but the more I love you, the more unhappy I am. This is my unfortunate dilemma, and I only mention it because the serious truth must be known. Although it nearly killed me, I asked you never to show me affection until I felt differently; I did this because I believed you learned to be affectionate with a man I hate, and that you can never show me an act of kindness you did not show him, and which your love for him taught you. No woman’s lips ever touched mine—my only sister’s alone excepted, and hers not frequently—until yours did; my mind was never occupied with thoughts of love until I met you, and now that I know you only consented to marry me because you could not be better suited, my simple affection is hurt. I know that you care for me in a fashion; so you do for every one who is kind to you; but I wanted the affection you gave HIM, your first and best. I feel debased that this affair has ruined me, for it has completely, and I can no longer look an honest man in the face, for against my will I am an indifferent husband, instead of the worthy one I hoped to become. I was brought up in a community where the women were overworked, imposed upon, and unhappy; I resolved to make my wife a notable exception to this rule, but I cannot now, and I feel the disgrace keenly.”
The pale, fretful women of Fairview, who talked in the church of their heavy crosses to bear, and sat down crying, passed before me in procession; and staggering behind them, with the heaviest cross of all, was Mateel.
“I was so particular to tell you how I felt about this matter before we were married,” Jo went on, still looking into the fire, “though I spoke of it then only to convince you that I was a good lover, for I did not suspect that you regarded me as a victim instead of a man. I talked of it seriously that you might know I was in earnest, and much as I loved you, had I known this I would have given you up at the last moment. There might have been a remedy for it then; there is none now. As I have been during the past six weeks, so shall I be as long as I live, except that I shall grow more bitter and resentful. It is cruel that I have been mercilessly ruined, and nobody to blame for it. Were I injured in any other way, there would be some one to punish, and amends to be made, but in this no wrong has been done; indeed, I suppose I, who am so grievously injured, am more to blame than any one else for being so absurd. I am certain every one will regard it in this way, although that will not help the matter so far as I am concerned.”
There were evidences of bitterness in his words now, rather than of sadness and regret; and he looked around the room fiercely, as though he would do something desperate to those who had injured him. But he soon began thinking again, and went on talking:—
“I speak frankly only that we may understand each other, for it grieves me to do it. It is not a pleasure for me to command you never to touch me again. During the short time we have lived apart on account of this unfortunate matter, I have prayed every night that you would come to me, though I had locked my door so you could not. When my heart finally breaks it will be because you no longer come to me, though I will not let you. One night I became so distracted thinking of your unhappiness as well as my own that I stole softly into your room intending to kiss away your tears, and ask you to forgive my unintended cruelty; but I found you quietly sleeping, and I will swear that by the light of my lamp I saw you smiling. I will swear that you spoke the name of Clinton; and I went back to my room determined to kill him, and then myself. But my cowardly heart—it was never cowardly before—failed me, and I could only become more ugly and wicked.”
From the manner in which Mateel started at this I believed she had only gone to sleep when completely exhausted, and that she had only spoken the name because she was familiar with it, as she was familiar with a thousand others; but the circumstance seemed only to convince her that everything was against her, and that explanations would be useless; but, as if trying to avoid the subject, she asked, without looking up:—
“Since you have told Ned, what does he think?”
“I am not a competent judge,” I answered hurriedly, sorry that she had appealed to me at all, for I could think of no comfort for either of them. “I can only say that I have so much confidence in your husband that I do not question his sorrow. It is enough for me to know that he is unhappy, though, if I should advise him, it would be to try to forget. The world is full of difficulties which have no other remedy than this, though they are seldom forgotten. I have always known that Jo was just such a man as he has shown himself to be to-night; I remember distinctly how gloomy he became in talking about it the evening I first went to your house with him, and how it changed his disposition; and I remember how gayly you laughed at it as if it were of no consequence. I have always been Jo’s friend; I always shall be, and am his friend in this.”
She did not look up, but kept gazing at the fire, as she had done before.
“It is my most serious fault that I did not tell him of it before we were married; but I was timid, and thought of it only as one of the many little regrets with which every life is filled, and neglected it. I could not love my husband more than I do, and I only failed to tell him of it because I feared it would give him unnecessary pain. I was but sixteen then; a school-girl without serious thought or purpose, and certainly every one of my companions was as guilty as I, if it can be called guilt. It is not necessary for me to make explanations, for he has given me notice that they will not be accepted, but if there is anything I can do to make atonement—no difference what it is; even to going away from him, and dying alone and neglected—I will gladly do it, and humble myself cheerfully if that course will relieve him. I have so much confidence in my husband that I do not question the honesty of his grief, and for his sake I regret my past. In justice to my womanhood I cannot say I am ashamed of it. If I mentioned a name which was obnoxious to my husband in my sleep, it was because the name had caused me trouble. I do not remember it, for since this unhappy change in our home I have been ill and worn out. I was never strong, but I am so weak now as to be helpless.”
Jo seemed to not pay the slightest attention while his wife was talking, for he kept his eyes on the floor, but that he was listening intently I knew very well. Mateel looked at him timidly when she had finished, as if expecting a reply, but as he made none, she too looked at the floor. I watched her face narrowly, and there saw depicted such misery as I can never forget. She seemed to realize that she had made her husband unhappy by a thoughtless act, and to realize her utter inability to supply a remedy. I think a more ingenious woman could have made a more cautious statement, though not a more honest one, and won her husband back by explanations; but Mateel, as was the case with her father, gave up at once on the approach of a difficulty, and prepared for the worst. I saw in her face that she would never be able to effect a reconciliation; for, believing it to be hopeless, she would be dumb in contemplating the life they would lead in future. I knew she would be kind and attentive, and hope for the best, but in her fright and consternation she could not gather strength to test her ingenuity. I knew that she would accept her husband’s increasing obstinacy as evidence that a great calamity had come upon their house, and meekly submit, instead of resolving to conquer and triumph over it. If she had put her arms around his neck then (as he wanted her to do, in spite of his commands to the contrary), and, between declarations of her love, asked him to give her a year in which to prove her devotion, and explain away the unhappy past, I believe this story would never have been written, but they misunderstood each other at the beginning, and continued it until the end. I could see, also, that Jo regarded what she had said as a sort of justification of her course, thus widening and deepening the gulf between them; and I became so uncomfortable that I walked the floor to collect myself, but I could not think of anything which, if expressed, would help them, and I became more uncomfortable still when I reflected that they would accept my embarrassment as an evidence that I thought there was nothing to be done except the worst that could be done. I sat down then determined to speak of the matter lightly, but a look at them convinced me that this would be mockery, therefore I changed my mind, and said I would go to bed. This seemed to startle them both, as though they dreaded to be left alone, and Jo asked as a favor that I stay with him.
“If you leave that chair,” he said, “a Devil will occupy it, and stare at me until daylight.”
I replied that I only thought of going to bed to leave them alone, because I felt like an intruder, and was not at all sleepy, and in response to his request I stirred the fire, and sat down between them. Occasionally I dozed, but on waking again, I found them sitting on either side of the fire, as far apart as possible, as my grandfather and grandmother had done before them. I felt that all had been said that could be said, and although once or twice I broke the silence by some commonplace remark, neither of them replied further than to look up as if imploring me not to go to sleep again, and leave them alone.
I thought the night would never end, but at last the room began to grow lighter, and when the sun came up over the woods, its first rays looked in upon two faces so haggard and worn that I wondered whether it did not pity them. The sun came up higher yet, but still they sat there; and the curtains being down, and the shutters closed, I thought the sunlight had deserted that house, and given it over to gloom and despair.