CartoonTHE STRIPES MAY GO ON YET, IF YOU DON’T WATCH OUT.
THE STRIPES MAY GO ON YET, IF YOU DON’T WATCH OUT.
Their report was such as to justify legal action on the part of the Department of Justice, and after the information had been carefully examinedby the President and the Cabinet, the bill in equity was filed. The recital of alleged facts in this petition, is virtually a history of the Standard Oil Company from its infancy to the present time. It sets forth that the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, with its seventy allied corporations and limited partnerships, produces, transports and sells about 90 per cent of the refined oil products used in this country and about the same proportion of the refined oil exported from the United States; that this practical monopoly has been procured by a course of action which, beginning in 1870, has continued, in the main, under the same persons down to the present time; that these persons now surviving are John D. Rockefeller. William Rockefeller, Henry H. Rogers, Henry M. Flagler, John A. Archbold, Oliver H. Payne and Chas. M. Pratt; that their design throughout has been the suppression of competition in the production, transportation and sale of refined oil and to obtain a monopoly therein; that between 1870 and 1882 the purpose was effected by agreements between many persons and corporations engaged in this business; that in the latter year the business was made certain by vesting in nine trustees, including five ofthe persons named above, sufficient stock in the thirty-nine corporations then concerned to suppress competition among themselves; that this plan was acted upon until it was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Ohio, in an action against the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, one of said corporations, in 1892; that during the seven years following, the same individual defendants, as a majority of the liquidating trustees, were pretending to liquidate the trust, but as a matter of fact were managing all the corporations in the same old way and were exercising the same control over them; that in 1899 the individual defendants increased the capital stock of the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, from $10,000,000 to $110,000,000; that the company was then a producing and selling corporation, and that they added to its functions the power of purchasing stock in other companies, and practically all the powers exercised by the trustees under the unlawful agreement of 1882; that the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, then taking the place of the trustees, acquired all the stock of the corporations theretofore held and controlled by the trusts, paying therefor by the issue of its own shares in exchange; that the President of the Board of Trustees became the president of the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, that the trust assumed the direction of the business of the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, and has continued it ever since.
After this summary of Standard Oil history, the petition goes on to say that the purpose and effect of the corporation as a holding company was precisely the same as the purpose and effect of the appointment of the trustees previously referred to, namely: to suppress competition between the corporations and limited partnerships, whose stock was first held by the trusts and then by the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey; that by the foregoing methods, and by securing railroad rates which discriminated in favor of the corporations whose stock was held by the holding company, the latter was enabled to secure a monopoly in large sections of the country, with the result that prices to consumers are much higher in those sections than in sections where competition, to some extent, prevails.
The bill further sets forth that from 1882 to 1895 the Standard paid dividends amounting to $512,000,000 on a professed valuation of a trifle less than $70,000,000, besides accumulating a surplus “of unknown magnitude,” and that for the last nine years the dividends have run from 33 to 48 per cent.
Almost on the very day that this bill was filed the Standard declared a quarterly dividend which aggregated $10,000,000.
In filing this bill Attorney General Moody said that the question of criminal prosecution would be left “for future consideration.”
Whatever may be the disposition of the Attorney General of the United States in regard to the criminal prosecution of Standard Oil officers and directors, there seems to be no doubt as to the attitude of Prosecutor David, of the state of Ohio. The grand jury of Hancock county has returned an indictment against the Standard Oil Company, of Ohio, and against John D. Rockefeller, president of the Standard Oil Company, of New Jersey, as well as three directors of the subsidiary corporation in the Buckeye state. Previous proceedings against the same defendants, taken on an information brought before the Probate Court of that state, are now being held up, pending the decision of the higher court as to the jurisdiction of the court below. The present indictments by the grand jury are based on the evidence adduced in the previous trial.Conviction would subject the defendant company to a maximum fine of five thousand dollars, which, however, it is believed, may be imposed for ever day covered in the indictments. Mr. Rockefeller and the directors of the subsidiary company would be subject to the same fine and to imprisonment for a period of from six months to one year. More recently Prosecutor David is quoted as expressing the belief that he has sufficient evidence to bring not only Mr. Rockefeller, but all the highest officials of the controlling company before the Ohio courts.
In the meantime he has taken steps to secure an alternative writ of mandamus against the Buckeye Pipe Line Company, said to be owned by the Standard Oil Company and operated in such a manner as to stifle competition, requiring that the defendant provide for the public equal and just facilities and demanding that they fix a schedule of rates.
In St. Louis the Federal grand jury has brought in two indictments, with a total of seventy-two counts, against the Waters-Pierce Oil Company for violation of the Elkins Anti-Rebate law. If convicted on all the counts the maximum penalties would exceed a million and a half dollars.
The proceedings taken by the attorney general of Texas to oust the same company from that state have developed a collateral sensation of great size. Attorney General Davidson demands of the defendant company certain vouchers which, it is alleged, will show that Senator Joseph W. Bailey was paid various sums of money by the Waters-Pierce Company to secure its readmission to the state, and gives out that if this evidence is not forthcoming, secondary evidence will be offered to establish the alleged fact. Senator Bailey indignantly denies that he received any such sums, and announces that he will prosecute for perjury anyone who swears to the existence of such evidence. Senator Bailey has already been nominated by primary, but his re-election will come before the legislature which convenes in January.
In the meantime the New York Central Railroad and the Sugar Trust have been fined heavily for, respectively, giving and receiving rebates.
One of the results of the investigation conducted by the Armstrong committee into the affairs of the New York and the Mutual Life insurance companies was the enactment of legislation providing that the affairs of the two companies should be taken out of the hands of the existing boards of trustees, that all outstanding proxies should be invalidated and that the policy holders should be given an opportunity to choose the men who should thereafter manage the affairs of the two companies. In pursuance of this law the policy holders began voting on Nov. 18 and continued to cast their ballots for or against the administration tickets until Dec. 18. In the New York Life the administration ticket consisted of “the best of the old trustees,” together with some new blood, while an opposition ticket was presented by the International Policy-Holders Committee, of which the Hon. Richard Olney was chairman. In the Mutual contest there were three tickets: an administration ticket, the United Committee’s ticket and a fusion ticket. The second of these was so called because it was the product of the united efforts of the Mutual Policy Holders’ committee and the International Policy Holders’ committee of which Mr. Samuel Untermyer was the chief organizer and sponsor. The fusion ticket was made up of candidates from the administration and the Mutual Policy Holders’ respective rosters. At the time we go to press the result of the elections is not known.
ROBERT E. PEARY.
ROBERT E. PEARY.
Commander Robert E. Peary has returned from his expedition to reach the north pole. After suffering innumerable hardships he reached a latitude of 87 degrees and 6 minutes. This was within 203 miles of the coveted goal and thirty-four miles farther than the point reached by the Duke of Abruzzi expedition, which had hitherto held the record.
Up in Canada they are still telling the story of thehabitantwho, when told that the Queen was dead, asked, “Who is Queen now?” He was told that there was no Queen, but a King had ascended the throne, whereupon the admiring peasant exclaimed, “My, what a pull he must have with Laurier!”
The Canadian parliament assembled at Ottawa on Nov. 22—four months earlier than usual—with its Liberal majority practically unimpaired, and the Premier continues to hold the pre-eminence in Canadian affairs indicated by the artless tribute of thehabitant.
The Dominion has not escaped the muck-rakers, and the Conservatives are bringing wholesale charges of corruption at the polls.
On Nov. 29 Minister of Finance Fielding introduced his long anticipated tariff bill. Briefly stated, this measure provides for an intermediate tariff, the rates of which shall be between the preferential rates conceded to the mother country and the general tariff which applies to other countries. This intermediate tariff may be held out as a basis of reciprocity negotiations with such countries as show a disposition to meet the Canadian government half way.
The situation in Central and South America is unusually quiet. As a result of the President’s visit, the working forces on the Panama Canal have been completely reorganized. It has been definitely decided not to appoint a governor of the Canal Zone to succeed Magoon, and an order has been promulgated to give Chairman Shonts more complete control over the administration portion of canal construction, while Chief Engineer Stevens is placed in absolute control over Panama. Bids for the contract to complete the canal will be opened Jan. 12.
Cipriano Castro, the fire-eating President of Venezuela, may not be dead, but he will soon work himself to death denying the charge unless he does something definite before long. It is evident that he is in a very low state of health, and the end may come at any time.
Alfonso Penna was inaugurated President of Brazil on Nov. 16. He is in thorough accord with the efforts to establish closer trade relations between his country and the United States.
Argentina holds her own as the most prosperous and progressive of SouthAmerican states, and Chili is rapidly recovering from the disastrous earthquake which visited her last fall.
The youth of the land, and even the children of larger growth, will be glad to know that according to recent investigations the Island of Juan Fernandez, so dear to the hearts of every boy who has grown up on Robinson Crusoe, was not sunk into the sea by the disaster, as at first announced, but remains intact.
Gov. Magoon has declared vacant the seats of the senators and representatives elected to the Cuban Congress in 1905, and another election will be held. The rivalry of Moderates and Liberals continues, while the Liberals, particularly, are divided among themselves. It is evident that American occupation of the island must continue for some time.
That order of history which is “philosophy teaching by example” has been moving steadily and persistently over the face of Europe toward a policy which the fathers of our own republic foresaw and adopted a hundred and twenty years ago. Perhaps the most pronounced feature of Liberalism in the Old World today is the conviction that the separation of church and state must become an accomplished fact. A movement so vast could not be carried forward without being complicated in some measure with bigotry and fanaticism, but on the whole it may be said that it is inspired and sustained by the highest motives of state policy.
From a Drawing by “Spy.”THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
From a Drawing by “Spy.”THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
The present Liberal ministry in England, which succeeded the Balfour government, appealed to the country on the issue of free trade and was overwhelmingly sustained. But since that time it is safe to say that the Education bill, introduced by Augustine Birrell, President of the Board of Education—and whimsically called the “Birreligious bill”—has been the measure most discussed by the British people and the world at large. Briefly stated, this bill provides that, beginning with January of next year, only such schools as are provided by the local educational authorities throughout England shall be recognized as public schools, and after that date no public funds can legally be spent on any other schools. In other words, if the present denominational voluntary schools wish to receive government support they must become public schools, and as such must be content with the same undenominational teaching that is given in other public schools. The bill provides, further, that attendance shall not be compulsory, and that there shall be no religious test for teachers chosen by the local authorities. In those schools which are taken over by the educationalauthorities from the religious organizations—by the consent of the latter, of course—religious instruction may be given two mornings a week, but not by the regular staff of teachers, and not at the public expense. The bill further provides that $5,000,000 shall be appropriated for educational purposes by the government.
This measure, which has set all England in a ferment, was passed by the House of Commons, but in the House of Lords it met vigorous opposition, particularly from the spiritual peers, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On Dec. 6 it passed the upper house, so mutilated as to be unacceptable to the Commons. The agitation in favor of mending or ending the chamber of peers has been coming prominently forward. No basis of compromise between the upper and lower house has yet been found. Since the Education bill is sent back to the House of Commons with its most vital features stricken out, the Liberal Government will probably go on to other legislation, equally unacceptable to the peers, and thus force them to reject a number of measures which are demanded by the people. They will then appeal to the country, and the ending of a system of hereditary legislators may be involved in the popular mandate.
PREMIER GEORGES CLEMENCEAU.
PREMIER GEORGES CLEMENCEAU.
On the Liberal program is a bill abolishing plural voting. Under the present system of property qualification a large landowner may not only vote where he resides but in every other place where he has property, and as the elections do not occur in England, as they do in this country, on one and the same day, it is entirely practicable for such a landowner actually to vote for half a dozen parliamentary candidates. Of course the peers will oppose any reform of the present system of plural voting, and thereby will come in collision with popular sentiment again. The land tenure bill, by which a tenant may secure greater permanency in his lease or compensation for improvements in case he is dispossessed, and the trades unions bill, exempting the funds of labor unions from damage suits against members of such unions who may commit a tort, are also in the Liberal program, and both will be resisted by the upper house, thereby contributing to its own undoing.
While in England there are issues which dispute the first place with the Education bill, there can be no doubt as to the pre-eminence, just at this time, of the administration of the law providing for separation of Church and State in France. It was early in December, 1905, that the French Senate adopted a measure which abrogated the Concordat, signed in 1801 by the First Napoleon and Pope Pius VII. This measure had already passed the Chamber of Deputies in July. In France the churches are owned by the state and the clergy, regardless of denomination, are supported by the government, a member of the cabinet known as the Minister of Public Worship, having supervision of ecclesiastical affairs. According to the terms of the new bill, no newly made clergyman of any denomination is to receive support from the government of the republic. Those now getting it from the state will continue to do so, but the appropriations are to be decreased as the pensions and salaries of the clergyman now in office expire or are withdrawn. The churches and other places of religious worship will continue to belong to the state, but they are to be leased to congregations of the churches or denominations now worshipping in them. The Vatican is bitterly opposing the separation act, and there has been considerable delay in forming the associations to take over the church property under the terms of the law. Originally it was provided that the period during which these associations should be formed would expire on December 11, 1906, but there is no intention on the part of the Clemenceau ministry, which came into power late in October, to persecute the church. M. Briand, Minister of Public Worship and the author of the bill, announced in the Chamber of Deputies on Nov. 10, that church property not claimed by the “cultural associations” by Dec. 11 would pass under control of the state and finally go to the communes at the end of the ensuing year, but that in the meantime the churches will remain at the disposition of the clergy. The way is thus left open to the Vatican by the admission of the possibility that church property can be granted by state decree to associations formed before December 11, 1907.
The government’s inventories of church property were completed without arousing as much hostility as they did in the beginning but as we go to press great excitement prevails.
Not only is the French government pursuing a peaceful policy toward the church, as far as possible, but a humane measure is now pending which is well worthy of an era of civilization and enlightenment. A parliamentary commission, to which the matter was referred, has, by a vote of eight to two, reported in favor of abolishing the death penalty, and substituting life imprisonment. In extreme cases, solitary confinement is recommended. It is not generally known, perhaps, that many of the leading countries of Europe have long since abolished the death penalty, except in trials by court martial. It seems a mockery that Russia should be no exception to this rule, but in point of fact it was the Empress Catherine the Great who took the initiative in abolishing capital punishment. That the law is apparently disregarded is due to the fact that the greater part of Russia is subjected to what is known as “the minor state of siege,” which admits of the application of military law to the trial of political prisoners. Capital punishment was abolished in Greece forty odd years ago, and since that time Roumania, Portugal, and the Netherlands in the order named, have followed suit. It has been in comparatively recent years that Italy, Switzerland and Norway adopted the same measure of clemency, on the other side of the water, and Brazil and Venezuela in the southern part of our own hemisphere. So the civilized countries which still retain capital punishment are the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Austria and Spain.
The leaven of Liberalism has been working mightily in the direction of the severance of church and state in the land of the Inquisition.
The weak and capricious youngster who occupies the throne of Spain sent assurances to the Pope, late in October, of his filial attachment, and all that sort of thing. Six days later he signed the Associations bill, which had just passed the Chamber of Deputies, restricting the power and influence of the church in a degree but slightly less than in France. Then he made a little speech. There is an old Spanish custom that the premier should give a banquet at the end of each year that he and his colleagues in the ministry have been continuously in office. In view of the fact, as the young king recalled, that one hundred and twelve ministers had taken the oath before him during the four years and a half since his coronation, there had been no banquets at the expense of an incumbent premier. Alfonso, in signing the Associations bill, expressed the hope that Gen. Lopez Dominguez, who was then at the head of the Liberal ministry, with a large Liberal majority behind him in the Cortes, “would be able to reintroduce so pleasant a custom.”
And the premier said he hoped so, too.
Having passed the lower house and received the signature of the king, the reform measure which is agitating all Spain went back to the Senate. It must pass that body, and again receive the signature of the king, to become the law of the land.
Since 1876, when the Roman Catholic Church was reestablished as the state religion of Spain, after a period of seven years of freedom of thought, of education, of burial, etc., the Liberals have been slowly regaining the liberties secured by the revolution of 1868. The church has made strenuous resistance and has pursued a reactionary policy which has finally aroused all the liberal and progressive forces. The state already provided that marriages between Roman Catholics must be recorded in the civil register in order to have legal validity, but the church contends that civil unions are valid only when they are performed according to canon law. The church has also arrayed itself against the municipal control of cemeteries, and demands that the custom of setting apart certain sections of such cemeteries for the burial of foreigners and non-Catholic Spaniards shall be discontinued. Now the Liberals, who are in power, have taken the bit in their teeth, so to speak. It is proposed to emancipate the schools from monastic teaching, and to require a state registration of all the monastic orders in Spain, of which there is a large and increasing number since the agitation began in France. In short the state will insist upon the absolute control of civil marriages, the municipal control of the cemeteries, and a strict regulation of the monastic orders.
In the meantime Gen. Dominguez will not give that dinner. One faction in the Cortes thought that some time should be devoted to a consideration of the budget, as well as to the separation act, and he was forced to resign. A new cabinet was formed which lasted just three days—including a Sunday—and resigned. The Marquis de Armijo has succeeded in forming another cabinet, with old Gen. Weyler, by the way, as minister of war, and he is endeavoring to go on—with what success remains to be seen.
It is becoming very evident that the Triple Alliance, consisting of Italy, Germany and Austria, is becoming weaker every year. The feebleness with which Italy supported Germany’s pretentions in the Algeciras conference aroused the resentment of the Kaiser, who made it a point to telegraph his thanks to Austria for the part she took on thatsame occasion, thereby administering a silent rebuke to the kingdom beyond the Alps. This luke-warmness on the part of Italy is but one of many elements which go to establish the isolation of Germany among European powers. Prince von Buelow, the German chancellor, in an address at the opening of the Reichstag, did the best he could to convince the world that his imperial master had no sinister designs against anybody, but the powers still look upon the Kaiser with suspicion, and it is very apparent that he feels it keenly.
In the meantime France and England are drawing closer and closer together. The Anglo-Russian “understanding” is said to be very satisfactory at present. The rumor went that the basis of this understanding between the Czar and King Edward was that both governments should keep out of Tibet, that lower Persia should be given over to England as her sphere of influence, while Russia confined herself to the northern part, and finally that England should consent to the opening of the Dardanelles to the Russian Black Sea fleet. The last item discredits the whole program.
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The rumor runs that the Shah of Persia is practically dying and his son has been called to assume the regency. The Shah, before he was taken ill, granted a national parliament to his people, of which, however, little has been heard of late. What the policy of his son would be if he should succeed permanently to the throne is problematical, but behind the occupant of the Persian throne and the policy he may adopt, there is always the shadow of what is called, by acknowledged pre-eminence, “the Eastern question,” which will continue to exist until Russia can get some satisfactory port where her fleets will not be frozen up in winter and she may be free to sail the seas with her men-of-war and her merchant-men.
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The elections for the Russian duma have not yet been held, but the assembly is expected to convene by March 1. The government is improving the time disfranchising everybody who is likely to be hostile to the divine right of kings, is executing or exiling political prisoners, while the peasants are being systematically robbed of the relief sent to prevent them from starving during the prevailing famine.
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The lower house of the Austrian parliament, after a stormy agitation of more than a year, has passed a bill granting the franchise to every male Austrian over twenty-four years of age who is able to read and write, and has been a resident for at least a year in the place where an election is held. The upper house is not inclined to accept the bill, demanding two votes for married men over 35 years of age, but it is hoped that a compromise may be effected.
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In the Far East, China is becoming more and more suspicious of Japan’s intentions in Manchuria, and is discouraging the attendance of Chinese students upon Japanese schools and colleges. Strong measures have been taken to suppress the use of opium within ten years.
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Australia is still gasping at the decision of Western Australia to withdraw from the commonwealth and set up a government of its own.
In this movement, the Western section probably has the entire sympathy of Ex-Governor Bill Stone, of Pennsylvania, who is busy just now advocating the separation of the Western half of his own state from the Eastern half, so contaminated by wicked Philadelphia!
Two women“I RECKON YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL ME.”
“I RECKON YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING TO TELL ME.”
By Will N. Harben.
AAnn Boyd stood at the open door of her corn-house, a square, one-storied hut made of the trunks of young pine-trees, the bark of which, being worm-eaten, was crumbling from the smooth hard-wood. She had a tin pail on her arm, and was selecting “nubbins” for her cow from the great heap of husked corn which, like a mound of golden nuggets, lay within. The strong-jawed animal could crunch the dwarfed ears, grain and corn together, when they were stirred into a mush made of wheat-bran and dish-water.
Mrs. Boyd, although past fifty, showed certain signs of having been a good-looking woman. Her features were regular, but her once slight and erect figure was now heavy, and bent as if from toil. Her hair, which in her youth had been a luxuriant golden brown, was now thinner and liberally streaked with gray. From her eyes deep wrinkles diverged, and the corners of her firm mouth were drawn downward. Her face, even in repose, wore an almost constant frown, and this habit had deeply gashed her forehead with lines that deepened when she was angry.
With her pail on her arm, she was turning back towards her cottage, which stood about a hundred yards to the right, beneath the shade of two giant oaks, when she heard her name called from the main-travelled road, which led past her farm, on to Darley, ten miles away.
“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Waycroft!” she exclaimed, without change of countenance, as the head and shoulders of a neighbor appeared above the rail-fence. “I couldn’t imagine who it was calling me.”
“Yes, it was me,” the woman said, as Mrs. Boyd reached the fence and rested her pail on the top rail. “I hain’t seed you since I seed you at church, Sunday. I tried to get over yesterday, but was too busy with one thing and another.”
“I reckon you have had your hands full planting cotton,” said Mrs. Boyd. “I didn’t expect you; besides, I’ve had all I could do in my own field.”
“Yes, my boys have been hard at it,” said Mrs. Waycroft. “I don’t go to the field myself, like you do. I reckon I ain’t hardy enough, but keeping things for them to eat and the house in order takes all my time.”
“I reckon,” said Mrs. Boyd, studying the woman’s face closely under the faded black poke-bonnet—“I reckon you’ve got something to tell me. You generally have. I wish I could not care a snap of the finger what folks say, but I’m only a natural woman. I want to hear things sometimes when I know they will make me so mad that I won’t eat a bite for days.”
Mrs. Waycroft looked down at the ground. “Well,” she began, “I reckon you know thar would be considerable talk after what happened at meeting Sunday. You know a thing like that naturallywouldstir up a quiet community like this.”
“Yes, when I think of it I can see there would be enough said, but I’m used to being the chief subject of idle talk. I’ve had twenty odd years of it, Mary Waycroft, though this public row was rather unexpected. I didn’t look for abuse from the very pulpit in God’s house, if itisHis. I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know a friendly soul was nigh.”
“Yes, I was there clean through from the opening hymn. A bolt from heaven on a sunny day couldn’t have astonished me more than I was when you come in and walked straight up the middle aisle, and sat down just as if you’d been coming there regular for all them years. I reckon you had your own private reasons for making the break.”
“Yes, I did.” The wrinkled mouth of the speaker twitched nervously. “I’d been thinking it out, Mrs. Waycroft, for a long time and trying to pray over it, and at last I come to the conclusion that if I didn’t go to church like the rest, it was an open admission that I acknowledged myself worse than others, and so I determined to go—I determined to go if it killed me.”
“And to think you was rewarded that way!” answered Mrs. Waycroft; “it’s a shame! Ann Boyd, it’s a dirty shame!”
“It will be a long time before I darken a church door again,” said Mrs. Boyd. “If I’m ever seen there it will be after I’m dead and they take me there feet foremost to preach over my body. I didn’t look around, but I knew they were all whispering about me.”
“You never saw the like in your life, Ann,” the visitor said. “Heads were bumping together to the damagement of new spring hats, and everybody was asking what it meant. Some said that, after meeting, you was going up and give your hand to Brother Bazemore and ask him to take you back, as a member, but he evidently didn’t think you had a purpose like that, or he wouldn’t have opened up on you as he did. Of course, everybody thar knowed he was hitting at you.”
“Oh yes, they all knew, and he had no reason for thinking I wanted to ask any favor, for he knows too well what I think of him. He hates the ground I walk on. He has been openly against me ever since he come to my house and asked me to let the Sunday-school picnic at my spring and in my grove. I reckon I gave it to him pretty heavy that day, for all I’d been hearing about what he had to say of me had made me mad. I let him get out his proposal as politely as such a sneaking man could, and then I showed him where I stood. Here Mrs. Waycroft, I’ve been treated like a dog and an outcast by every member of his church for the last twenty years, called the vilest names a woman ever bore by his so-called Christian gang, and then, when they want something I’ve got—something that nobody else can furnish quite as suitable for their purpose—why he saunters over to my house holding the skirts of his long coat as if afraid of contamination, and calmly demands the use of my property—property that I’ve slaved in the hot sun and sleet and rain to pay for with hard work. Oh, I was mad! You see, that was too much, and I reckon he never in all his life got such a tongue-lashing. When I came in last Sunday and sat down, I saw his eyes flash, and knew if he got half an excuse he would let out on me. I was sorry I’d come then, but there was no backing out after I’d got there.”
“When he took his text I knew he meant it for you,” said the other woman. “I have never seen a madder man in the pulpit, never in mylife. While he was talking, he never once looked at you, though he knew everybody else was doing nothing else. Then I seed you rise to your feet. He stopped to take a drink from his goblet, and you could ’a’ heard a pin fall, it was so still. I reckon the rest thought like I did, that you was going right up to him and pull his hair or slap his jaws. You looked like you hardly knowed what you was doing, and, for one, I tuck a free breath when you walked straight out of the house. What you did was exactly right, as most fair-minded folks will admit, though I’m here to tell you, my friend, that you won’t find fair-minded folks very plentiful hereabouts. The fair-minded ones are over there in that graveyard.”
Mrs. Boyd stroked her quivering lips with her hard, brown hand, and said, softly: “I wasn’t going to sit there and listen to any more of it. I’d thrown aside pride and principle and gone to do my duty to my religion, as I saw it, and thought maybe some of them—one or two, at least—would meet me part of the way, but I couldn’t listen to a two hours’ tirade about me and my—my misfortune. If I’d stayed any longer, I’d have spoken back to him, and that would have been exactly what he and some of the rest would have wanted, for then they could have made a case against me in court for disturbing public worship, and imposed a heavy fine. They can’t bear to think that, in spite of all their persecution, I’ve gone ahead and paid my debts and prospered in a way that they never could do with all their sanctimony.”
There was silence for a moment. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the trees and the blades of long grass beside the road. There was a far-away tinkling of cow and sheep bells in the lush-green pastures which stretched out towards the frowning mountain against which the setting sun was levelling its rays.
“You say you haven’t seen anybody since Sunday,” remarked the loitering woman, in restrained, tentative tones.
“No, I’ve been right here. Why did you ask me that?”
“Well, you see, Ann,” was the slow answer, “talking at the rate Bazemore was to your face, don’t you think it would be natural for him to—to sort o’ rub it on even heavier behind your back, after you got up that way and went out so sudden.”
“I never thought of it, but I can see now that it would be just like him.” Mrs. Boyd took a deep breath and lowered her pail to the ground. “Yes,” she went on, reflectively, as she drew herself up again and leaned on the fence, “I reckon he got good and mad when I got up and left.”
“Huh!” The other woman smiled. “He was so mad he could hardly speak. He fairly gulped, his eyes flashed, and he was as white as a bunch of cotton. He poured out another goblet of water that he had no idea of drinking, and his hand shook so much that the glass tinkled like a bell against the mouth of the pitcher. You must have got as far as the hitching-rack before his fury busted out. I reckon what he said was the most unbecoming thing that a stout, able-bodied man ever hurled at a defenseless woman’s back.”
There was another pause. Mrs. Boyd’s expectant face was as hard as stone; her dark-gray eyes were two burning fires in their shadowy orbits.
“What did he say?” she asked. “You might as well tell me.”
Mrs. Waycroft avoided her companion’s fierce stare. “He looked down at the place where you sat, Ann. right steady for a minute, then he said: ‘I’m glad that woman had the common decency to sit on a seat by herself while she was here; but I hope when meeting is over that some of you brethren will take the bench out in the woods and burn it. I’ll pay for a new one out of my own pocket.’”
“Oh!” The exclamation seemed wrung from her when off her guard, and Mrs. Boyd clutched the rail of the fence so tightly that her strong nails sunk into the soft wood. “He saidthat! He said thatabout me!”
“Yes, and he ought to have been ashamed of himself,” said Mrs. Waycroft; “and if he had been anything else than a preacher, surely some of the men there—men you have befriended—would not have set still and let it pass.”
“But theydidlet it pass,” said Mrs. Boyd, bitterly; “they did let it pass, one and all.”
“Oh yes, nobody would dare, in this section, to criticise a preacher,” said the other. “What any little, spindle-legged parson says goes the same as the word of God out here in the backwoods. I’d have left the church myself, but I knowed you’d want to hear what was said; besides, they all know I’m your friend.”
“Yes, they all know you are the only white woman that ever comes near me. But what else did he say?”
“Oh, he had lots to say. He said he hadn’t mentioned no names, but it was always the hit dog that yelped, and that you had made yourself a target by leaving as you did. He went on to say that, in his opinion, all that was proved at court against you away back there was just. He said some folks misunderstood Scripture when it come to deal with your sort and stripe. He said some argued that a church door ought always to be wide open to any sinner whatsoever, but that in your daily conduct of holding every coin so tight that the eagle on it squeals, and in giving nothing to send the Bible to the heathens, and being eternally at strife with your neighbors, you had showed, he said, that no good influence could be brought to bear on you, and that people who was really trying to live upright lives ought to shun you like they would a catching disease. He ’lowed you’d had the same Christian chance in your bringing-up, and a better education than most gals, and had deliberately throwed it all up and gone your headstrong way. In his opinion, it would be wrong to condone your past, and tell folks you stood an equal chance with the rising generation fetched up under the rod and Biblical injunction by parents who knowed what lasting scars the fires of sin could burn in a living soul. He said the community had treated you right, in sloughing away from you, ever since you was found out, because you had never showed a minutes’ open repentance. You’d helt your head, he thought, if possible, higher than ever, and in not receiving the social sanction of your neighbors, it looked like you was determined to become the richest woman in the state for no other reason than to prove that wrong prospered.”
The speaker paused in her recital. The listener, her face set and dark with fury, glanced towards the cottage. “Come in,” she said, huskily; “people might pass along and know what we are talking about, and, somehow, I don’t want to give them that satisfaction.”
“That’s a fact,” said Mrs. Waycroft; “they say I fetch you every bit of gossip, anyway. A few have quit speaking to me. Bazemore would himself, if he didn’t look to me once a month for my contribution. I hope what I’ve told you won’t upset you, Ann, but you always say you want to know what’s going on. It struck me that the whole congregation was about the most heartless body of human beings I ever saw packed together in one bunch.”
“I want you to tell me one other thing,” said Mrs. Boyd, tensely, as they were entering the front doorway of the cottage—“was Jane Hemingway there?”
“Oh yes, by a large majority. I forgot to tell you about her. I had my eyes on her, too, for I knowed it would tickle her nigh to death, and itdid. When you left she actually giggled out loud and turned back an’ whispered to the Mayfield girls. Her old, yellow face fairly shone, she was that glad, and when Bazemore went on talking about you and burning that bench, she fairly doubled up, with her handkerchief clapped over her mouth.”
Mrs. Boyd drew a stiff-backed chair from beneath the dining-table and pushed it towards her guest. “There is not in hell itself, Mary Waycroft, a hatred stronger than I feel right now for that woman. She is a fiend in human shape. That miserable creature has hounded me every minute since we were girls together. As God is my judge, I believe I could kill her and not suffer remorse. There was a time when my disposition was as sweet and gentle as any girl’s, but she changed it. She has made me what I am. She is responsible for it all. I might have gone on—after my—my misfortune, and lived in some sort of harmony with my kind if it hadn’t been for her.”
“I know that,” said the other woman, as she sat down and folded her cloth bonnet in her thin hands. “I really believe you’d have been a different woman, as you say, after—after your trouble if she had let you alone.”
Mrs. Boyd seated herself in another chair near the open door, and looked out at a flock of chickens and ducks which had gathered at the step and were noisily clamoring for food.
“I saw two things that made my blood boil as I was leaving the church,” said she. “I saw Abe Longley, who has been using my pasture for his cattle free of charge for the last ten years. I caught sight of his face, and it made me mad to think he’d sit there and never say a word in defence of the woman he’d been using all that time; and then I saw George Wilson, just as indifferent, near the door, when I’ve been favoring him and his shabby store with all my trade when I could have done better by going on to Darley. I reckon neither of those two men said the slightest thing when Bazemore advised the—burning of the bench I’d sat on.”
“Oh no, of course not!” said Mrs. Waycroft, “nobody said a word. They wouldn’t have dared, Ann.”
“Well, they will both hear from me,” said Mrs. Boyd, “and in a way that they won’t forget soon. I tell you, Mary Waycroft, this thing has reached a climax. That burning bench is going to be my war-torch. They say I’ve been at strife with my neighbors all along; well, they’ll see now. I struggled and struggled with pride to get up to the point of going to church again, and that’s the reception I got.”
“It’s a pity to entertain hard feelings, but I don’t blame you a single bit,” said Mrs. Waycroft, sympathetically. “As I look at it, you have done all you can to live in harmony, and they simply won’t have it. They might be different if it wasn’t for that meddlesome old Jane Hemingway. She keeps them stirred up. She and her daughter is half starving to death, while you—” Mrs. Waycroft glanced round the room at the warm rag carpet of many colors, at the neat fire-screen made of newspaper pictures pasted on a crude frame of wood, and, higher, to the mantel-piece, whose sole ornament was a Seth Thomas clock, with the Tower of London in glaring colors on the glass door—“while you don’t ask anybody any odds. Instead of starving, gold dollars seem to roll up to your door of their own accord and fall in a heap. They tell me even that cotton factory which you invested in, and which Mrs. Hemingway said had busted and gone up the spout, is really doing well.”
“The stock has doubled in value,” said Mrs. Boyd, simply. “I don’t know how to account for my making money. I reckon it’s simply good judgment and a habit of throwing nothing away. The factory got to apretty low ebb, and the people lost faith in it, and were offering their stock at half price. My judgment told me it would pull through as soon as times improved, and I bought an interest in it at a low figure. I was right; it proved to be a fine investment.”
“I was sorter sorry for Virginia Hemingway, Sunday,” said Mrs. Waycroft. “When her mother was making such an exhibition of herself in gloating over the way you was treated, the poor girl looked like she was ashamed, and pulled Jane’s apron like she was trying to keep her quiet. I reckon you hain’t got nothing against the girl, Ann?”
“Nothing except that she is that devilish woman’s offspring,” said Mrs. Boyd. “It’s hard to dislike her; she’s pretty—by all odds the prettiest and sweetest-looking young woman in this county. Her mother in her prime never saw the day she was anything like her. They say Virginia isn’t much of a hand to gossip and abuse folks. I reckon her mother’s ways have disgusted her.”
“I reckon that’s it,” said the other woman, as she rose to go. “I know I love to look at her; she does my old eyes good. At meeting I sometimes gaze steady at her for several minutes on a stretch. Sitting beside that hard, crabbed old thing, the girl certainly does look out of place. She deserves a better fate than to be tied to such a woman. I reckon she’ll be picked up pretty soon by some of these young men—that is, if Jane will give her any sort of showing. Jane is so suspicious of folks that she hardly lets Virginia out of her sight. Well, I must be going. Since my husband’s death I’ve had my hands full on the farm; he did a lots to help out, even about the kitchen. Good-bye. I can see what I’ve said has made a change in you, Ann. I never saw you look quite so different.”
“Yes, the whole thing has kind o’ jerked me round,” replied Mrs. Boyd. “I’ve taken entirely too much off of these people—let them run over me dry-shod; but I’ll show them a thing or two. They won’t let me live in peace, and now they can try the other thing.” And Ann Boyd stood in the doorway and watched the visitor trudge slowly away.
“Yes,” she mused, as she looked out into the falling dusk, “they are trying to drive me to the wall with their sneers and lashing tongues. But I’ll show then that a worm can turn.”
The next morning, after a frugal breakfast of milk and cornmeal pancake, prepared over an open fireplace on live coals, which reddened her cheeks and bare arms, Mrs. Boyd pinned up her skirts till their edges hung on a level with the tops of her coarse, calf-skin shoes. She then climbed over the brier-grown rail-fence with the agility of a hunter and waded through the high, dew-soaked weeds and grass in the direction of the rising sun. The meadow was like a rolling green sea settling down to calmness after a storm. Here and there a tuft of dewy broom-sedge held up to her vision a sheaf of green hung with sparkling diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, and far ahead ran a crystal creek in and out among gracefully drooping willows and erect young reeds.
“That’s his brindle heifer now,” the trudging woman said, harshly. “And over beyond the hay-stack and cotton-shed is his muley cow and calf. Huh, I reckon I’ll make them strike a lively trot! It will be some time before they get grass as rich as mine inside of them to furnish milk and butter for Abe Longley and his sanctimonious lay-out.”
Slowly walking around the animals, she finally got them together and drove them from her pasture to the small road which ran along the foot of the mountain towards their owner’s farm-house, the gray roof of which rose above the leafy trees in the distance. To drive the animals out, she had found it necessary to lower a panel of her fence, and she was replacing the rails laboriously, one by one, when she heard a voice from the woodland on the mountain-side, a tract of unproductive land owned by the man whose cows she was ejecting. It was Abe Longley himself, and in some surprise he hurried down the rugged steep, a woodman’s axe on his shoulder. He was a gaunt, slender man, gray and grizzled, past sixty years of age, with a tuft of stiff beard on his chin, which gave his otherwise smooth-shaven face a forbidding expression.
“Hold on thar, Sister Boyd!” he called out, cheerily, though he seemed evidently to be trying to keep from betraying the impatience he evidently felt. “You must be getting nigh-sighted in yore old age. As shore as you are a foot high them’s my cattle, an’ not yourn. Why, I knowed my brindle from clean up at my woodpile, a full quarter from here. I seed yore mistake an’ hollered then, but I reckon you are gettin’ deef as well as blind. I driv’ ’em in not twenty minutes ago, as I come on to do my cuttin’.”
“I know you did, Abe Longley,” and Mrs. Boyd stooped to grasp and raise the last rail and carefully put it in place; “I know they are yours. My eyesight’s good enough. I know good and well they are yours, and that is the very reason I made them hump themselves to get off my property.”
“But—but,” and the farmer, thoroughly puzzled, lowered his glittering axe and stared wonderingly—“but you know, Sister Boyd, that you told me with your own mouth that, being as I’d traded off my own pasture-land to Dixon for my strip o’ wheat in the bottom, that I was at liberty to use yourn how and when I liked, and, now—why, I’ll be dad-blamed if I understand you one bit.”
“Well, I understand what I’m about, Abe Longley, if you don’t!” retorted the owner of the land. “Ididsay you could pasture on it, but I didn’t say you could for all time and eternity; and I now give you due notice if I ever see any four-footed animal of yours inside of my fences I’ll run them out with an ounce of buckshot in their hides.”
“Well, well, well!” Longley cried, at the end of his resources, as he leaned on his smooth axe-handle with one hand and clutched his beard with the other. “I don’t know what to make of yore conduct. I can’t do without the use of your land. There hain’t a bit that I could rent or buy for love or money on either side of me for miles around. When folks find a man’s in need of land, they stick the price up clean out of sight. I was tellin’ Sue the other day that we was in luck havin’ sech a neighbor—one that would do so much to help a body in a plight.”
“Yes, I’m very good and kind,” sneered Mrs. Boyd, her sharp eyes ablaze with indignation, “and last Sunday in meeting you and a lot of other able-bodied men sat still and let that foul-mouthed Bazemore say that even the wooden bench I sat on ought to be taken out and burned for the public good. You sat there and listened tothat, and when he was through you got up and sung the doxology and bowed your head while that makeshift of a preacher called down God’s benediction on you. If you think I’m going to keep a pasture for such a man as you to fatten your stock on, you need a guardian to look after you.”
“Oh, I see,” Longley exclaimed, a crestfallen look on him. “You are goin’ to blame us all for what he said, and you are mad at everybody that heard it. But you are dead wrong, Ann Boyd—dead wrong. You can’t make over public opinion, and you’d ’a’ been better off years ago if you hadn’t been so busy trying to doit, whether or no. Folks would let you alone if you’d ’a’ showed a more repentant sperit, and not held your head so high and been so spiteful. I reckon the most o’ your trouble—that is, the reason it’s lasted so long, is due to the women-folks more than the men of the community, anyhow. You see, it sorter rubs women’s wool the wrong way to see about the only prosperity a body can see in the entire county falling at the feet of the one—well, the one least expected to have sech things—the one, I mought say, who hadn’t lived exactly up to thebestprecepts.”
“I don’t go to men like you for my precepts,” the woman hurled at him, “and I haven’t got any time for palavering. All I want to do is to give you due notice not to trespass on my land, and I’ve done that plain enough, I reckon.”
Abe Longley’s thin face showed anger that was even stronger than his avarice; he stepped nearer to her, his eyes flashing, his wide upper-lip twitching nervously. “Do you know,” he said, “that it’s purty foolhardy of you to take up a fight like that agin a whole community. You know you hain’t agoin’ to make a softer bed to lie on. You know, if you find fault with me for not denouncin’ Bazemore, you may as well find fault with every living soul that was under reach o’ his voice, fer nobody budged or said a word in yore defence.”
“I’m taking up a fight with no one,” the woman said, firmly. “They can listen to what they want to listen to. The only thing I’m going to do in future is to see that no person uses me for profit and then willingly sees me spat upon. That’s all I’ve got to say to you.” And, turning, she walked away, leaving him standing as if rooted among his trees on the brown mountain-side.
“He’ll go home and tell his wife, and she’ll gad about and fire the whole community against me,” Mrs. Boyd mused; “but I don’t care. I’ll have my rights if I die for it.”
An hour later, in another dress and a freshly washed and ironed gingham bonnet, she fed her chickens from a pan of wet cornmeal dough, locked up her house carefully, fastened down the window-sashes on the inside by placing sticks above the movable ones, and trudged down the road to George Wilson’s country-store at the crossing of the roads which led respectively to Springtown, hard-by on one side, and Darley, farther away on the other.
The store was a long, frame building which had once been whitewashed, but was now only a fuzzy, weather-beaten gray. As was usual in such structures, the front walls of planks rose higher than the pointed roof, and held large and elaborate lettering which might be read quite a distance away. Thereon the young storekeeper made the questionable statement that a better price for produce was given at his establishment than at Darley, where high rent, taxes, and clerk-hire had to be paid, and, moreover, that his goods were sold cheaper because, unlike the town dealers, he lived on the products from his own farm and employed no help. In front of the store, convenient alike to both roads, stood a rustic hitching-rack made of unbarked oaken poles into which railway spikes had been driven, and on which horseshoes had been nailed to hold the reins of any customer’s mount. On the ample porch of the store stood a new machine for the hulling of peas, several ploughs, and a red-painted device for the dropping and covering of seed-corn. On the walls within hung various pieces of tinware and harnesses and saddles, and the two rows of shelving held a good assortment of general merchandise.
As Mrs. Boyd entered the store, Wilson, a blond young man with an ample mustache, stood behind the counter talking to an Atlanta drummerwho had driven out from Darley to sell the storekeeper some dry-goods and notions, and he did not come to her at once, but delayed to see the drummer make an entry in his order-book; then he advanced to her.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Boyd,” he smiled, “I am ordering some new prints for you ladies, and I wanted to see that he got the number of bolts down right. This is early for you to be out, isn’t it? It’s been many a day since I’ve seen you pass this way before dinner. I took a sort of liberty with you yesterday, knowing how good-natured you are. Dave Prixon was going your way with his empty wagon, and, as I was about to run low on your favorite brand of flour, I sent you a barrel and put it on your account at the old price. I thought you’d keep it. You may have some yet on hand, but this will come handy when you get out.”
“But I don’t intend to keep it,” replied the woman, under her bonnet, and her voice sounded harsh and crisp. “I haven’t touched it. It’s out in the yard where Prixon dumped it. If it was to rain on it I reckon it would mildew. It wouldn’t be my loss. I didn’t order it put there.”
“Why, Mrs. Boyd!” and Wilson’s tone and surprised glance at the drummer caused that dapper young man to prick up his ears and move nearer; “why, it’s the best brand I handle, and you said the last gave you particular satisfaction, so I naturally—”
“Well, I don’t want it; I didn’t order it, and I don’t intend to have you nor no one else unloading stuff in my front yard whenever you take a notion and want to make money by the transaction. Deduct that from my bill, and tell me what I owe you. I want to settle in full.”
“But—but—” Wilson had never seemed to the commercial traveller to be so much disturbed; he was actually pale, and his long hands, which rested on the smooth surface of the counter, were trembling—“but I don’t understand,” he floundered. “It’s only the middle of the month, Mrs. Boyd, and I never run up accounts till the end. You are not goingoff, are you?”
“Oh no,” and the woman pushed back her bonnet and eyed him almost fiercely, “you needn’t any of you think that. I’m going to stay right on here; but I’ll tell you what I am going to do, George Wilson—I’m going to buy my supplies in the future at Darley. You see, since this talk of burning the very bench I sit on in the house of God, which you and your ilk set and listen to, why—”
“Oh, Mrs. Boyd,” he broke in, “now don’t go and blame me for what Brother Bazemore said when he was—”
“BrotherBazemore!” The woman flared up and brought her clinched hand down on the counter. “I’ll never as long as I live let another dollar of my money pass into the hands of a man who calls that man brother. You sat still and raised no protest against what he said, and that ends business between us for all time. There is no use talking about it. Make out my account, and don’t keep me standing here to be stared at like I was a curiosity in a side-show.”
“All right, Mrs. Boyd; I’m sorry,” faltered Wilson, with a glance at the drummer, who, feeling that he had been alluded to, moved discreetly across the room and leaned against the opposite counter. “I’ll go back to the desk and make it out.”
She stood motionless where he had left her till he came back with her account in his hand, then from a leather bag she counted out the money and paid it to him. The further faint, half-fearful apologies which Wilson ventured on making seemed to fall on closed ears, and, with the receipted bill in her bag, she strode from the house. He followed her to the door and stood looking after her as she angrily trudged back towards her farm.
“Well, well,” he sighed, as thedrummer came to his elbow and stared at him wonderingly, “there goes the best and most profitable customer I’ve had since I began selling goods. It’s made me sick at heart, Masters. I don’t see how I can do without her, and yet I don’t blame her one bit—not a bit, so help me God.”
Wilson turned, and with a frown went moodily back to his desk and sat down on the high stool gloomily eyeing the page in a ledger which he had just consulted.
“By George, that woman’s a corker,” said the drummer, sociably, as he came back and stood near the long wood-stove. “Of course, I don’t know what it’s all about, but she’s her own boss, I’ll stake good money on that.”
“She’s about the sharpest and in many ways the strongest woman in the state,” said the storekeeper, with a sigh. “Good Lord, Masters, she’s been my main-stay ever since I opened this shack, and now to think because that loud-mouthed Bazemore, who expects me to pay a good part of his salary, takes a notion to rip her up the back in meeting, why—”
“Oh, I see!” cried the drummer—“I understand it now. I heard about that at Darley. Soshe’sthe woman! Well, I’m glad I got a good look at her. I see a lot of queer things in going about over the country, but I don’t think I ever ran across just her sort.”
“She’s had a devil of a life, Masters, from the time she was a blooming, pretty young girl till now that she is at war with everybody within miles of her. She’s always been a study to me. She’s treated me more like a son than anything else—doing everything in her power to help me along, buying, by George, things sometimes that I knew she didn’t need because it would help me out, and now, because I didn’t get up in meeting last Sunday and call that man down she holds me accountable. I don’t know but what she’s right. Why should I take her hard-earned money and sit still and allow her to be abused? She’s simply got pride, and, lots of it, and it’s bad hurt.”
“But what was it all about?” the drummer inquired.
“The start of it was away back when she was a girl, as I said,” began the storekeeper. “You’ve heard of Colonel Preston Chester, our biggest planter, who lives a mile from here—old-time chap, fighter of duels, officer in the army, and all that?”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen him; in fact, I was at college at the State University with his son Langdon. He was a terrible fellow—very wild and reckless, full half the time, and playing poker every night. He was never known to pay a debt, even to his best friends.”
“Langdon is a chip off of the old block,” said Wilson. “His father was just like him when he was a young man. Between you and me, the Colonel never had a conscience; old as he now is, he will sit and laugh about his pranks right in the presence of his son. It’s no wonder the boy turned out like he did. Well, away back when this Mrs. Boyd was a young and pretty girl, the daughter of honest, hard-working people, who owned a little farm back of his place, he took an idle fancy to her. I’m telling you now what has gradually leaked out in one way and another since. He evidently won her entire confidence, made her believe he was going to marry her, and, as he was a dashing young fellow, she must have fallen in love with him. Nobody knows how that was, but one thing is sure, and that is that he was seen about with her almost constantly for a whole year, and then he stopped off suddenly. The report went out that he’d made up his mind to get married to a young woman in Alabama who had a lot of money, and he did go off and bring home the present Mrs. Chester, Langdon’s mother. Well, old-timerssay young Ann Boyd took it hard, stayed close in at home and wasn’t seen out for a couple of years. Then she came out again, and they say she was better-looking than ever and a great deal more serious and sensible. Joe Boyd was a young farmer those days, and a sort of dandy, and he fell in love with her and hung about her day and night, never seeming willing to let her out of his sight. Several other fellows, they say, was after her, but she seemed to like Joe the best, but nothing he’d do or say would make her accept him. I can see through it now, looking back on what has since leaked out, but nobody understood it then, for she had evidently got over her attachment for Colonel Chester, and Joe was a promising fellow, strong, good-looking, and a great beau and flirt among women, half a dozen being in love with him, but Ann simply wouldn’t take him, and it was the talk of the whole county. He was simply desperate, folks say, going about boring everybody he met with his love affair. Finally her mother and father and all her friends got after her to marry Joe, and she gave in. And then folks wondered more than ever why she’d delayed for she was more in love with her husband than anybody had any reason to expect. They were happy, too. A child was born, a little girl, and that seemed to make them happier. Then Mrs. Boyd’s mother and father died, and she came into the farm, and the Boyds were comfortable in every way. Then what do you think happened?”
“I’ve been wondering all along,” the drummer laughed. “I can see you’re holding something up your sleeve.”
“Well, this happened. Colonel Chester’s wife was, even then, a homely woman, about as old as he was, and not at all attractive aside from her money, and marrying hadn’t made him any the less devilish. They say he saw Mrs. Boyd at meeting one day and hardly took his eyes off of her during preaching. She had developed into about the most stunning-looking woman anywhere about, and knew how to dress, which was something Mrs. Chester, with all her chances, had never seemed to get onto. Well, that was the start of it, and from that day on Chester seemed to have nothing on his mind but the good looks of his old sweetheart. Folks saw him on his horse riding about where he could get to meet her, and then it got reported that he was actually forcing himself on her to such an extent that Joe Boyd was worked up over it, aided by the eternal gab of all the women in the section.”
“Did Colonel Chester’s wife get onto it?” the drummer wanted to know.
“It don’t seem like she did,” answered Wilson. “She was away visiting her folks in the South most of the time, with Langdon, who was a baby then, and it may be that she didn’t care. Some folks thought she was weak-minded; she never seemed to have any will of her own, but left the Colonel to manage her affairs without a word.”
“Well, go on with your story,” urged the drummer.
“There isn’t much more to tell about the poor woman,” continued Wilson. “As I said, Chester got to forcing himself on her, and I reckon she didn’t want to tell her husband what she was trying to forget for fear of a shooting scrape, in which Joe would get the worst of it; but this happened: Joe was off at court in Darley and sent word home to his wife that he was to be held all night on a jury. The man that took the message rode home alongside of Chester and told him about it. Well, I reckon, all hell broke out in Chester that night. He was a drinking man, and he tanked up, and, as his wife was away, he had plenty of liberty. Well, he simply went over to Joe Boyd’s house and went in. It was about ten o’clock. My honestconviction is, no matter what others think, that she tried her level best to make him leave without rousing the neighborhood, but he wouldn’t go, but sat there in the dark with his coat off, telling her he loved her more than her husband did, and that he never had loved his wife and that he was crazy for her, and the like. How long this went on with her imploring and praying to him to go, I don’t know; but, at any rate, they both heard the gate-latch click and Joe Boyd come right up the gravel-walk. I reckon the poor woman was scared clean out of her senses, for she made no outcry, and Chester went to a window, his coat on his arm, and was climbing out when Joe, who couldn’t get in at the front door was making for the one in the rear, met him face to face.”
“Great goodness!” ejaculated the commercial traveller.
“Well, you bet, the devil was to pay,” went on the storekeeper grimly. “Chester was mad and reckless, and, being hot with liquor, and regarding Boyd as far beneath him socially, instead of making satisfactory explanations, they say he simply swore at Boyd and stalked away. Dumfounded, Boyd went inside to his miserable wife and demanded an explanation. She has since learned how to use her wits with the best in the land, but she was young then, and so, by her silence, she made matters worse for herself. He forced her to explain, and, seeing no other way out of the affair, she decided to throw herself on his mercy and make a clean breast of things she and her family had kept back all the time. Well, sir, she confessed to what had happened away back before Chester had deserted her, no doubt telling a straight story of her absolute purity and faithfulness to Boyd after marriage. Poor old Joe! He wasn’t a fighting man, and, instead of following Chester and demanding satisfaction, he stayed at home that night, no doubt suffering the agony of the damned and trying to make up his mind to believe in his wife and to stand by her. As it looks now, he evidently decided to make the best of it, and might have succeeded, but somehow it got out about Chester being caught there, and that started gossip so hot that her life and his became almost unbearable. It might have died a natural death in time, but Mrs. Boyd had an enemy, Mrs. Jane Hemingway, who had been one of the girls who was in love with Joe Boyd. It seems that she had never got over Joe’s marrying another woman, and when she heard this scandal she nagged and teased Joe about his babyishness in being willing to believe his wife, and told him so many lies that Boyd finally quit staying at home, sulking about in the mountains, and making trips away till he finally applied for a divorce. Ignorant and inexperienced as she was, and proud, Mrs. Boyd made no defence, and the whole thing went his way with very little publicity. But the hardest part for her to bear was when, having the court’s decree to take charge of his child, Boyd came and took it away.”
“Good gracious! that was tough, wasn’t it?” exclaimed the drummer.
“That’s what it was, and they say it fairly upset her mind. They expected her to fight like a tiger for her young, but at the time they came for it she only seemed stupefied. The little girl was only three years old, but they say Ann came in the room and said she was going to ask the child if it was willing to leave her, and they say she calmly put the question, and the baby, not knowing what she meant, said, ‘Yes.’ Then they say Ann talked to it as if it were a grown person, and told her to go, that she’d never give her a thought in the future, and never wanted to lay eyes on her again.”
“That was pitiful, wasn’t it?” said Masters. “By George, we don’t dream of what is going on in the hearts of men and women we meet face to face every day. And that’s what started her in the life she’s since led.”