CHAPTER III
CARMEL more than half expected Abner Fownes to appear in the office, but he did not appear. Indeed, it was some days before she caught so much as a casual glimpse of him on the street. But she was gathering information about him and about the town of Gibeon and the county of which it was the center. Being young, with enthusiasm and ideals, and a belief in the general virtue of the human race, she was not pleased.
She set about it to study Gibeon as she would have studied some new language, commencing with elementals, learning a few nouns and verbs and the local rules of the grammar of life. She felt she must know Gibeon as she knew the palm of her hand, if she were to coax theFree Pressout of the slough into which it had slipped.
But it was not easy to know Gibeon, for Gibeon did not know itself. Like so many of our American villages, it was not introspective—even at election time. The tariff and the wool schedule and Wall Street received from it more attention than did keeping its own doorstep clean. It was used to its condition, and viewed it as normal. There were moments of excited interest and hot-blooded talk. Always there was an undercurrent of rumor; but itseemed to Carmel the town felt a certain pride in the iniquity of its politics. A frightful inertia resides in the mass of mankind, and because of this inertia tsars and princes and nobilities and Tammany Societies and bosses and lobbies and pork barrels and the supreme tyranny of war have existed since men first invented organization.... Sometimes it seems the world’s supply of energy is cornered by the ill-disposed. Rotten governments and administrations are tolerated by the people because they save the people the trouble of establishing and conducting something better.
In a few days Carmel perceived a great deal that was going on in Gibeon, and understood a little of it, and, seeing and understanding as she did, an ambition was born in her, the ambition to wake up Gibeon. This ambition she expressed to Tubal, who listened and waggled his head.
“One time,” he said, “I worked fer a reform newspaper—till it went into bankruptcy.”
“But look—”
“I been lookin’ a sight longer ’n’ you have, Lady.” At first he had called her Lady as a dignified and polite form of greeting. After that it became a sort of title of affection, which spread from Tubal to Gibeon. “I been lookin’ and seein’, and what I see is that they’s jest one thing folks is real int’rested in, and that’s earnin’ a livin’.”
“I don’t believe it, Tubal. I believe people want to do right. I believe everybody would rather doright and be good—if some one would just show them how.”
“Mebby, but you better let somebody else take the pointer and go to the blackboard. You got to eat three times a day, Lady, and this here paper’s got to step up and feed you. Look at it reasonable. What d’yegitby stirrin’ things up? Why, half a dozen real good folks claps their hands, but they don’t give up a cent. What d’ye git if you keep your hands off and let things slide? You git the county printin’, and consid’able advertisin’ and job work that Abner Fownes kin throw to you. You git allowed to eat. And there you be.... Take that letter of the perfessor’s, fer instance——”
“I’m going to print that letter if—if I starve.”
“Which is what the perfessor’s doin’ right now.... And where’s Sheriff Churchill? Eh? Tell me that.”
“Tubal, what is this about the sheriff? Has he really disappeared?”
“If you don’t b’lieve it, go ask his wife. The Court House crowd lets on he’s run off with a woman or mebby stole some county funds. They would.... But what woman? The’ wa’n’t no woman. And Churchill wa’n’t the stealin’ kind.”
“What do you think, Tubal?”
“Lady, I don’t even dast to think.”
“What will be done?”
“Nothin’.”
“You mean the sheriff of a county can disappear—and nothing be done about it?”
“He kin in Gibeon. Oh, you keep your eye peeled. Delorme and Fownes’ll smooth it over somehow, and the folks kind of likes it. Gives ’em suthin’ to talk about. Sure. When the’ hain’t no other topic they’ll fetch up the sheriff and argue about what become of him. But nobody’ll ever know—for sure.”
“I’m going to see Mrs. Churchill,” said Carmel, with sudden determination. “It’s news. It’s the biggest news we’ll have for a long time.”
“H’m!... I dunno. Deputy Jenney and Peewee Bangs they dropped in here a few days back and give me a tip to lay off the sheriff. Anyhow, everybody knows he’s gone.”
Carmel made no reply. She reached for her hat, put it on at the desirable angle, and went out of the door. Tubal stared after her a moment, fired an accurate salvo at a nail head in the floor, and walked back into the shop with the air of a man proceeding to face a firing squad.
Carmel walked rapidly up Main Street past the Busy Big Store and Smith Brothers’ grocery and Miss Gammidge’s millinery shop, rounding the corner on which was Field & Hopper’s bank. She cut diagonally across the Square, past the town pump, and proceeded to the little house next the Rink. The Rink had been erected some twenty-five years before during the roller-skating epidemic, but was now utilized as a manufactory of stepladders and plant stands and kitchen chairs combined in one article. This handy device was the invention of Pazzy Hendee,whose avocation was inventing, but whose occupation was constructing models of full-rigged ships. It was in the little house, square, with a mansard roof, that Sheriff Churchill’s family resided. Carmel rang the bell.
“Come in,” called a woman’s voice.
Carmel hesitated, not knowing this was Gibeon’s hospitable custom—that one had but to rap on a door to be invited to enter.
“Come in,” said the voice after a pause, and Carmel obeyed.
“Right in the parlor,” the voice directed.
Carmel turned through the folding doors to the right, and there, on the haircloth sofa, sat a stout, motherly woman in state. She wore her black silk with the air common to Gibeon when it wears its black silk. It was evident Mrs. Churchill had laid aside her household concerns in deference to the event, and, according to precedent, awaited the visits of condolence and curiosity of which it was the duty, as well as the pleasure, of her neighbors to pay.
“Find a chair and set,” said Mrs. Churchill, scrutinizing Carmel. “You’re the young woman that Nupley left the paper to, hain’t you?”
“Yes,” said Carmel, “and I’ve come to ask about your husband—if the subject isn’t too painful.”
“Painful! Laws! ’Twouldn’t matter how painful ’twas. Folks is entitled to know, hain’t they? Him bein’ a public character. Was you thinkin’ of havin’ a piece in the paper?”
“If you will permit,” said Carmel.
In spite of the attitude of state, in spite of something very like pride in being a center of interest and a dispenser of news, Carmel liked Mrs. Churchill. Her face was the face of a woman who had been a faithful helpmeet to her husband; of a woman who would be summoned by neighbors in illness or distress. Motherliness, greatness of heart, were written on those large features; and a fine kindliness, clouded by present sorrow, shone in her wise eyes. Carmel had encountered women of like mold. No village in America but is the better, more livable, for the presence and ready helpfulness of this splendid sisterhood.
“Please tell me about it,” said Carmel.
“It was like this,” said Mrs. Churchill, taking on the air of a narrator of important events. “The sheriff and me was sittin’ on the porch, talkin’ as pleasant as could be and nothin’ to give a body warnin’. We was kind of arguin’ like about my oldest’s shoes and the way he runs through a pair in less’n a month. The sheriff he was holdin’ it was right and proper boys should wear out shoes, and I was sayin’ it was a sin and a shame sich poor leather was got off on the public. Well, just there the sheriff he got up and says he was goin’ to pump himself a cold drink, and he went into the house, and I could hear the pump squeakin’, but no thought of anythin’. He didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back, so I got up, thinkin’ to myself, what in tunket’s he up to now and kind of wonderin’ if mebby he’d fell in a fit or suthin’.” Carmel took note that Mrs.Churchill talked without the air of punctuation marks. “I went out to the back door and looked, and the’ wa’n’t hide or hair of him in sight. I hollered, but he didn’t answer....” Mrs. Churchill closed her eyes and two great tears oozed between the tightly shut lids and poised on the uplands of her chubby cheeks. “And that’s all I know,” she said in a dull voice. “He hain’t never come back.”
“Have you any ideawhyhe disappeared?”
“I got my idees. My husband was a man sot in his ways—not but what I could manage him when he needed managin’, and a better or more generous provider never drew the breath of life. But he calc’lated to do his duty. I guess he done it too well!”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Churchill?”
“The sheriff was an honest man. When the folks elected him they chose him because he was honest and nobody couldn’t move him out of a path he set his foot to travel. He was close mouthed, too, but I seen for weeks past he had suthin’ on his mind that he wouldn’t come out with. He says to me once, ‘If folks knew what they was livin’ right next door to!’ He didn’t say no more, but that was a lot for him....” Suddenly her eyes glinted and her lips compressed. “My husband was done away with,” she said, “because he was a good man and a smart man, and I’m prayin’ to God to send down vengeance on them that done it.”
She paused a moment and her face took on the grimness of righteous anger. “It’s reported to methey’re settin’ afoot rumors that he run off with some baggage—him that couldn’t bear me out of sight these dozen year; him that couldn’t git up in the mornin’ nor go to bed at night without me there to help him! They lie! I know my man and I trust him. He didn’t need no woman but me, and I didn’t need no man but him.... Some says he stole county money. They lie, too, and best for them they don’t make no sich sayin’s in my hearin’....”
“What do you think is at bottom of it all?”
Mrs. Churchill shook her head. “Some day it’ll all come out,” she said, and her word was an assertion of her faith in the goodness of God. There was a pause, and then woman’s heart cried out to woman’s heart for sympathy.
“I try to bear up and to endure it like he’d want me to. But it’s lonely, awful lonely.... Lookin’ ahead at the years to come—without him by me.... Come nighttime and it seems like I can’t bear it.”
“But—but he’ll come back,” said Carmel.
“Back!Child, there hain’t nobackfrom where my husband’s gone.”
Somehow this seemed to Carmel a statement of authority. It established the fact. Sheriff Churchill would never return, and his wife knew it. Something had informed her past doubting. It gave Carmel a strange, uncanny sensation, and she sat silent, chilled. Then an emotion moved in her, swelled, and lifted itself into her throat. It was something more than mere anger, it was righteous wrath.
“Mrs. Churchill,” she said, “if this is true—thething you believe—then there are men in Gibeon who are not fit to walk the earth. There is a thing here which must be crushed—unearthed and crushed.”
“If it is God’s will.”
“It must be God’s will. And if I can help—if I can do one single small thing to help——”
“Mebby,” said Mrs. Churchill, solemnly, “He has marked you out and set you apart as His instrument.”
“I want to think. I want to consider.” Carmel got to her feet. “I—— Oh, this is a wicked, cruel, cruel thing!...”
She omitted, in her emotion, any word of parting, and walked from the house, eyes shining, lips compressed grimly. In her ears a phrase repeated itself again and again—“Mebby He has set you apart as His instrument....”
On the Square she met Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, who first peered at her through his great beetle glasses and then confronted her.
“May I ask,” he said, brusquely, “what decision you have reached concerning my letter?”
“I am going to print it,” she said.
He was about to pass on without amenities of any sort whatsoever, but she arrested him.
“What areyourplans?” she asked.
“I have none,” he said, tartly.
“No plans and no money?”
“That is a matter,” he said, “which it does not seem to me is of interest to anyone but myself.”
She smiled, perceiving now he spoke out of a boyishshame and pride, and perceiving also in his eyes an expression of worry and bewilderment which demanded her sympathy.
“No schools are open at this time of year,” she said.
“None. I do not think I shall teach again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like school trustees,” he said, simply, and one understood how he regarded the genus school trustee as a separate classification of humanity, having few qualities in common with the general human race. “I—I shallwork,” he said.
“At what? What, besides teaching, are you fitted to do?”
“I—I can dig,” he said, looking at her hopefully. “Anybody can dig. Men who dig eat—and have a place to sleep. What more is there?”
“A great deal more.... Have you no place to eat or sleep?” she said, suddenly.
“My landlady has set my trunk on the porch, and as for food, I breakfasted on berries.... They are not filling,” he added.
Carmel considered. In her few short days of ownership she had discovered the magnitude of the task of rehabilitating theFree Press. She had seen how she must be business manager, advertising solicitor, and editor, and that any of the three positions could well demand all of her time. It would be useless to edit a paper, she comprehended, if there was no business to support it. Contrariwise, it would be impossible to get business for a paper asfutile as theFree Presswas at that moment in its history.
“How,” she said, “would you like to be an editor—a kind of an editor?”
“I’d like it,” he said. “Then I could say to the public the things I’d like to say to the public. You can’t educate them. They don’t care. They are sunk in a slough of inertia with a rock of ignorance around their necks. I would like to tell them how thick-headed they are. It would be a satisfaction.”
“I’m afraid,” said Carmel, “you wouldn’t do for an editor.”
“Why not, I should like to know?”
“Because,” said Carmel, “you don’t know very much.”
She could see him swell with offended dignity. “Good morning,” he said, and turned away without lifting his hat.
“And you have very bad manners,” she added.
“Eh?... What’s that?”
“Yes. And I imagine you are awfully selfish and self-centered. You don’t think about anybody but yourself, do you? You—you imagine the universe has its center in Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, and you look down on everybody who hasn’t a lot of degrees to string after his name. You don’t like people.” She paused and snapped a question at him. “How much did they pay you for being superintendent of schools?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars a year,” he said, the answer being surprised out of him.
“Doesn’t that take down your conceit?”
“Conceit!... Conceit!...”
“Yes—a good carpenter earns more than that. The world can’t set such a high value on you if it pays a mechanic more than it does you.”
“I told you,” he said, impatiently, “that the world is silly and ignorant.”
“It is you who are silly and ignorant.”
“You—you have no right to talk to me like this. You—you are forward and—and impertinent. I never met such a young woman.”
“It’s for the good of your soul,” she said, “and because—because I think I’m going to hire you to write editorials and help gather news. Before you start in, you’ve got to revise your notions of the world—and of yourself. If you don’t like people, people won’t like you.”
Evidently he had been giving scant attention to her and plenary consideration to himself. “How much will you pay me?” he asked.
“There you are!... I don’t know. Whatever I pay you will be more than you are worth.”
He was thinking about himself again, and thinking aloud.
“I fancy I should like to be an editor,” he said. “The profession is not without dignity and scholarly qualities——”
“Scholarly fiddlesticks!”
Again he paid her no compliment of attention. “Why shouldn’t one be selfish? What does it matter? What does anything matter? Here we arein this world, rabbits caught in a trap. We can’t escape. We’re here, and the only way to get out of the trap is to die. We’re here with the trap fastened to our foot, waiting to be killed. That’s all. So what does anything matter except to get through it somehow. Nobody candoanything. The greatest man who ever lived hasn’t done a thing but live and die. Selfish? Of course I’m selfish. Nothing interests me but me. I want to stay in the trap with as little pain and trouble as I can manage.... Everything and everybody is futile.... Now you can let me be an editor or you can go along about your business and leave me alone.”
“You have a sweet philosophy,” she said, cuttingly. “If that is all your education has given you, the most ignorant scavenger on the city streets is wiser and better and more valuable to the world than you. I’m ashamed of you.”
“Scavenger!...” His eyes snapped behind his beetle glasses and he frowned upon her terribly. “Now I’m going to be an editor—the silly kind of an editor silly people like. Just to show you I can do it better than they can. I’ll write better pieces about Farmer Tubbs painting his barn red, and better editorials about the potato crop. I’m a better man than any of them, with a better brain and a better education—and I’ll use my superiority to be a better ass than any of them.”
“Do you know,” she said, “you’ll never amount to a row of pins until you really find a desire to be of use to the world? If you try to help the world,sincerely and honestly, the world finds it out and helps you—and loves you.... Don’t you want people to like you?”
“No.”
“Well, when you can come to me and tell me you do want people to like you, I’ll have some hopes of you.... Report at the office at one o’clock. You’re hired.”
She walked away from him rapidly, and he stood peering after her with a lost, bewildered air. “What an extraordinary young woman!” he said to himself. Carmel seated herself at her desk to think. Her eyes glanced downward at the fresh blotter she had put in place the day before, and there they paused, for upon its surface lay a grimy piece of paper upon which was printed with a lead pencil:
Don’t meddle with Sheriff Churchill or he’ll have company.
That was all, no signature, nothing but the message and the threat. Carmel bit her lip.
“Tubal,” she called.
“Yes, Lady.”
“Who has been in the office—inside the railing?”
“Hain’t been a soul in this mornin’,” he said—“not that I seen.”
Carmel crumpled the paper and threw it in the waste basket. Then she picked up her pen and began to write—the story of the disappearance of Sheriff Churchill. Without doubt she broke the newspaper rule that editorial matter should not be contained ina news story, but her anger and determination are offered as some excuse for this. She ended the story with a paragraph which said:
“The editor has been warned that she will be sent to join Sheriff Churchill if she meddles with his disappearance. TheFree Pressdesires to give notice now that it will meddle until the whole truth is discovered and the criminals brought to justice. If murder has been done, the murderers must be punished.”