“The hosts of hell are pressing hard, O God! Thou who didst guide thy chosen people with a pillarof fire, show now to thy unworthy servant that thou art God!”
What the parson saw he never told, but he sprang to his feet and went down the left-hand road at a lively run, a moment after Tom Adams, half a mile in the rear, had shaded his eyes and exclaimed,
“Blamed if there isn’t a feller a-prayin’ right out in the road; if he wants anythingthatbad, I hope he’ll get it. Travel, Selim—getup, Bill!—let’s see who he is.”
Speaking after the manner of the flesh, the Reverend Timotheus Brown had found only plain sailing on the river; spiritually, he had a very different experience. “As stubborn as a mule” was the most common of the current estimates of Pastor Brown’s character; and if the conscientious old preacher had ever personally heard this opinion of himself, the verbal expression thereof would have given him but slight annoyance, compared with that which he experienced from his own inner man as he paddled down the stream. To forcibly resist something so satisfied the strongest demand of his nature that neither shortening breath nor blistering hands caused him to slacken the speed with which he forced his paddle against the water. But another contest was going on, and in this the consistent theologian was not so triumphant as he liked always to be. Harry Wainright was one of the ungodly; that he owned (and frequently occupied) a high-pricedpew in Mr. Brown’s own church was only another reason why the preacher should quote concerning him, “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck——”—what if the conclusion of the same passage—“shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy,” should apply? What could prevent its doing so, if Wainright had fulfilled the description in the first half? Had not the same God inspired the whole passage? If so, what right had any man, least of all a minister of the Gospel, to try to set at naught the Divine will? Harry Wainright was, according to the decrees of an unchangeable God, one of the lost—as much so as if he were already in the bottomless pit. And still the old man’s paddle flew; once on the trip he had felt as if the weakness of the arm of flesh would decide the case for him, and in favor of the Word whose expounder he was; he found himself wishing that it might, so that he could feel that although God had overruled him, he might have comfort in the assurance that he had not proved indifferent to his sudden emotion of yearning for his fellow man. But that mysterious physical readjustment, known in animals as “second breath,” came to the rescue of his fainting frame, and then it seemed as if no watery torrent couldprevail against the force of his arm. Oh! if he might but talk to some one of the fathers of the church; that he might be, even for ten minutes, back in his own library! But no father of the church resided along the Reverend Brown’s nautical course, nor was there a theological library nearer than his own, and there he was, actually bent upon saving one whom the Eternal pronounced lost! Lost? Hold! “For the Son of Man is come into the world to save them that are lost.” If Christ had a right to save the lost, had not an ambassador of Christ the same privilege? was not an ambassador one who stood in the place—who fulfilled the duties—of an absent king? “Glory be to God on high!” shouted the Reverend Timotheus, and the dense woods echoed back “God on high!” as the old man, forty years a conscientious pastor, but only that instant converted to Christianity, drove his paddle into the water with a force that nearly threw the canoe into the air.
As for Parson Wedgewell, whom we left arising from his knees after asking information from his Divine guide, he found himself upon the right road. The river was nearer than he had dared to hope; a run of half a mile brought him into a clearing, in whichstood Brown’s warehouse, near the river. TheExcellencehad just put her nose against the bank, and the clerk at the warehouse was tired of wondering why Fred Macdonald, on the opposite bank, was shouting so impatiently to the ferryman, and why an old man in a canoe should be coming down the river at the rate of fifty-paddle strokes per minute, when he saw Parson Wedgewell, coatless, hatless, with open shirt, disordered hair, and face covered with dirt deposited just after an unlucky stumble, come flying along the road, closely followed by Tom Adams, who was lashing his horses furiously. A happy inspiration struck the clerk; he shouted “Horse thief!” and seized the parson, and instantly received a blow under the chin which rendered him inactive and despondent for the space of half an hour. The parson saw the gang-plank shoved out; he saw Harry Wainright step aboard; he saw the Rev. Timotheus jump from his canoe into water knee deep, dash up the plank, and throw his arm over Harry Wainright’s shoulder; but only a second or two elapsed before Parson Wedgewell monopolized the runaway’s other side, and then, as the three men stared at each other, neither one speaking a word, and the two pastors bursting intotears, Tom Adams hurried aboard, and exclaimed,
“Mr. Wainright, Mrs. Wainright is particular anxious to see you this evenin’, for somethin’, I don’t know what, an’ I hadn’t time to get any sort of a carriage for fear I’d lose the boat; but there’s good springs to the seat of the brick-yard wagon, an’ a new sheep-skin besides.” No other words coming to Tom’s mind, he abruptly walked forward muttering, “That’s the cock-an’-bullest yarn I everdidtell; IknewI wouldn’t know what to say.” As Tom meditated, he heard one “roustabout” say to another,
“I say, Bill, you know that feller that used to sell such bully whiskey in Barton? Well, he’s around there on the guards, dancin’ like a lunatic. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s what come of swearin’ off drinkin’.”
“Mighty unsafe perceedin’,” replied Bill, eyeing Crupp suspiciously.
Harry Wainright made not the slightest objection to going back home, and he acted very much like a man who was glad of the company in which he found himself. The divine of the canoe looked at his blistered hands, and paid the resuscitated clerkto send the boat back by the first steamer. While Fred Macdonald was crossing the river, Tom Adams kindly drove back the road and recovered Parson Wedgewell’s coat and hat, and the parson accepted the hospitalities of the boat to the extent of water, soap, and towel. He attempted to make his peace with the injured clerk; but that functionary, having already interviewed Tom Adams, insisted that no apology was necessary, and asked the old gentleman in what church he preached.
As the party started back, they saw, coming through a cross-road, a buggy violently driven, and containing two men—who proved to be Squire Tomple and Father Baguss—in a vehicle belonging to the latter; their air of having merely happened there deceived no one, least of all Harry Wainright himself. Father Baguss did not live in town, nor within four miles of it; but when Squire Tomple suggested that he would beg a ride back in Tom Adams’s wagon, Father Baguss objected, and remarked that he guessed he had business in town himself; so the Squire retained his seat, and Father Baguss fell in behind the wagon as decorously as if he was taking part in a funeral procession. Behind them came Fred Macdonald, who had good excuseto gallop back to the peculiar attraction that awaited him in Barton, but preferred to remain in his present company. As the party approached the town, Tom Adams considerately drove through the darkest and most unfrequented streets, and stopped as near as possible to Wainright’s house. Wainright, politely declining any escort, walked quietly home. Father Baguss stood up in his buggy, with his hand to his ear, in the original position of attention: suddenly he exclaimed,
“There! I heard his door shut:now, brethren.” And Father Baguss started the doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and the glorious harmonies of the old choral were proof even against the tremendous but discordant notes which Tom Adams, with the most honorable intentions, interjected in rapid succession. Then the party broke up. The two pastors escorted each other home alternately and several times in succession, during which apparently meaningless proceeding they learned, each from the other, how much of good intent had been stifled in both of them for lack of prompt application. Crupp and Tomple talked but little, and no “Imaginary Conversation” would be at all likely to reproduce whatthey said. Father Baguss made the whole air between Barton and his own farm redolent of camp-meeting airs, and Fred Macdonald heard in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor something sweeter than all the music ever written. As for Tom Adams, he jogged slowly toward his employer’s stables, repeating to himself,
“The bulliest spree I ever went on—theverybulliest!”
Here were two elements of Barton society with which Mr. Crupp had not been so successful as he had hoped; these were the doctors, and that elastic body known as “the boys.” Individually, the physicians had promised well at first; all of them but one were members of the Barton Division of the Sons of Temperance, and the Division rooms afforded the only floor upon which Dr. White, the allopathist, Dr. Perry, the homeopathist, and Dr. Pykem, the water-cure physician, ever could meet amicably, for they belonged to separate churches. Old Dr. Matthews, who had retired from practice, was not a “Son,” only because he was a conscientious opponent of secret societies; but he had signed every public pledge ever circulated in Barton, and he had never drunk a drop of liquor in his life. All the physicians freely admitted to Mr. Crupp that alcohol was a never-failing cause of disease, orat least of physical deterioration; all declared that no class of maladies were so incurable, and so depressing to the spirits of the medical practitioner, as those to which habitual drinkers, even those who were never drunk, were subject; but—they really did not see what more they, the physicians of Barton, could do than they were already doing. Crupp discussed the matter with Parson Wedgewell, and the parson volunteered to preach a sermon to physicians from the text, “Give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts,” a text which had suggested itself to him, or, rather, had been providentially suggested to him on the occasion of his very first interview with Crupp, and which was outlined in his mind in a manner suggestive of delightful subtleties and a startling application. But when Crupp sounded the doctors as to whether such a discourse would be agreeable, Dr. White said he would be glad to listen to the eloquent divine; but he was conscientiously opposed to appearing, even by the faintest implication, to admit that the homeopathist was a physician at all. Dr. Perry felt his need, as a partaker in the fall of Adam, to being preached to from any portion of the inspired Word; but he could not sit in an audience to which such a humbug as Pykem could beadmitted in an official capacity; while Dr. Pykem said that he would rejoice to encourage the preacher by his presence, if he thought any amount of preaching would do any good to a remorseless slaughterer like White, or an idiotic old potterer like Perry. Then Mr. Crupp tried another plan: he himself organized a meeting in which the exercises were to consist of short addresses upon the physical bearing of intemperance, the addresses to be made by “certain of our fellow-citizens who have had many opportunities for special observation in this direction.” Even then Drs. White and Perry objected to sitting on the same platform with Dr. Pykem, who had never attended any medical school of any sort, and who would probably say something utterly ridiculous in support of his own senseless theories, and thus spoil the effect of the physiological facts and deductions which Drs. Perry and White each admitted that the other might be intellectually capable of advancing. Crupp arranged the matter amicably, however, by having Pykem make the first address, during which the other two physicians were to occupy back seats, where they might, while unobserved, take notes of such of Pykem’s heresies as they might deem it necessary to combat: he furtherarranged that, immediately after Pykem had concluded, he was to be called away to a patient, provided for the occasion. Still more—and great would have been the disgust of White and Perry had they known of it—Crupp laid so plainly before Pykem the necessities of the community, and the duty, not only Christian, but of the simplest manliness, also, that men of any intelligence owed to their fellow-men, that Pykem, who with all his hobbies was a man of Christian belief and humane heart, confined himself solely to the preventive efficacy of external applications of water, not unmixed with soap, in the case of persons who felt toward alcohol a craving which they could not logically explain; he thus delivered an address which might, with cause, be repeated in every community in the United States. Then Dr. Perry, whose forte was experimental physiology, read whole tables of statistics based upon systematic observations; and Dr. White unrolled and explained some charts and plates of various internal organs, naturally unhandsome in themselves, which had been injured by alcohol. It was declared by close observers that for a few days after this meeting the demand for sponges and toilet soap exceeded the experience of the old and single apothecary of thevillage, and that liquor-sellers looked either sober or savage, according to their respective natures.
But the boys! Crupp found himself in time really disposed to ask Pastors Wedgewell and Brown whether there wasn’t Scriptural warrant for the supposition that Job obtained his sons by marrying a widow with a grown-up family. “The boys” numbered about a hundred specimens, ranging in age from fourteen years to forty; no two were alike in disposition, as Crupp had long known; they came from all sorts of peculiar social conditions that warred against their physical and moral well-being; some of them seemed wholly corrupt, and bent upon corrupting others; many more exhibited a faculty for promising which could be matched in magnitude only by their infirmity of performance. By a vigorous course of individual exhortation, the burden of which was that everybody knew they drank because they were too cowardly to refuse, and that nobody despised them so heartily as the very men who sold them the rum, Crupp lessened the number of drinking boys by about one-fourth, thus rescuing those who were easiest to save and most worth saving, but the remainder made as much trouble as the collective body had done. Cruppscolded, pleaded, and argued; he hired some boys to drop liquor for at least a stated time; he importuned some of the more refined citizens to interest themselves socially in certain boys; he lent some of these boys money with which to buy clothing which would bring their personal appearance up to the Barton standard of respectability, and he covertly excited some of the merchants up to a genuine interest in certain boys, by persuading them to sell to said boys coats, boots, and hats on credits nominally short.
He enjoyed the hearty co-operation of the village pastors, all of whom preached sermons to young men and to parents; but his principal practical assistance came, quite unexpectedly, from old Bunley. Bunley had not yet succeeded in finding anything to do, and, as he had on his hands all of his time which was not needed at the family woodpile, he went around talking to the boys. Bunley had been, according to the Barton classification, a “boy” himself; he had drunk in a not remote day with any boy who invited him; he knew more jolly songs than any other half dozen inebriates in the village, and was simply oppressed with the load of good (bad) stories which he never tired of telling; he hadbeen always ready to play cards with any boy, and had come to be regarded, among the youngsters, as “the best fellow in the village.” Now that he had reformed, his success in reforming boys was simply remarkable—so much so that Parson Wedgewell began to tremble over the thought that Bunley, by the present results of the experience of his sinful days, might demonstrate, beyond the hope of refutation, the dreadful proposition that it was better that a man should be a sinner in his youth, so as to know how to be a saint when he became old. This idea Parson Wedgewell laid, with much trepidation, before the Reverend Timotheus Brown, and the two old saints and new friends had a delightfully doleful time on their knees over it, until there occurred to the Reverend Timotheus Brown a principle which he proceeded to formulate as follows: The greater the capacity of a misguided faculty for evil, the greater the good the same faculty may accomplish when in its normal condition. To be sure, the discovery was not original with him; the same statement had been made by peripatetic phrenologists at Barton; indeed, it was visible, to one who could read rather than merely repeat words, in every chapter of the Bible so dear to this good old man; butthe illusion under which Parson Brown was allowed to labor worked powerfully for his own good and for that of the community, for from that time forth both he and Parson Wedgewell displayed their greatest earnestness in work with cases apparently the most hopeless. These they found among “the boys,” and harder work no reformer ever laid out for himself. The ingenuity, the persistence, the determined brutality of some of the boys, the logical acuteness displayed in varied fits of deception, only stimulated the old man to greater industry, and slowly, after hard work, often after work that seemed more like hard fighting, but yet surely, Parson Brown reformed one after another of several hard cases. The villagers, most of whom considered that their whole duty consisted in critical observation, applauded handsomely, and Bunley was astonished, and felt considerably mortified at the marked success of his new rival, while Parson Wedgewell found it necessary to pray earnestly that unchristian jealousy might be banished from his own mind. But to Parson Brown the greatest triumph occurred when Crupp—Crupp, the literalist, the hard-headed, the man who trusted in the arm of flesh, the man of action, he who slightingly received any suggestionsof special thank-offerings of prayer for special services received—Crupp came to him by night—it reminded Parson Brown of Nicodemus—and exclaimed, “It’s no use, Parson; I’ve done my best on Frank Pughger, but he’s a goner if God don’t put in a special hand. I’ll turn him over to you, I guess.”
The holy hilarity which Father Baguss enjoyed on his way home, after having assisted in bringing Harry Wainright back, did not depart with the shades of night. The old man was out of bed at his usual hour, and he took his spiritual songs to the barn with him, to the astonishment of his mild-eyed cows and quick-eared horses; and when his drove of porkers demanded their morning meal with the vocal power peculiar to a chorus of swine, the old man defiantly jumped an occasional octave, and made the spiritual songs dominate over the physical. He seemedsohappy that his single hired man could not resist the temptation of asking for an increase of pay; but the sobriety to which this interruption and its consequent refusal reduced Father Baguss was of only temporary duration, and the broken strain was resumed with renewed energy. The ecstasy lasted into and through the old man’s matutinal repast, and manifested itself byan occasional hum through the good man’s nose, which did the duty ordinarily performed by a mouth which was now busied about other things; it caused Father Baguss to read a glorious psalm as he officiated at the family altar after breakfast; it made itself felt half way through the set prayer which the old farmer had delivered every morning for forty years; but it seemed suddenly to depart as its whilom possessor uttered the petition, “May we impart to others of the grace with which thou hast visited us so abundantly.” For the Tappelmines had come suddenly into Father Baguss’s mind, and as that receptacle was never particularly crowded, the Tappelmines made themselves very much at home there. The prayer having ended, the old man loitered about the house instead of going directly to the “clearing,” in which he had been getting out some oak fence-rails; he stared out of the window, walked up and down the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, lit a pipe, relit it half a dozen times at two minute intervals, sighed, groaned, and at length strode across the room like a bandit coming upon the boards of a theater, seized his hat, and started for the Tappelmine domicile.
As he plodded along over the rough road, he had two very distinct ideas in his mind: one was, that he hadn’t the slightest notion of what to say to Tappelmine; the other, and stronger, was, that it would be a relief to him to discover that Tappelmine was away from home, or even sick in bed—yes, or even drunk. But this hope was of very short duration, for soon the old man heard the Tappelmine axe, and, as he rounded the corner of the miserable house, he saw Tappelmine himself—a tall, gaunt figure in faded homespun, torn straw hat, and a tangled thicket of muddy-gray hair. The face which Tappelmine turned, as he heard the approaching footsteps, was not one to warm the heart of a man inspired only by an unwelcome sense of duty; it was thin, full of vagrant wrinkles; the nose had apparently started in different directions, and each time failed to return to its original line; the eyes were watery and colorless, and the lips were thin and drawn into the form of a jagged volcano crater.
“The idee of doin’ anything for such!” exclaimed Father Baguss under his breath. “O Lord!youput me up to this here job—unless it was all Crupp’s work; now see me through!” Then he said,
“How are you, neighbor?”
“Oh! off an’ on, ’bout as usual,” said Tappelmine, with a look which seemed to indicate that his usual condition was not one upon which he was particularly to be felicitated.
“How’d your crop turn out?” asked Father Baguss, well knowing that “crop” was a terribly sarcastic word to apply to the acre or two of badly cultivated corn which Tappelmine had planted, but yet feeling a frantic need of talking against time.
“Well, not over’n above good,” said Tappelmine, as impervious to the innocent sarcasm as he would have been to anything but a bullet or a glass of whiskey. “I dunno what would have ’come of us ef I hadn’t knocked over a couple of deer last week.”
“You might have given a hint to your neighbors, if worst had come to worst,” suggested Father Baguss, perceiving a gleam of light, but not so delighted over it as a moment or two before he had expected to be. “Nobody’d have stood by an’ seen you starve.”
“Glad you told me,” said Tappelmine, abruptly raising his axe, and starting two or three large chips in quick succession.
The light seemed suddenly to be departing, and Father Baguss made a frantic clutch at it.
“You needn’t have waited to be told,” said he. “You know well enough we’re all human bein’s about here.”
“Well,” said Tappelmine, leaning on his axe, and taking particular care not to look into his neighbor’s eye, “I used to borry a little somethin’—corn, mebbe, or a piece of meat once in a while; but folks didn’t seem over an’ above glad to lend ’em, an’ I’m one of the kind of fellows that can take a hint, I am.”
“That was ’cause you never said a word ’bout payin’ back—leastways, you didn’t atourhouse.”
Tappelmine did not reply, except by looking sullen, and Father Baguss continued:
“Besides, it’s kinder discouragin’ to lend to a feller that gets tight a good deal—gets tight sometimes, anyhow; it’s hard enough to get paid by folks that always keep straight.”
As Tappelmine could say nothing to controvert this proposition, he continued to look sullen, and Father Baguss, finding the silence insupportably annoying, said rather more than he had intended to say. There are natures which, while containingnoble qualities, are most awkward expositors of themselves, and that of Baguss was one of this sort. Such people are given to action which is open to criticism on every side; yet, in spite of their awkwardnesses, they find in their weakness the source of whatever strength they discover themselves to be possessed of. Father Baguss was one of this special division of humanity; but—perhaps for his own good—he was unconscious of his strength and painfully observant of his weakness. Yet he continued as follows:
“Look here, Tappelmine, I came over here on purpose to find out if I could do anything to help you get into better habits. You don’t amount to a row of pins as things are now, and I don’t like it; it’s throwed up to me, because I’m your neighbor, and there’s folks that stick to it thatI’mto blame. I don’t see how; but if there’s any cross layin’ around that fits my shoulders, I s’pose I ought to pick it up an’ pack it along. Now, why in creation don’t you give up drinkin,’ an’ go to church, an’ make a crop, an’ do other things like decent folks do? You’re bigger’n I am, an’ stouter, an’ your farm’s as good as mine if you’d only work it. Now why you don’t do it, I don’t see.”
“Don’t, eh?” snarled Tappelmine, dropping his axe, and leaning against the house with folded hands. “Well, ’cause I hain’t got any plow, nor any harrow, nor but one hoss, nor rails enough to keep out cattle, nor seed-corn or wheat, nor money to buy it with, nor anything to live on until the crop’s made, nor anything to prevent the crop when it’s made from being grabbed by whoever I owe money to;that’swhy I don’t make a crop. An’ I don’t go to church, ’cause I hain’t got any clothes excep’ these ’uns that I’ve got on, an’ my wife’s as bad off asIbe. An’ I don’t give up drinkin’, ’cause drinkin’ makes me feel good, an’ the only folks I know that care anything for me drink too. You fellers that only drink on the sly——”
“I never touched a drop in all my life!” roared Father Baguss.
“That’s right,” said Tappelmine; “stick to it; there’s some that’ll believe that yarn. But what I was goin’ to say was, folks that drink on the sly know it’s comfortin’, an’ I don’t see what they go a-pokin’ up fellers that does it fair an’ square for.”
Father Baguss groaned, and some influence—the old man in later days laid it upon the arch-enemy of souls—suggested to him the foolishness ofhaving gone into so great an operation without first counting the cost; hadn’t the great Founder of the old man’s religious faith enjoined a counting of the cost of any enterprise before entering upon it? Father Baguss wishedthatchapter of Holy Writ might have met his eye that morning at the family altar; but it had not, and, worse yet, Tappelmine was becoming wide awake and excited. It was not what the drunkard had said about drinking or church-going that troubled this would-be reformer; Tappelmine’s outline of his material condition was what annoyed Father Baguss; for, in spite of an occasional attempt to mentally allay his fears by falling back upon prayer, the incentive with which he had called upon Tappelmine had taken strong hold of his conscience, and persisted in making its influence felt. Plows and prayers, harrows and hopes, seed-corn and the seed sown by the wayside mixed themselves inextricably in his mind, as parallels often do when men dream, or when they are confronted by an emergency beyond the control of their own intellects. The old man prayed silently and earnestly for relief, and his prayer was answered in a manner not entirely according to his liking, for he felt moved to say,
“I’lllend you seed, if you’ll go to work an’ put it right in, an’ I’ll lend you a plow and a team to break up the ground with—I mean, I’ll hire ’em to you, an’ agree to buy your crop at rulin’ price, an’ pay you the difference in cash.”
“That sounds somethin’ like,” remarked Tappelmine, thrusting his hands into his trowsers’ pockets, and making other preparations for a business talk; “but,” he continued, “what am I to live on along till harvest? ’Tain’t even winter yet.”
Father Baguss groaned, and asked, “What was you a-goin’ to live on if I hadn’t offered seed and tools, Tappelmine?”
“The Lord knows,” answered the never-do-well, with unimpeachable veracity.
“Then,” said the old farmer, “I guess he knows what you’ll do in t’other case. You can work, I reckon.Ihain’t got much to do, but you can do it, at whatever prices is goin’, an’ that’ll help you get work of other folks; nobody can say I get stuck on the men I hire. So they’re generally glad enough to hire ’em themselves.”
Tappelmine did not seem overjoyed at his prospects, but he had the grace to say that they were better than he had expected. Father Baguss wenthome, feeling but little more comfortable than when he had started on his well-intended mission. Tappelmine sauntered into his own cabin, wondering how much of the promised seed-corn and wheat he could smuggle into town and trade for whiskey; but he was rather surprised to have his wife, a short, thin, sallow, uninteresting-looking woman, who had been listening at the broken window, approach him, throw her arms about his neck, and exclaim,
“Now, old man, we can be respectable, can’t we? The chance has been a long time a-comin’, but we’ve got it now.”
The surprise was too great for Tappelmine, and he spent the remainder of the day in nursing his knee on the single hearthstone of his mansion. He was not undisturbed, however, and as men of his mental caliber hate persistent reason even worse than they do work, Mrs. Tappelmine not only coaxed her lord into resolving to be respectable, but allowed that gentleman to persuade himself that he had formed the resolution of his own accord.
The superintendency of the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills was a position which exactly suited Fred Macdonald, and it gave him occasion for the expenditure of whatever superfluous energy he found himself possessed of, yet it did not engross his entire attention. The faculty which the busiest of young men have for finding time in which to present themselves, well clothed and unbusiness-like, to at least one young woman, is as remarkable and admirable as it is inexplicable. The evenings which did not find Fred in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor were few indeed, and if, when he was with Esther, he did not talk quite as sentimentally as he had done in the earlier days of his engagement, and if he talked business very frequently, the change did not seem distasteful to the lady herself. For the business of which he talked was, in the main, of a sort which loving women have for ages recognized as the inevitable, and to which they have subjected themselveswith a unanimity which deserves the gratitude of all humanity. Fred talked of a cottage which he might enter without first knocking at the door, and of a partnership which should be unlimited; if he learned, in the course of successive conversations, that even in partnerships of the most extreme order many compromises are absolutely necessary, the lesson was one which improved his character in the ratio in which it abased his pride. The cottage grew as rapidly as the mill, and on his returns from various trips for machinery there came with Fred’s freight certain packages which prevented their owner from appearing so completely the absorbed business man which he flattered himself that he seemed. Then the partnership was formed one evening in Parson Wedgewell’s own church, in the presence of a host of witnesses, Fred appearing as self-satisfied and radiant as the gainer in such transactions always does, while Esther’s noble face and drooping eyes showed beyond doubt who it was that was the giver.
As the weeks succeeded each other after the wedding, however, no acquaintance of the couple could wonder whether the gainer or the giver was the happier. Fred improved rapidly, as the school-boyimproves; but Esther’s graces were already of mature growth, and rejoiced in their opportunity for development. Though she could not have explained how it happened, she could not but notice that maidens regarded her wonderingly, wives contemplated her wistfully, frowns departed and smiles appeared when she approached people who were usually considered prosaic. Yet shadows sometimes stole over her face, when she looked at certain of her old acquaintances, and the cause thereof soon took a development which was anything but pleasing to her husband.
“Fred,” said Esther one evening, “it makes me real unhappy sometimes to think of the good wives there are who are not as happy as I am. I think of Mrs. Moshier and Mrs. Crayme, and the only reason that I can see is, their husbands drink.”
“I guess you’re right, Ettie,” said Fred. “They didn’t begin their domestic tyranny in advance, asyoudid—bless you for it.”
“But whydon’ttheir husbands stop?” asked Esther, too deeply interested in her subject to notice her husband’s compliment. “They must see what they’re doing, and how cruel it all is.”
“They’re too far gone to stop; I suppose that’sthe reason,” said Fred. “It hasn’t been easy work formeto keep my promise, Ettie, and I’m a young man; Moshier and Crayme are middle-aged men, and liquor is simply necessary to them.”
“That dreadful old Bunley wasn’t too old to reform, it seems,” said Esther. “Fred, I believe one reason is that no one has asked them to stop. See how good Harry Wainright has been since he found that so many people were interested in him that day!”
“Ye——es,” drawled Fred, evidently with a suspicion of what was coming, and trying to change the subject by suddenly burying himself in his memorandum book. But this ruse did not succeed, for Esther crossed the room to where Fred sat, placed her hands on his shoulders, and a kiss on his forehead, and exclaimed,
“Fred,you’rethe proper person to reform those two men!”
“Oh, Ettie,” groaned Fred, “you’re entirely mistaken. Why, they’d laugh right in my face, if they didn’t get angry and knock me down. Reformers want to be older men, better men, men like your father, for instance, if people are to listen to them.”
“Father says they need to be men who understandthe nature of those they are talking to,” replied Esther; “and you once told me that you understood Moshier and Crayme perfectly.”
“But just think of what they are, Ettie,” pleaded Fred. “Moshier is a contractor, and Crayme’s a steamboat captain;suchmen never reform, though they always are good fellows. Why, if I were to speak to either of them on the subject, they’d laugh in my face, or curse me. The only way I was able to make peace with them for stopping drinking myself was to say that I did it to please my wife.”
“Did they accept that as sufficient excuse?” asked Esther.
“Yes,” said Fred reluctantly, and biting his lips over this slip of his tongue.
“Then you’ve set them a good example, and I can’t believe its effect will be lost,” said Esther.
“I sincerely hope it won’t,” said Fred, very willing to seem a reformer at heart; “nobody would be gladder than I to see those fellows with wives as happy as mine seems to be.”
“Then why don’t you follow it up, Fred, dear, and make sure of your hopes being realized? You can’t imagine how much happierIwould be if I could meet those dear women without feeling that Ihad to hide the joy that’s so hard to keep to myself.”
The conversation continued with considerable strain to Fred’s amiability; but his sophistry was no match for his wife’s earnestness, and he was finally compelled to promise that he would make an appeal to Crayme, with whom he had a business engagement, on the arrival of Crayme’s boat, theExcellence.
Before the whistles of the steamer were next heard, however, Esther learned something of the sufferings of would-be reformers, and found cause to wonder who was to endure most that Mrs. Crayme should have a sober husband, for Fred was alternately cross, moody, abstracted, and inattentive, and even sullenly remarked at his breakfast-table one morning that he shouldn’t be sorry if theExcellencewere to blow up, and leave Mrs. Crayme to find her happiness in widowhood. But no such luck befell the lady: the whistle-signals of theExcellencewere again heard in the river, and the nature of Fred’s business with the captain made it unadvisable for Fred to make an excuse for leaving the boat unvisited.
Itdidseem to Fred Macdonald as if everythingconspired to make his task as hard as it could possibly be. Crayme was already under the influence of more liquor than was necessary to his well-being, and the boat carried as passengers a couple of men, who, though professional gamblers, Crayme found very jolly company when they were not engaged in their business calling. Besides, Captain Crayme was running against time with an opposition boat which had just been put upon the river, and he appreciated the necessity of having the boat’s bar well stocked and freely opened to whoever along the river was influential in making or marring the reputation of steamboats. Fred finally got the captain into his own room, however, and made a freight contract so absent-mindedly that the sagacious captain gained an immense advantage over him; then he acted so awkwardly, and looked so pale, that the captain suggested chills, and prescribed brandy. Fred smiled feebly, and replied,
“No, thank you, Sam; brandy’s at the bottom of the trouble. I”—here Fred made a tremendous attempt to rally himself—“I wantyouto swear off, Sam.”
The astonishment of Captain Crayme was marked enough to be alarming at first; then the ludicrousfeature of Fred’s request struck him so forcibly that he burst into a laugh before whose greatness Fred trembled and shrank.
“Well, by thunder!” exclaimed the captain, when he recovered his breath; “if that isn’t the best thing I ever heard yet! The idea of a steamboat captain swearing off his whiskey! Say, Fred, don’t you want me to join the church? I forgot that you’d married a preacher’s daughter, or I wouldn’t have been so puzzled over your white face to-day. Sam Crayme brought down to cold water! Wouldn’t the boys along the river get up a sweet lot of names for me—the ‘Cold-water Captain,’ ‘Psalm-singing Sammy’! and then, when an editor or any other visitor came aboard,wouldn’tI look the thing, hauling out glasses and a pitcher of water! Say, Fred, does your wife let you drink tea and coffee?”
“Sam!” exclaimed Fred, springing to his feet, “if you don’t stop slanting at my wife, I’ll knock you down.”
“Good!” said the captain, without exhibiting any signs of trepidation. “Nowyou talk like yourself again. I beg your pardon, old fellow; you know I was only joking, but itistoo funny. You’llhave to take a trip or two with me again, though, and be reformed.”
“Not any,” said Fred, resuming his chair; “take your wife along, and reform yourself.”
“Look here, now, young man,” said the captain, “you’recracking on too much steam. Honestly, Fred, I’ve kept a sharp eye on you for two or three months, and I am right glad you can let whiskey alone. I’ve seen times when I wished I were in your boots; but steamboats can’t be run without liquor, however it may be with woolen mills.”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Fred. “You get trade because you run your boat on time, charge fair prices, and deliver your freight in good order. Who gives you business because you drink and treat?”
The captain, being unable to recall any shipper of the class alluded to by Fred, changed his course.
“’Tisn’t so much that,” said he; “it’s a question of reputation. How would I feel to go ashore at Pittsburg or Louisville or Cincinnati, and refuse to drink with anybody? Why, ’twould ruin me. It’s different with you who don’t have to meet anybody but religious old farmers. Besides, you’ve just been married.”
“And you’ve been married for five years,” said Fred, with a sudden sense of help at hand. “How do you supposeyourwife feels?”
Captain Crayme’s jollity subsided a little, but with only a little hesitation he replied,
“Oh! she’s used to it; she doesn’t mind it.”
“You’re the only person in town that thinks so, Sam,” said Fred.
Captain Crayme got up and paced his little state-room two or three times, with a face full of uncertainty. At last he replied,
“Well, between old friends, Fred, I don’t think so very strongly myself. Hang it! I wish I’d been brought up a preacher, or something of the kind, so I wouldn’t have had business ruining my chances of being the right sort of a family man. Emilydon’tlike my drinking, and I’ve promised to look up some other business; but ’tisn’t easy to get out of steamboating when you’ve got a good boat and a first-rate trade. Once she felt so awfully about it that Ididswear off—don’t tell anybody, for God’s sake! but I did. I had to look out for my character along the river, though; so I swore off on the sly, and played sick. I’d give my orders to the mates and clerks from my bed in here, and then I’dlock myself in, and read novels and the Bible to keep from thinking. ’Twas awful dry work all around; but ‘whole hog or none’ ismystyle, you know. There was fun in it, though, to think of doing something that no other captain on the river ever did. But, thunder! by the time night came, I was so tired of loafing that I wrapped a blanket around my head and shoulders, like a Hoosier, sneaked out the outer door here, and walked the guards, between towns; but I was so frightened for fear some one would know me that the walk did me more harm than good. And blue! why a whole cargo of indigo would have looked like a snow-storm alongside of my feelings the second day; ’pon my word, Fred, I caught myself crying in the afternoon, just before dark, and I couldn’t find out what for either. I tellyou, I was scared, and things got worse as time spun along; the dreams I had that night made me howl, and I felt worse yet when daylight came along again. Toward the next night I was just afraid to go to sleep; so I made up my mind to get well, go on duty, and dodge everybody that it seemed I ought to drink with. Why, the Lord bless your soul! the first time we shoved off from a town, I walked up to the bar, just as I alwaysdid after leaving towns; the barkeeper set out my particular bottle naturally enough, knowing nothing about my little game; I poured my couple of fingers, and dropped it down as innocent as a lamb before I knew what I was doing. By George! my boy, ’twas like opening lock-gates; I was just heavenly gay before morning. There was one good thing about it, though—I never told Emily I was going to swear off; I was going to surprise her, so I had the disappointment all to myself. Maybe she isn’t as happy as your wife; but, whatever else I’ve done, or not done, I’ve never lied to her.”
“It’s a pity you hadn’t promisedherthen, before you tried your experiment,” said Fred. The captain shook his head gravely and replied,
“I guess not; why, I’d have either killed somebody or killed myself if I’d gone on a day or two longer. I s’pose I’d have got along better if I’d had anybody to keep me company, or reason with me like a schoolmaster; but I hadn’t; I didn’t know anybody that I dared trust with a secret like that.”
“Ihadn’t reformed then, eh?” queried Fred.
“You? why you’re one of the very fellows I dodged! Just as I got aboard the boat—I came down late, on purpose—I saw you out aft. I tellyou, I was under my blankets, with a towel wrapped around my jaw, in about one minute, and was justa-prayingthat you hadn’t seen me come aboard.”
Fred laughed, but his laughter soon made place for a look of tender solicitude. The unexpected turn that had been reached in the conversation he had so dreaded, and the sympathy which had been awakened in him by Crayme’s confidence and openness, temporarily made of Fred Macdonald a man with whom Fred himself had never before been acquainted. A sudden idea struck him.
“Sam,” said he, “try it over again, andI’llstay by you. I’ll nurse you, crack jokes, fight off the blues for you, keep your friends away. I’ll even break your neck for you, if you like, seeing it’s you if it’ll keep you straight.”
“Will you, though?” said the captain, with a look of admiration undisguised, except by wonder. “You’re the first friend I ever had, then. By thunder! how marrying Ettie Wedgewelldidimprove you, Fred! But,” and the captain’s face lengthened again, “there’s a fellow’s reputation to be considered, and where’ll mine be after it gets around that I’ve sworn off?”
“Reputation be hanged!” exclaimed Fred. “Loseit, for your wife’s sake. Besides, you’llmakereputation instead of lose it: you’ll be as famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I’ve bet you a hundred that you can’t stay off your liquor for a year, and that you’re not the man to take a dare.”
“Thatsounds like business,” exclaimed the captain, springing to his feet.
“Let me draw up a pledge,” said Fred eagerly, drawing pen and ink toward him.
“No, you don’t, my boy,” said the captain gently, and pushing Fred out of the room and upon the guards. “Emily shall do that. Below there!—Perkins, I’ve got to go up town for an hour; see if you can’t pick up freight to pay laying-up expenses somehow. Fred, go home and get your traps; ‘now’s the accepted time,’ as your father-in-law has dinged at me, many a Sunday, from the pulpit.”
As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whiskey which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at full speed upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass that he burst into his own house, threw his arm around his wife with more than ordinary tenderness, and then looking into her eyes with the daring born of utter desperation, said,
“Emily, I came back to sign the strongest temperance pledge that you can possibly draw up; Fred Macdonald wanted to write out one, but I told him that nobody but you should do it; you’ve earned the right to, poor girl.” No such duty and surprise having ever before come hand in hand toMrs. Crayme, she acted as every true woman will imagine that she herself would have done under similar circumstances, and this action made it not so easy as it might otherwise have been to see just where the pen and ink were, or to prevent the precious document, when completed, from being disfigured by peculiar blots which were neither finger-marks nor ink-spots, yet which in shape and size suggested both of these indications of unneatness. Mrs. Crayme was not an adept at literary composition, and, being conscious of her own deficiencies, she begged that a verbal pledge might be substituted; but her husband was firm.
“A contract don’t steer worth a cent unless it’s in writing, Emily,” said he, looking over his wife’s shoulder as she wrote. “Gracious, girl, you’re making it too thin;anygreenhorn could sail right through that and all around it. Here, letmehave it.” And Crayme wrote, dictating aloud to himself as he did so, “And the—party—of the first part—hereby agrees to—do everything—else that the—spirit of this—agreement—seems to the party—of the second—part to—indicate or—imply.” This he read over to his wife, saying,
“That’s the way we fix contracts that aren’t ship-shape,Emily; a steamboat couldn’t be run in any other way.” Then Crayme wrote at the foot of the paper, “Sam. Crayme, Capt. Str.Excellence,” surveyed the document with evident pride, and handed it to his wife, saying,
“Now, you see, you’ve got me so I can’t ever get out of it by trying to make out that ’twas some other Sam Crayme that you reformed.”
“O husband!” said Mrs. Crayme, throwing her arms about the captain’s neck, “don’ttalk in that dreadful business way! I’m too happy to bear it. I want to go with you on this trip.”
The captain shrank away from his wife’s arms, and a cold perspiration started all over him as he exclaimed,
“Oh, don’t, little girl! Wait till next trip. There’s an unpleasant set of passengers aboard; the barometer points to rainy weather, so you’d have to stay in the cabin all the time; our cook is sick, and his cubs serve up the most infernal messes; we’re light of freight, and have got to stop at every warehouse on the river, and the old boat’ll be either shrieking, or bumping, or blowing off steam the whole continual time.”
Mrs. Crayme’s happiness had been frighteningsome of her years away, and her smile carried Sam himself back to his pre-marital period as she said,
“Never mind the rest; I see you don’t want me to go,” and then she became Mrs. Crayme again as she said, pressing her face closely to her husband’s breast, “but I hope you won’t getanyfreight,anywhere, so you can get home all the sooner.”
Then the captain called on Dr. White, and announced such a collection of symptoms that the doctor grew alarmed, insisted on absolute quiet, conveyed Crayme in his own carriage to the boat, saw him into his berth, and gave to Fred Macdonald a multitude of directions and cautions, the sober recording of which upon paper was of great service in saving Fred from suffering over the Quixotic aspect which the whole project had begun, in his mind, to take on. He felt ashamed even to look squarely into Crayme’s eye, and his mind was greatly relieved when the captain turned his face to the wall and exclaimed,
“Fred, for goodness’ sake get out of here; I feel enough like a baby now, without having a nurse alongside. I’ll do well enough for a few hours; just look in once in a while.”
During the first day of the trip, Crayme made notrouble for himself or Fred: under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a two-hour chat which was alternately humorous, business-like, and retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor after the sympathizers had departed. On the second night the captain was restless, and the two men played cards. On the third day the captain’s physique reached the bottom of its stock of patience, and protested indignantly at the withdrawal of its customary stimulus; and it acted with more consistency, though no less ugliness, than the human mind does when under excitement and destitute of control. The captain grew terribly despondent, and Fred found ample use for all the good stories he knew. Some of these amused the captain greatly, but after one of them he sighed,
“Poor old Billy Hockess told me that the only time I ever heard it before, anddidn’twe have a glorious time that night! He’d just put all his money into theYenesei—that blew up and took himwith it only a year afterward—and he gave us a new kind of punch he’d got the hang of when he went East for the boat’s carpets. ’Twas made of two bottles of brandy, one whiskey, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in curaçoa and honey for a month. It looks kind of weak when you think about it, but there were only six of us in the party, and it went to the spot by the time we got through. Golly, but didn’t we make Rome howl that night!”
Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but, as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O’Rann, and uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero