Studying with the judge.
After this campaign Bradley went back to his studies at the seminary and to his work in Brown's office. Milton did not go back. Deering made him his assistant in the treasurer's office, and he confided to Bradley his approaching marriage with Eileen.
In talking about Milton's affairs to Bradley, Mr. Jennings said sadly: "Well, that leaves me alone. He'll never come back to the farm. When he was at school I didn't miss him so much, because he was always coming back on a Saturday, but now—well, it's no use making a fuss over it, I s'pose, but it's going to be lonesome work for us out there."
"Mebbe he'll come back after his term of office is up."
Mr. Jennings shook his head. "No, town lifeand office'll spoil 'im—and then he'll get married. You'll never go back on the farm. Nobody ever does that gets away from it and learns how to get a livin' anywhere else."
This melancholy sat strangely upon Mr. Jennings, who usually took things as they came with smiling resignation. It affected Bradley deeply to see him so gloomy.
Bradley found a quiet and comfortable home with Judge Brown and his odd old wife, who manifested her growing regard for him by little touches of adornment in his room, and by infrequent confidences. As for the Judge, he took an immense delight in the young fellow, he made such a capital listener. Between Bradley and the grocery he really found opportunity to tell all his old stories and philosophize upon every conceivable subject. He talked a deal of politics, quoting Jefferson and Jackson. He criticised members of Congress, and told what he would have done in their places. He criticised, also, the grange movement, from what he considered to be a lofty plane.
"They profess to have for a motto 'equal rights to all and special privileges to none,' and then they go off into class legislation. It's easy to talk that principle, but it means business whenyou stand by it. I haint got the sand to stand by that principle myself. It goes too deep for me, but it's something you young politicians ought to study on. One o' these days that principle will get life into it, and when it does things will tumble. The Democratic party used to be a party that meant that, and if it ever succeeds again it must head that way. That's the reason I want to get you young fellows into it."
These talks didn't mean as much to Bradley as they should have done. He was usually at work at something and only half listened while the Judge wandered on, his heels in the air, his cheek full of tobacco. Old Colonel Peavy dropped in occasionally, and Dr. Carver, and then the air was full of good, old-time Democratic phrases. At such times the Judge even went so far as to quote Calhoun.
"As a matter of fact, Calhoun was on the right track. If he hadn't got his States' Rights doctrine mixed up with slavery, he'd 'a' been all right. What he really stood for was local government as opposed to centralized government. We're just comin' around back to a part of Calhoun's position."
This statement of the Judge stuck in Bradley's mind; months afterward it kept coming up andbecoming more significant each time that he talked upon it.
He thought less often of Miss Wilbur now, and he could hear her name mentioned without flushing. She had become a vaguer but no less massive power in his life. That beautiful place in his soul where she was he had a strange reverence for. He loved to have it there. It was an inspiration to him, and yet he did not distinctly look forward to ever seeing her, much less to meeting her.
Indefinite as this feeling was, it saved him from the mistake of marrying Nettie. Poor girl! She was in the grasp of her first great passion, and was as helpless as a broken-winged bird in the current of a river. She was feverishly happy and unaccountably sad by turns. The commands of her father not to see Bradley only roused her antagonism, and her mother's timid entreaties made no impression upon her. Not even Bradley's unresponsiveness seemed to have a decided discouraging effect.
Her classmates laughed at her, as they did at three or four other pairs in the school who proclaimed their devouring love for each other by walking to and from the chapel with locked arms, or who sat side by side in their classes withclasped hands, indifferent to any rude jest, reprimand from the teacher, or slyly-flung eraser. The principal gave it up in despair, calling it a "sort of measles which they'll outgrow."
It was really pitiful to the comprehending observer. There was so much that was pain mixed with this pleasure. There were so many keen and benumbing disappointments, like that of waiting about the door of the office for Bradley to come down, and then to see him appear in company with some client of Judge Brown. Not that the client made so much difference, but the cold glance of Bradley's eyes did. At such times she turned away with quivering lip and choking throat.
She had lost much of her pertness and brightness. She talked very little at home, and it was only when with Bradley that she seemed at all like her old bird-like self. Then she chattered away in a wild delight, if he happened to be in a responsive mood, or feverishly and with a forced quality of gayety if he were cold and unresponsive.
Bradley knew he ought to decide one way or the other, and often he promised himself that he would refuse to walk or ride with her, but the next time she came he weakly relented at sight ofher eager face. It took so little to make her happy, that the temptation was very great to yield, and so their lives went along. He took her to the parties and sleigh-rides with the young people, but on his return he refused to enter the house. He met her at the gate, and left her there upon his return.
The colonel had met him shortly after the election, and had threatened to whip him for his charges against him as an office-holder. He concluded not to try it, however, and contented himself by saying, "Don't you never darken my door again, young man."
But in general Bradley's life moved on uneventfully. He applied himself studiously to his work in the office. He was getting hold of some common law, and a great deal of common sense, for the Judge was strong on both these points.
"Young man," said the Judge one day, after Bradley had returned from a sleigh-ride with Nettie, "I see that the woman-question is before you. Now don't make a mistake. Be sure you are right. In nine cases out of ten, back out and you'll be right."
Bradley remained silent over by the rickety red-hot stove, warming his stiffened fingers. The Judge went on in a speculative way:
"I believe I notice a tendency in the times that makes it harder for a married man to succeed than it used to be. I think, on the whole, my advice would be to keep out of it altogether. More men fail on that account, I observe, than upon any other. You see it's so infernally hard to tell what kind of a woman your girl is going to turn out."
"You needn't worry about me," said Bradley a little sullenly.
"That's what Mrs. Brown said. I just thought I'd say a word or two, anyway. If I've gone too far, you may kick my dog over there."
Bradley looked at the sleeping dog, and back at the meditative Judge, and smiled. He sat down at his work and said no more upon the subject.
The judge advises Bradley.
It was at the Judge's advice that he decided to take a year at the law-school at Iowa City. He had been in the office over a year and a half, and though he had not been converted to Democracy, the Judge was still hopeful.
"Oh, you'll have to come into the Democratic camp," he often said. "You see, it's like this: the Republicans are so damn proud of their record, they're going to ossify, with their faces turned backward. They have a past, but no future. Now the Democratic party has no past that it cares particularly to look back at, and so it's got to look into the future. You progressive young fellows can't afford to stand in a party where everything is all done, because that leaves nothing for you to do but to admire some dead man. You'll be forced into the party of ideas, sure. Iaint disposed to hurry you, you'll come out all right when the time comes."
Bradley never argued with him. He had simply shut his lips and his mind to it all. Democracy had lost some of its evil associations in his mind, however, and Free Trade and Secession no longer meant practically the same thing, as it used to do.
"Now people are damn fools—excepting you an' me, of course," yawned the Judge, one day in midsummer. "What you want to do is to take a couple of years at Iowa City and then come back here and jump right into the political arena and toot your horn. They'll elect you twice as quick if you come back here with a high collar and a plug-hat, even these grangers. They distrust a man in 'hodden gray'—no sort of doubt of it. Now you take my advice. People like to be pollygoggled by a sleek suit of clothes. And then, there is nothing that impresses people with a man's immense accumulation of learning and dignity like a judicious spell of absence."
It was very warm, and they both sat with coats and vests laid aside. The fat old bull-dog was panting convulsively from the exertion of having just climbed the stairs. The Judge went on, after looking affectionately at the dog:
"Ah, we're a gittin' old together, Bull an' me. We like the shady side of the street. Now you could make a good run in the county to-day, as you are, but your election would be doubtful, and we can't afford to take any chances. There are a lot o' fellers who'd say you hadn't had experience enough—too young, an' all that kind o' thing. We'll suppose you could be elected auditor. It wouldn't pay. It would only stand in the way of bigger things. Now you take my advice."
"I'd like to, but I can't afford it, Judge."
"How much you got on hand?"
"Oh, couple of hundred dollars or so."
The Judge ruminated a bit, scratching his chin. "Well, now, I'll tell yeh, Mrs. Brown and I had a little talk about the matter last night, and she thinks I ought to lend you the money, and—she thinks you ought to take it. So pack up y'r duds in September and start in."
Bradley's first impulse, of course, was to refuse, because he felt he had no claim upon the Judge's charity. It took hold of his imagination, however, and he talked it all over thoroughly during the intervening weeks, and the Judge put it this way:
"Now, there's no charity about this thing—I simply expect to get three hundred per cent. on my money, so you go right along and when youcome back we'll have a new shingle painted—'Brown & Talcott.' We aint anxious to lose yeh. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Brown and I'll be pretty lonesome for the first few weeks after you go away—and what I'll do about that cussed cow and kindling-wood I really don't know. Mrs. Brown suggested we'd better take in another homeless boy, and I guess that's what we'll do."
A couple of nights later, while Bradley was sitting before his trunk, which he had begun to pack like the inexperienced traveller he was, several days in advance, Mrs. Brown came to the stairway to tell him Nettie was below and wanted to see him.
The poor girl had just heard that he was going away and she met him with a white, scared face. He sat down without speaking, for he had no defence, except silence, for things of that nature. The girl's fury of grief appalled him. She came over and flung herself sobbing upon his lap, her arms about his neck.
"Oh, Brad! Is it true? Are you going away?"
"I expect to," he replied coldly.
"You mustn't! You sha'n't! I won't let you!" she cried, tightening her arms about him, as if that would detain him. From that on, there was nothing but sobs on her side, and explanationson his—explanations to which her love, direct and selfish, would not listen for a moment. The unreserve and unreason of her passion at last disgusted him. His tone grew sharper.
"I can't stay here," he said. "You've no business to ask me to. I can't always be a lawyer's hack. I want to study and go higher. I've got to leave this town, if I ever amount to anything in the world."
"Then take me with you!" she cried.
"I can't do that! I can't any more'n make a livin' for myself. Besides, I've got to study."
"I'll make father give you some money," she said.
He closed his lips sternly, and said nothing further. Her agony wore itself out after a time, and she was content to sit up and look at him and listen to him at last while he explained. And her suppressed sobs and the tears that stood in her big childish eyes moved him more than her unrestrained sorrow. It was thus she conquered him.
He promised her he would come home often, and he promised to write every day, and by implication, though not in words, he promised to marry her—that is to say, he acquiesced in her plans for housekeeping when he returned and was established in the office. He ended it all by walkinghome with her and promising to see her every day before he went, and as he kissed her good-night at the gate, she was smiling again and quite happy, although a little catching of the breath (even in her laughter) showed that she was not yet out of the ground-swell of her emotion.
Mrs. Brown was waiting for him when he returned, and as he sat down in the sitting-room, where she was busy at her sewing, she looked at him in her slow way, and at last arose and came over near his chair.
"Have you promised her anything, Bradley?" she asked, laying her thimbled hand upon his shoulder, as his own mother might have done. Bradley lifted his gloomy eyes and colored a little.
"I don't know what I've said," he answered, from the depth of his swift reaction. "More'n I had any business to say, probably."
"I thought likely. You can't afford to marry a girl out of pity for her, Bradley—it won't do. I've seen how things stood for some time, but I thought I wouldn't say anything." She paused and considered a moment, standing there by his side. "It's a good thing for both of you that you're going away. You hadn't ought to have let it go on so long."
"I couldn't help it," he replied with moresharpness in his voice than he had ever used in speaking to her.
Her hand dropped from his shoulder. "No, I don't s'pose you could. It aint natural for young people to stop an' think about these things. I don't suppose you knew y'rself just where it was all leading to. Well, now, don't worry, and don't let it interfere with your plans. She'll outgrow it. Girls often go through two or three such attacks. Just go on with your studies, and when you come back, if you find her unmarried, why, then decide what to do."
Her touch of cynicism was accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that she had never had a daughter.
Bradley sees Ida again.
Bradley felt that the world was widening for him, as he took the train for Iowa City a few days later. He was now very nearly thirty years of age, and was maturing more rapidly than his friends and neighbors knew, for the processes of his mind, like those of an intricate coil of machinery, were hidden deep away from the casual acquaintance.
He had secured, in the two years at the seminary, a fairly good groundwork of the common English branches, and his occasional reading, and especially his attendance upon law-suits, had given him a really creditable understanding of common law. The Judge always insisted that law was simple, but it wasn't as profitable as—chicanery.
"Any man, from his fund of common sense,can settle nine tenths of all law-suits, but that aint what we're here for. A successful lawyer is the fellow who tangles things up and keeps common law and common sense subordinated to chicanery and precedent. Damn precedent, anyway. It means referring to a past that didn't know, and didn't want to know, what justice was."
In the atmosphere of lectures like these, Bradley had unconsciously absorbed a great deal of radical thought about law-codes, and now went about the study of the history of enactments and change of statutes without any servile awe of the past. The Judge's irreverence had its uses, for it put a law on its merits before the young student.
He found the law-school a very congenial place to study. He passed the examinations quite decently.
His life there was quiet and studious, for he felt that he had less time than the younger men. His age seemed excessive to him, by contrast. He was very generally respected as a quiet, decent fellow, who might be a fine consulting lawyer, but not a good man in the courts. They changed this opinion very suddenly upon hearing him present his first plea.
His life consisted for the most part of passing to and fro from his boarding-place to his recitation-room,or to long hours of digging in the library. He saw from time to time notices of Miss Wilbur's lectures in the interests of the grange and upon literary topics. He determined to hear her if she came into any neighboring city. There was no one to spy upon him, if he made an expedition of that sort.
One beautiful winter day he read in the weekly paper of the town that she was about to appear at the Congregational church in a lecture entitled, "The Real Woman-question." He had an impulse to sing, which he wisely repressed, for he couldn't sing—that is, nothing which the hearer would recognize as singing. The Fates seemed working in his favor.
He had preserved a marked sweetness and purity of thought through all his hard life that made him a good type of man. His clear, steady eyes never gave offence to any woman, for nothing but sympathy and admiration ever looked out of them. The very thought that she was coming so near brought a curious numbness into his muscles and a tremor into his hands. He looked forward now to the evening of the lecture with the keenest interest he had ever felt.
The dazzling winter day seemed more radiant than ever before, when he heard some ladies inthe post-office say Ida was in town. The blue shadows lay on the new-fallen snow vivid as steel. The warm sun showered down through the clear air a peculiar warmth that made the eaves begin to drop in the early morning. Sleighs were moving to and fro in the streets, and bright bits of color on the girls' hoods and in the broad knit scarfs which the young men wore, formed pleasing reliefs from the dazzling blue and white. Bells filled the air with jocund music.
Bradley walked straight away into the country. He wanted to be alone. It seemed so strange and sweet to be thus shaken by the coming of a woman. In the first few minutes he gave himself up to the thought that she was near and that he was going to hear her speak again. It made his hand shake and his heart beat quick.
He wondered if she would be changed. She would be older a little, but she would look just the same. He saw her stand again under the waving branches of the oaks, the flickering shadow on her brown hair, speaking again the words which had become the measure of his ambition, the prophecy of a social condition:
"I want to have everything I do to help us all on toward that time when the country will be filled with happy young people, and hale andhearty old people, when the moon will be brighter, and the stars thicker in the skies."
This was his thought. He had not risen yet to the conception of the real barrenness and squalor of the life he had lived.
His studies had made him a little more self-analytical, but there were inner deeps where he did not penetrate and there was one sacred place which he dared not enter. A whirl of thought confused him, but out of it all he returned constantly to the thought that he should hear her speak again.
That evening he dressed himself with as much care as if he were to call upon her alone, and he dressed very well now. His clothes were substantial and fitted him well. His year's immunity from hard work had left his large hands supple and delicate of touch, and his face had attained refinement and mobility. His eyes had become more introspective and had lost entirely the ox-like roll of the country-born man. He was a handsome and dignified young man. His bearing on the street was noticeably manly and unaffected.
The lecture was in the church and the seats were all filled. It gratified him, at the same time that it hopelessly abased him to observe all this evidence of her power. As he waited for her toappear that tremor came into his hands again, and that breathlessness, and curiously enough he felt that horrible familiar sinking of the heart which he always felt just before he himself rose to speak.
Somebody started to clap hands, and the rest joined in, as two or three ladies entered the back part of the church and passed up the aisle. He looked up as they went by him, and caught a glimpse of a stately head of brown hair, modestly bent in acknowledgment of the applause, and he caught a whiff of the delicate odor of violets. His eyes followed the strong, firm steps of the young woman who walked between the two older women. There was something fine and dignified in her walk, and the odor of her dress as she passed lingered with him, but he did not feel that this was the same woman, till she turned and faced him on the platform.
He sat impassively, but his pulse leaped when her clear brown eyes running calmly over the audience seemed to fall upon him. She was the same woman, his ideal and more. She was fuller of form and the poise of her head was more womanly, but she was the same spirit that had come to be such a power and inspiration in his life.
As a matter of fact she had grown also. Ifshe had not, she would have seemed girlish to him now; growing as he grew, she seemed the same distance beyond him. Her self-possession in the face of the audience appealed to him strongly. Something in her manner of dress pleased him, it was so individual, so like her simple, dignified, beautiful self in every line.
She spoke more quietly, more conversationally than when he heard her before, but her voice made him shudder with associated emotions. Its cadences reached deep, and the words she spoke opened long vistas in his mind. She was defending the right of women to live as human beings, to act as human beings, and to develop as freely as men.
"I claim the right to be an individual human being first and a woman afterward. Why should the accident of my sex surround me with conventional and arbitrary limitations? I claim the same right to find out what I can do and can't do that a man has. Who is to determine what my sphere is—men and men's laws or my own nature? These are vital questions. I deny the right of any man to mark out the path in which I shall walk. I claim the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that men are demanding.
"It is not a question of suffrage merely—suffrageis the smaller part of the woman-question—it is a question of equal rights. It is a question of whether the law of liberty applies to humanity or to men only. Absolute liberty bounded only by the equal liberties of the rest of humanity is the real goal of the race—not of man only, but woman too."
The ladies dimly feeling that liberty was a safe thing to cheer, clapped their hands softly under the cover of the nosier clapping of a few radicals who knew what the speaker was really saying. Bradley did not cheer—he was thinking too deeply.
"The woman question is not a political one merely, it is an economic one. The real problem is the wage problem, the industrial problem. The real question is woman's dependence upon man as the bread-winner. So long as that dependence exists there will be weakness. No individual can stand at their strongest and best while leaning upon some other. I believe with Browning and Ruskin that the development of personality is the goal of the race."
The ladies took it for granted that this was true as it was bolstered by two great names. A few, however, sat with wrinkled brows scenting something heretical in all that.
"The time is surely coming when women can no longer bear to be dependent, to be pitied or abused by men. They will want to stand upright and independent by their husbands, claiming the same rights to freedom of action, and demanding equal pay for equal work. She must be able to earn her own living in anhonorableway at a moment's notice. Then she will be a free woman even if she never leaves her kitchen."
It was trite enough to a few of the audience, but, to others, it was new, and to many it was revolutionary. She was destined to again set a stake in Bradley's mental horizon. The woman question had not engaged his attention; at least not in any serious way. He had not thought of woman as having any active part in living. In the thoughtless way of the average man, he had ignored or idealized women according as they appealed to his eye. He had not risen to the point of pitying or condemning, or in any way consciously placing them in the social economy.
The speaker had appealed to his imagination before, and now again he sat absolutely motionless while great new thoughts and impersonal emotions sprang up in his brain. He saw women in a new light, and the aloofness of the speaker grew upon him again. He felt that she was holding herplace as his teacher. Around him he heard the rustle of approval upon the gown she wore, upon her voice, and some few favorable comments upon her ideas. He saw some of the people crowd forward to shake her hand, while others went out talking excitedly.
He lingered as long as he dared, longing to go forward to greet her, but he went slowly out at last, home to his boarding place and sat down in his habitual attitude when in deep thought, his elbow on his knee, his chin in his palm. He wanted to see her, he must see her and tell her how much she had done for him.
How to do it was the question which absorbed him now. He got away from the noisy merriment of the house, out into the street again. The stars were more congenial company to him now; under their passionless serenity he could think better. He felt that he must come to an understanding with himself soon, but he put it off and turned his attention to his future, and more immediately to the plans which must be carried out, of seeing her.
When he came in he was desperately resolved. He would go to see her on the next day in her hotel. He justified himself by saying that she was a lecturer, a person before the public, andthat she would not think it strange; anyhow, he was going to do it.
In the broad daylight, however, it was not so easy as it seemed under the magic of the moon. The conventions of the world always count for less in the company of the moon and the stars. He heard during the morning that she was going away in the afternoon, and he was made desperate. He started out to go straight to the hotel, and he did, but he walked by it, once, twice, a half dozen times, each time feeling weaker and more desperate in his resolution.
At length he deliberately entered and astonished himself by walking up to the clerk and asking for Miss Wilbur.
The clerk turned briskly and looked at the pigeon-holes for the keys. "I think she is. Send up a card?"
True, he hadn't thought of that. He had no cards. He received one from the clerk that looked as if it had done duty before, and scrawled his name upon it, and gave it to the insolent little darky who served as "Front."
"Tell her I'd like to see her just a few minutes."
On the stairs he tried to prepare what heshould say to her. His mouth already felt dry, and his brain was a mere swirl of gray and white matter. Almost without knowing how, he found himself seated in the ladies' parlor, to which the boy had conducted him. It was a barren little place, in spite of its excessively florid gilt and crimson paper, and its ostentatious harsh red-plush furniture.
His heart sent the blood into his throat till it ached with the tension. His lips quivered and turned pale as he heard the slow sweep of a woman's dress, and there she stood before him, with smiling face and extended hand. "Are you Mr. Talcott? Did you want to see me?"
She had the frank gesture and ready smile a kindly man would have used. Instantly his brain cleared, his heart ceased to pound, and the numbness left his limbs. He forgot himself utterly. He only saw and heard her. He found himself saying:
"I wanted to come in and tell you how much I liked your speech last night, and how much I liked a speech you made up at Rock River, at the grange picinic."
"Oh, did you hear me up there? That was one of my old speeches. I've quite outgrown that now. You'll be shocked to know I don'tbelieve in a whole lot of things that I used to believe in." As she talked, she looked at him precisely as one man looks at another, without the slightest false modesty or coquettishness. She evidently considered him a fellow-student on social affairs. "I'm glad you liked my talk on the woman question. It was dreadfully radical to the most of my audience."
"It was right," Bradley said, and their minds seemed to come together at that point as if by an electrical shock. "I never thought of it before. Women have been kept down. We do claim to know better what she ought to do than she knows herself. The trouble is we men don't think about it at all. We need to have you tell us these things."
"Yes, that's true. As soon as I made that discovery I began talking the woman question. One radicalism opened the way to the other. Being a radical is like opening the door to the witches. Are you one?" she asked, with a sudden smile, "I mean a radical, not a witch."
"I don't know," he replied simply, "I'm a student. I know I can't agree with some people on these things."
"Somepeople! Sometimes I feel it would be good to meet with a single person—a singleone—I could agree with! But tell me of yourself—are you in the grange movement?"
"Well, not exactly, but I've helped all I could."
"What is the condition of the grange in your county?"
"It seems to be going down."
She was silent for some time. Her face saddened with deep thought. "Yes, I'm afraid it is. The farmers can't seem to hold together. Strange, aint it? Other trades and occupations have their organizations and stand by each other, but the farmer can't seem to feel his kinship. Well, I suppose he must suffer greater hardships before he learns his lesson. But God help the poor wives while he learns! But hemustlearn," she ended firmly. "He must come some day to see that to stand by his fellow-man is to stand by himself. That's what civilization means, to stand by each other."
Bradley did not reply. He was looking upon her, with eyes filled with adoration. He had never heard such words from the lips of anyone. He had never seen a woman sit lost in philosophic thought like this. Her bent head seemed incredibly beautiful to him, and her simple flowing dress, royal purple. Her presence destroyedhis power of thought. He simply waited for her to go on.
"The farmer lacks comparative ideas," she went on. "He don't know how poor he is. If he once finds it out, let the politicians and their masters, the money-changers, beware! But while he's finding it out, his children will grow up in ignorance, and his wife die of overwork. Oh, sometimes I lose heart." Her voice betrayed how strongly she perceived the almost hopeless immensity of the task. "The farmer must learn that to help himself, he must help others. That is the great lesson of modern society. Don't you think so?"
"I don't know. I'm losing my hold on things that I used to believe in. I've come to believe the system of protection is wrong." He said this in a tone absurdly solemn as if he had somehow questioned the law of gravity.
"Of course it is wrong," she said. "The moment I got East, I found free-trade in the air, and my uncle, who is a manufacturer, admitted it was all right in theory, but it wouldn't do as a practical measure. That finished me. I'm a woman, you know, and when a thing appears right in theory, I believe it'll be right in practice. Expediency don't count with me, you see. But tell me, do you still live in Rock River?"
"Yes, I'm only studying law down here."
"Oh, I see. I suppose you know many of the people at Rock River." She asked about Milton, whom she remembered, and about Mr. Deering. Then she returned again to the subject of the grange. "Yes, it has been already a great force, but I begin to suspect that the time is coming when it must include more or fail. I don't know just what—I aint quite clear upon it—but as it stands now, it seems inadequate."
She ended very slowly, her chin in her palm, her eyes on the floor. She made a grand picture of thought, something more active than meditation. Her dress trailed in long, sweeping lines, and against its rich dark purple folds her strong, white hands lay in vivid contrast. The most wonderful charm of her personality was her complete absorption in thought, or the speech of her visitor. She was interested in this keen-eyed, strong-limbed young fellow as a possible convert and reformer. She wanted to state herself clearly and fully to him. He was a fine listener.
"I'm afraid I see a tendency that is directly away from my ideal of a farming community. There is a force operating to destroy the grange and all other such movements."
"You mean politics?"
"No, I mean land monopoly. I believe in thickly settled farming communities, communities where every man has a small, highly cultivated farm. That's what I've been advocating and prophesying, but I now begin to see that our system of ownership in land is directly against this security, and directly against thickly-settled farming communities. The big land owners are swallowing up the small farmers, and turning them into renters or laborers. Don't you think so?"
"I hadn't though of it before, but I guess that's so—up in our county, at least."
"It's so everywhere I've been. I don't understand it yet, but I'm going to. In the meantime I am preaching union and education. I don't see the end of it, but I know"—Here she threw off her doubt—"I know that the human mind cannot be chained. I know the love of truth and justice cannot be destroyed, and marches on from age to age, and that's why I am full of confidence. The farmer is beginning to compare his mortgaged farm with the banker's mansion and his safe, and no one can see the end of his thinking. The great thing is his thinking."
She arose and gave him her hand. "I'm glad you came in. Give my regards to Mr. Deering and other friends, won't you? Tell them not tothink I'm not working because I'm no longer their lecturer. You ought to be in the field. Will you read something which I'll send?" she asked, the zeal of the reformer getting the upper hand again.
"Certainly. I should be very glad to."
"I'll send you some pamphlets I've been reading." Her voice seemed to say the interview was ended, but Bradley did not go. He was struggling to speak. After a significant pause, he said in a low voice:
"I'd—I'd like to write to you—if you don't—mind."
Her eyes widened just a line, but they did not waver. "I should like to hear from you," she said cordially. "I'd like to know what you think of those pamphlets, which I'll surely send."
He had the courage to look once more into her brown eyes, with their red-gold deeps, as he shook hands. The clasp of her hand was firm and frank.
"Good-by! I hope I shall see you again. My address is always Des Moines, though I'm on the road a great deal."
Out into the open air again he passed like a man sanctified. It seemed impossible that he had not only seen her, but had retained his self-possession,and had actually dared to ask permission to write to her!
The red-gold sunlight was flaming across the snow, and the shadows stood out upon the shining expanse vivid as stains in ink. The sky, aflame with orange and gold clouds, was thrown into loftier relief by the serrate blue rim of trees that formed the western horizon. As he walked, he had a reckoning with himself. It could not longer be delayed.
He had been a boy to this day, but that hour made him a man, and he knew he was a lover. Not that he used that word, for like the farm-born man that he was, he did not say, "I love her," but he lifted his face to the sky in an unuttered resolution to be worthy her.
He had come under the spell of her womanly presence. He had seen her in her house-dress, and his admiration for her intellect and beauty had added to itself a subtle quality, which rose from the potential husbandship and fatherhood within him.
Now that he was out of her immediate presence, thoughts came thick and fast. Every word she had spoken seemed to have a magical power of arousing long trains of speculation. He walked far out into the quiet evening, walkeduntil he grew calmer, and the emotion of the hour faded to a luminous golden dusk in his mind as the day changed into the beautiful winter night.
As he sat down at his desk, an hour later, he saw a letter lying there. It was one of Nettie's poor little school-girl love letters. A feeling of disgust and shame seized him. He crumpled the letter in his hands, and was on the point of throwing it away, when his mood changed, and he softened. By the side of Miss Wilbur poor little Nettie was a willful child.
A few days after there came to him a pamphlet directed in a woman's hand. Its title page struck him as something utterly new, but it was only the first of a flood of similar publications.
"The Coming Conflict. A Series of Lectures prophetic of the Coming Revolution of the Poor, when they will rise against the National Banks and against all Indirect Taxation."
Its dedication was marked with a pencil and he read it over and over: "To the Toiling Millions who produce all the wealth, yet because they have never controlled legislation, have been impoverished by unjust laws made in the interests of the Land-holder and the Money-changer, who seize upon and hold the surplus wealth of the nation bythe same right that the slave-master held his slave,legalright and that alone, this tract is inscribed by the author."
It was Bradley's first intimation of the mighty forces beginning to stir in the deeps of American society. He found the pamphlet filled with great confusing thoughts. He confessed frankly in his letter to Miss Wilbur that he got nothing satisfactory out of it, though it made him think.
It was astonishing to himself to find his thoughts flowing out to her upon paper with the greatest ease. He was stricken with fear after he had mailed his letter, it was so bulky. He was appalled at the length of time which must pass before he might reasonably expect to hear from her. He counted the days, the hours that intervened. Her note came at last, and it made his blood leap as the clerk flung it out with a grin. "She's blessed yeh this time!" It was a red-headed clerk, and his grin, by reason of a quid of tobacco in his thin cheek, was particularly offensive. Bradley felt an impulse to call him out of his box and whip him.
When he opened the letter in his own room he felt a sort of fear. How would she reply? The letter gave out a faint perfume like that he remembered floated with her dress. It was arather brief note, but very kind. She called his attention to two or three passages in the pamphlet, and especially asked him to read the chapters touching on the land and money questions. But the part over which he spent the most time was the paragraph at the close:
"I liked your letter very much. It shows a sincere desire for the truth. You will never stop short of the truth, I'm sure, but you will have sacrifices to make—you must expect that. I shall take great interest in your work."Very sincerely,"Ida Wilbur."
"I liked your letter very much. It shows a sincere desire for the truth. You will never stop short of the truth, I'm sure, but you will have sacrifices to make—you must expect that. I shall take great interest in your work.
"Very sincerely,"Ida Wilbur."
Bradley changes his political views.
The West had always been Republican. Its States had come into the Union as Republican States. It met the solid South with a solid North-west year after year, and it firmly believed that the salvation of the nation's life depended on its fidelity to the war traditions and on the principle of protection to American industries.
Its orators waved the bloody shirt to keep the party together, though each election placed the war and its issues farther into the background of history, and an increasing number of people deprecated the action of fanning smouldering embers into flame again. Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska were Stalwarts of the Stalwart. Kansas was the battle-ground of the old Abolition andFree Soil forces, and their traditions kept alive a love and reverence for the Republican party long after its real leaders had passed away, and long after it had ceased to be the party of the people.
Iowa was hopelessly Republican, also. A strong force in the Rebellion, dominated by New England thought, its industries predominantly agricultural, it held rigidly to its Republicanism, and trained its young men to believe that, while "all Democrats were not thieves, all thieves were Democrats," and, when pressed to the wall, admitted, reluctantly, that there were "somegood men among the Democrats."
In the fall of Bradley's last year at Iowa City, another presidential campaign was coming on, but few men considered that there was any change impending. Local fights really supplied the incitement to action among the Republican leaders. There was no statement of a general principle, no discussion of economic issues by their political leaders. They carefully avoided anything like a discussion of the real condition of the people.
Rock County had been the banner Republican county. For years the Democrats of Rock County had met in annual convention to nominate a ticket which they had not the slightestexpectation of electing. There was something pathetic in the habit. It was not faith—it was a sort of desperation; and yet the Republicans as regularly had their joke about it, regardless of the pathos presented in the action of a body of men thus fighting a forlorn and hopeless battle. Each year some old-fashioned Democrat dropped away into the grave, and yet the remnant met and nominated a complete ticket, and voted for it solemnly, even religiously.
The young Republicans of the county called this remnant "Free traders" and "Copperheads," exactly as if the terms were synonymous. The Republican boys of the country felt that there was something mysteriously uncanny in the term "Free Trader" (and always associated "Copperhead" with the yellow-backed rattlesnakes that made their dens in the limestone cliffs), and in their snowballing took sides with these mysterious words as shibboleths.
In truth, many of these Democrats were very thoughtful men—old-line Jeffersonians, who held to a principle of liberty. Others had been born Democrats a half-century ago, and had never been able to make any change. They continued the habit of being Democrats, just as they continued the habit of wearing fuzzy old plug hats, of old-fashionedshapes, and long, polished frock coats. Then there were a few of that perpetually cross-grained class who will never agree with anybody else if they can help it. They belonged to the Democracy because the Democrats were in the minority, and considered it wrong to belong to a majority, anyhow. Of this sort were men like Colonel Peavy and old Judd Colwell.
The Colonel had been nominated for treasurer and Colwell for sheriff on the Democratic ticket year after year, and each year the leaders of the party had prophesied decided gains, but they did not come. The State remained apparently hopelessly Republican. The forces which were really preparing for change were too far below the surface for these old-line politicians to understand and measure.
As a matter of fact, the schools and debating clubs and newspapers were preparing the whole country for a political revolution. Radicals were everywhere being educated. Men like Radbourn, who still remained nominally a Republican, and a host of other young men and progressive men were becoming disabused of the protective idea, and were ready for a revolt. There needed but a change of leadership to make a change of the relation of parties and of party names.
The Grange, which was still non-partisan, seemed not destined to play a very strong part in politics, though it was still at work wresting some advanced forms of legislation from one or the other of the old parties.
But the deeper change was one which Judge Brown and a few of the progressive men had only just dimly perceived. The war and the issues of the war were slowly drawing off. The militant was being lost in the problems of the industrial. Each year a larger mass of people practically said, "The issues of to-day are not the issues of twenty-five years ago. The bloody shirt is an anachronism."
Here and there a young man coming to maturity caught the spirit of the new era, and turned away from the talk of the solid South, and addressed himself to a consideration of the questions of taxation and finance. These men formed a growing power in the State, and chafed under the restraint of their leaders.
And above all, death, the great pacificator, unlooser of bonds, and aider of progress, was doing his work. The old men were dying and carrying their prejudices with them, while each year thousands of young voters, to whom the war was an echo of passion, sprang to the polls andfaced the future policy of the parties, not their past. Not only all over the State of Iowa, but all over the West, they were silent factors, in many cases kept so by the all-compelling power of party ties; but they represented a growing power, and they were to become leaders in their turn.
This spreading radicalism reached Bradley in the quiet of his life in Iowa City. The young fellows in the school were debating it with fierce enthusiasm, and several of them capitulated. They all recognized that the liquor question once out of the way, the tariff was the next great State issue. At the Judge's suggestion, Bradley did not return to Rock River during vacation, but spent the time reading with a prominent lawyer of the town who had a very fine law library.
He did not care to return particularly, for the quiet studious life he led, almost lonely, had grown to be very pleasant to him. He read a great deal outside his law, and enjoyed his days as he had never done before. Unconsciously he had fallen into a mode of life and a habit of thought which were unfitting him for a politician's career. He gave very little thought to that, however; his ambition for the time had taken a new form. He wished to be well read; to be a scholar such as he imagined Miss Wilbur to be.
He began reading for that purpose, and kept at it because he really had the literary perception. He wrote to her of his reading; and when in her reply she mentioned some book which he had not read, he searched for it, and read it as soon as possible. In this quiet way he spent his days, the happiest he had ever known.
He had just two disturbing factors: one was Nettie's relation to him, and the other was his desire to see Miss Wilbur. Nettie wrote quite often at first, letters all very much alike, and very short, sending love and kisses. She was not a good letter writer, and even under the inspiration of love could not write above two pages of repetitious matter. "It's dreadfully hard work to write," she kept saying. "I wish you was to home. When are you coming back?"
It was very curious to see the different way in which he came to the writing of letters to these two persons.
"Dear Nettie," he would begin, with a scowling brow, "Ican'twrite any oftener, because in the first place I'm too busy, and in the second place nothing happened here that you would care to hear about. I don't know when I'll be home. I ought to finish my course here. No, I don't expect you to mope. I expect you to have agood time, go to parties and dances all you want to."
But when Miss Wilbur's letters arrived, he devoured them with tremulous eagerness, and sat up half the night writing an elaborate answer, while Nettie's letters lay unanswered for days.
"Miss Ida Wilbur, Dear Miss." (That was the way he addressed her. He was afraid to call her Dear Miss Wilbur, it seemed a little too familiar.) In the body of his letters there was no expressed word of his regard for her. It was only put indirectly into the length of his letters, and was shown in the eager promptness of his reply. She wrote kindly, scholarly replies, giving him a great deal to think about. Her letters were very far apart, however, as she was moving about so much. She advised him to read the modern books.
"I'm always on the wrong side of everything," she wrote once, "so I'm on the side of the modern novel. I champion Mr. Howells. Are you reading his story in theCentury? I like it because it isn't like anybody else; and Mr. Cable, too, you should read, and Henry James and Miss Jewett; they're all of this modern school, that most Western people know nothing about. The West is so afraid of its own judgments. Myfriends go about praising the classics because they know it's safe to do so, I suppose, while I am an image breaker to them. Mr. Howells says the idea of progress in art does not admit of the conception that any art is finished. Just like the question of social advance, there is always new work to be done and new victories to be won."
But more often she wrote upon economic subjects, as being more impersonal; and then her wish to make Bradley a reformer was greater than her desire to make him a lover of modern art.
"The spirit of reform is beginning to move over the face of the great deep," she wrote at another time. "No one who travels about as I do, can fail to see it. The labor question in the cities, and the farmer question in the country, will soon be the great disturbing factors in politics. The protective theory will go down: it is based on a privilege; and the new war, like the old war, is going to be against all kinds of special privileges."
It was with a peculiar feeling of pain and relief that he read Miss Wilbur's renunciation of her home-market idea. It seemed as if something sweet and fine had gone with it; and yet it strengthened him, for he had come to believe that a home-market built up by legislation was unnaturaland a mistake. Judge Brown's constant hammerings had left a mark.
He wrote to her something of his hesitation, and she replied substantially that there was no abandonment of the home-market idea; only the method of bringing it about had changed. She had come to believe in what was free and natural, not what was artificial and forced.
"If you will study the past," she went on, "you will find that advance in legislation has always been in the direction of less law, less granting of special privileges. Take the time of the Stuarts, for example, when the king granted monopolies in the sale of all kinds of goods. It is abhorrent to us, and yet I suppose those protected merchants believed their monopolies to be rights. Slowly these rights have come to be considered wrongs, and the people have abolished them. So all other monopolies will be abolished, when people come to see that it is an infringement of liberty to have a class of men enjoying any special privilege whatever. The way to build up a home-market is to make our own people able to buy what they want.
"There never was a time when our own people were not too poor to buy what they wanted. Goods lie rotting in our Eastern factories, and weexport many products which the farmer would be very glad to consume, if he were able. The farmer is poor; but it isn't because he needs protection, it isn't because he doesn't produce enough—it's because what he does produce is taken from him by bankers and corporations."
Bradley read her letters over and over again. Every word which she uttered had more significance than words from any one else. She seemed a marvellous being to him. He looked eagerly in every letter for some personal expression, but she seemed carefully to avoid that; and though his own letters were filled with personalities, she remained studiously impersonal. She replied cordially and kindly, but with a reserve that should have been a warning to him; but he would not accept warnings now—he was too deeply moved. Under the influence of her letters he developed a tremendous capacity for work. The greatest stimulus in the world had come to him, and remained with him. If it should be withdrawn at any time, it would weaken him. He did not speculate on that.