Part 6 (1/2)
Dolan was made sheriff, and Bemis county attorney, and with those two officers and a majority of the county commissioners the Ridge had the forces of administration with her. And so one night Minneola came with her wrinkled front of war; viz., forty fighting men under Gabriel Carnine and an ox team, prepared to take the county records by force and haul them home by main strength. But Lycurgus Mason, whose wife had locked him in the cellar that night to keep him from danger, was the cackling goose that saved Rome; for when, having escaped his wife's vigilance, he came riding down the wind from Minneola to catch up with his fellow-townsmen, his clatter aroused the men of the Ridge, and they hurried to the court-house and greeted the invaders with half a thousand armed men in the court-house yard. And in a crisis where craft and cunning would not help him, courage came out of John Barclay's soul for the first time and into his life as he limped through the guns into the open to explain to the men from Minneola when they finally arrived that Lycurgus Mason had not betrayed them, but had rushed into the town, thinking his friends were there ahead of him. It was a plucky thing for John to do, considering that his death would stop the making of the levy for the court-house that was to be recorded in a few days. But the young man's blood tingled with joy as he jumped the court-house fence and went back to his men. There was something like a smile from Jane Mason in his joy, but chiefly it was the joy that youth has in daring, that thrilled him. And the next day, or perhaps it was the next,--at any rate, it was a Sunday late in June,--when an armed posse from Minneola came charging down on the town at noon, John ran from his office unseen, over the roofs of buildings upon which as a boy he had romped, and ducking through a second-story window in Frye's store, got two kegs of powder, ran out of the back door, under the exposed piling supporting the building, put the two kegs of powder in a wooden culvert under the ammunition wagons of the Minneola men, who were battling with the town in the street, and taking a long fuse in his teeth, crawled back to the alley, lit the fuse, and ran into the street to look into the revolver of J. Lord Lee--late of the Red Legs--and warn him to run or be blown up with the wagons. And when the explosion came, knocking him senseless, he woke up a hero, with the town bending over him, and Minneola's forces gone.
And so John and the town had their fling together. And we who sit among our books or by our fire--or if not that by our iron radiator exuding its pleasance and comfort--should not sniff at that day when blood pulsed quicker and joy was keener, and life was more vivid than it is to-day.
Thirty-five years later--in August, 1908, to be exact--the general, in his late seventies, sat in McHurdie's harness shop while the poet worked at his bench. On the floor beside the general was the historical edition of the Sycamore Ridge _Banner_--rather an elaborate affair, printed on glossy paper and bedecked with many photogravures of old scenes and old faces. A page of the paper was devoted to the County Seat War of '73. The general had furnished the material for most of the article,--though he would not do the writing,--and he held the sheet with the story upon it in his hand.
As he read it in the light of that later day, it seemed a sordid story of chicanery and violence--the sort of an episode that one would expect to find following a great war. The general read and reread the old story of the defeat of Minneola, and folded his paper and rolled it into a wand with which he conjured up his spirit of philosophy.
”Heigh-ho,” he sighed. ”We don't know much, do we?”
McHurdie made no reply. He bent closely over his work, and the general went on: ”I was mighty mad when Hendricks defeated me for the state senate in '72, just to get that law pa.s.sed cheating Minneola out of a fair vote on the court-house question. But it's come out all right.”
The harness maker sewed on, and the general reflected. Finally the little man at the bench turned his big dimmed eyes on his visitor, and asked, ”Did you think, General, that you knew more than the Lord about making things come out right?” There was no reply and McHurdie continued, ”Well, you don't--I've got that settled in my mind.”
There was silence for a time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the paper wand in his hand. ”Watts,” said the general, finally, ”I know what it was--it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did.
Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records--” and there was more of it--the old story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from the general on John's courage, Watts replied, ”John was always a bold little fice--he never lacked bra.s.s.”
”Was he going with Jane Mason then, Watts,--I forget?” queried the general.
”Yes--yes,” replied McHurdie. ”Don't you remember that very next night she sang in the choir--well, John had brought her over from Minneola two days before, and that Sunday when the little devil went in the culvert across Main Street and blew up the Minneola wagons, Jane was in town that day--I remember that; and man--man--I heard her voice say things to him in the duet that night that she would have been ashamed to put in words.”
The two old men were silent. ”That was youth, too, Watts,--fighting and loving, and loving and fighting,--that's youth,” sighed the general.
”Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old Shakespeare says, Phil--and in your day you had yours, too. Every dog, General--every dog--you know.” The two voices were silent, as two old men looked back through the years.
McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the water, and turned with his spectacles in his hands to his comrade. ”Maybe it's this way: with a man, it's fighting and loving before we get any sense; and with a town it's the same way, and I guess with the race it's the same way--fighting and loving and growing sensible after it's over. Maybe so--maybe so, Phil, comrade, but man, man,” he said as he climbed on his bench, ”it's fine to be a fool!”
CHAPTER VII
In Sycamore Ridge every one knows Watts McHurdie, and every one takes pride in the fact that far and wide the Ridge is known as Watts McHurdie's town, and this too in spite of the fact that from Sycamore Ridge Bob Hendricks gained his national reputation as a reformer and the further fact that when the Barclays went to New York or Chicago or to California for the winter in their private car, they always registered from Sycamore Ridge at the great hotels. One would think that the town would be known more as Hendricks' town or Barclay's town; but no--nothing of the kind has happened, and when the rich and the great go forth from the Ridge, people say: ”Oh, yes, Sycamore Ridge--that's Watts McHurdie's town, who wrote--” but people from the Ridge let the inquirers get no farther; they say: ”Exactly--it's Watts McHurdie's town--and you ought to see him ride in the open hack with the proprietor of a circus when it comes to the Ridge and all the bands and the calliope are playing Watts' song. The way the people cheer shows that it is really Watts McHurdie's town.” So when Colonel Martin Culpepper wrote the ”Biography of Watts McHurdie” which was published together with McHurdie's ”Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works,” there was naturally much discussion, and the town was more or less divided as to what part of the book was the best. But the old settlers,--those who, during the drouth of '60, ate mince pies with pumpkins as the fruit and rabbit meat as the filling and New Orleans black-strap as the sweetening, the old settlers who knew Watts before he became famous,--they like best of all the chapters in the colonel's Biography the one ent.i.tled ”At Hymen's Altar.” And here is a curious thing about it: in that chapter there is really less of Watts and considerably more of Colonel Martin Culpepper than in any other chapter.
But the newcomers, those who came in the prosperous days of the 70's or 80's, never could understand the partiality of the old settlers for the ”Hymen's Altar” chapter. Lycurgus Mason also always took the view that the ”Hymen” chapter was drivel.
”Now, John, be sensible--” Lycurgus insisted one night in 1903 when the two were eating supper in Barclay's private car on a side-track in Arizona; ”don't be like my wife--she always drools over that chapter, too. But you know my wife--” Lycurgus always referred to Mrs. Mason with a grand gesture as to his dog or his horse, which were especially desirable chattels. ”My wife,--it's just like a woman,--she sits and reads that, and laughs and weeps, and giggles and sniffs, and I say, 'What's the matter with you, anyway?'”
John Barclay pushed a b.u.t.ton. To the porter he said, ”Bring me that little red book in my satchel.” The book had been published but a few weeks, and John always carried a copy around with him in those days to give to a friend. When the porter brought the book, Barclay read aloud, ”Ah, truly hath the poet said, 'Marriages are made in heaven.'”
But Lycurgus Mason pulled his napkin from under his chin and moved back from the table, dusting the crumbs from his obviously Sunday clothes. ”There you go--that's it; 'as the poet says.' John, if you heard that 'as the poet says' as often as I do--” He could not finish the figure. But he sniffed out his disgust with ”as the poet says.”
”It wasn't so bad when we were in the hotel, and she was busy with something else. But now--but now--” he repeated it the third time, ”but now--honest, every time that woman goes to get up a paper for the Hypatia Club, she gets me in the parlour, and rehea.r.s.es it to me, and the dad-binged thing is simply packed full of 'as the poet sayses.' And about that marriages being made in heaven, I tell my wife this: I say, 'Maybe so, but if they are, I know one that was made on a busy day when the angels were thinking of something else.'”
And John Barclay, who knew Mrs. Mason and knew Lycurgus, knew that he would as soon think of throwing a bomb at the President as to say such a thing to her; so John asked credulously: ”You did? Well, well! Say, what did she say to that?”
”That's it--” responded Lycurgus. ”That's it. What could she say? I had her.” He walked the length of the room proudly, with his hands thrust into his pockets.
Barclay moved his chair to the rear of the car, where he sat smoking and looking into the clear star-lit heavens above the desert. And his mind went back thirty years to the twilight in June after he had set off the powder keg in the culvert under Main Street in Sycamore Ridge, and he tried to remember how Jane Mason got over from Minneola--did he bring her over the day before, or was she visiting at the Culpeppers', or did she come over that day? It puzzled him, but he remembered well that in the Congregational choir he and Jane sang a duet in an anthem, ”He giveth his beloved sleep.” And he hummed the old aria, a rather melancholy tune, as he sat on the car platform in Arizona that night, and her voice came back--a deep sweet contralto that took ”G” below middle ”C” as clearly as a tenor, and in her lower register there was a pa.s.sion and a fire that did not blaze in the higher notes. For those notes were merely girlish and untrained. That June night in '73 was the first night that he and Jane Mason ever had lagged behind as they walked up the hill with Bob and Molly. And what curious things stick in the memory! The man on the rear of the car remembered that as they left the business part of Main Street behind and walked up the hill, they came to a narrow cross-walk, a single stone in width, and that they tried to walk upon it together, and that his limp made him jostle her, and she said, ”We mustn't do that.”
”What?” he inquired.
”Oh--you know--walk on one stone. You know what it's a sign of.”
”Do you believe in signs?” he asked. She kept hold of his arm, and kept him from leaving the stone. She was taller than he by a head, and he hated himself for it. They managed to keep together until they crossed the street and came into the broader walk. Then she drew a relieved breath and answered: ”Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I do.” They were lagging far behind their friends, and the girl hummed a tune, then she said, ”You know I've always believed in my 'Star light--star bright--first star I've seen to-night,' just as I believe in my prayers.” And she looked up and said, ”Oh, I haven't said it yet.” She picked out her star and said the rhyme, closing with, ”I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish to-night.”
And sitting on the car end in Arizona thirty years after, he tried to find her star in the firmament above him. He was a man in his fifties then, and the night she showed him her star was more than thirty years gone by. But he remembered. We are curious creatures, we men, and we remember much more than we pretend to. For our mothers in many cases were women, and we take after them.