Part 7 (1/2)

Robinson was forgetting the etiquette of the West. No man--except, perhaps, in speaking to a n.i.g.g.e.r--ever a.s.sumed a tone of insolent superiority to any other man; if he did so, it was at the risk of sudden death; even a hired man was habitually treated with civility.

The t.i.tles of colonel, judge, major, captain, and squire were in constant use both in public and private; there was plenty of humorous ”chaff,” but not insult. Colonels, judges, majors, captains, and squires were civil, both to each other and to the rest of the citizens. Robinson, in speaking to his fellow countryman, forgot for a moment that he was not in dear old England, where he could settle a little difference with his fists. But little Wilkins did not forget, and he was not the kind of man to be pounded with impunity. He had in his pocket a hunting knife, with which he could kill a hog--or a man. When Robinson called him a skunk he felt in his pocket for the knife, and put his thumb on the spring at the back of the buckhorn handle, playing with it gently. It was not a British Brummagem article, made for the foreign or colonial market, but a genuine weapon that could be relied on at a pinch.

”Oh, I dare say you were a great man at home, weren't you?” he said.

”A lord maybe, or a landlord. But we don't have sich great men here, and I am as good a man as you any day, skunk though I be.”

Robinson had just thrown another shovelful of charcoal into the furnace under his boiler, and he held up his shovel as if ready to strike Williams, but it was never known whether he really intended to strike or not.

The three other men standing near were quite amused with the dispute of the two Englishmen, and were smiling pleasantly at their foolishness. But little Wilkins did not smile, nor did he wait for the shovel to come down on his head; he darted under it with his open knife in the same manner as the Roman soldier went underneath the dense spears of the Pyrrhic phalanx, and set to work. Robinson tried to parry the blows with the handle of the shovel, but he made only a poor fight; the knife was driven to the hilt into his body seven times, then he threw down his shovel, and tried to save himself behind the boiler, but it was too late; the dispute about England and the States was settled.

Wilkins took his team home, then returned to Joliet and gave himself into the custody of the squire, Hoosier Smith. At the inquest he was committed to take his trial for murder, and did not get bail. His wife left the farm, and with her two little boys lived in an old log hut near the gaol. She brought with her two cows, which Wilkins milked each morning as soon as Silas let him out of prison. I could see him every day from the window of my room, and I often pa.s.sed by the hut when he was doing ch.o.r.es, chopping wood, or fetching water, but I never spoke to him. He did not look happy or sociable, and I could not think of anything pleasant to say by way of making his acquaintance. After much observation and thought I came to the conclusion that Sheriff Cunningham wanted his prisoner to go away; he would not like to hang the man; the citizens would not take Wilkins off his hands; if two fools chose to get up a little difficulty and one was killed, it was their own look-out; and anyway they were only foreigners. The fact was Wilkins was waiting for someone to purchase his farm.

The court-house for Will County was within view of the gaol, at the other side of the street, and one day I went over to look at it. The judge was hearing a civil case, and I sat down to listen to the proceedings. A learned counsel was addressing the jury. He talked at great length in a nasal tone, slowly and deliberately; he had one foot on a form, one hand in a pocket of his pants, and the other hand rested gracefully on a volume of the statutes of the State of Illinois. He had much to say about various horses running on the prairie, and particularly about one animal which he called the ”Skemelhorne horse.” I tried to follow his argument, but the ”Skemelhorne horse” was so mixed up with the other horses that I could not spot him.

Semicircular seats of unpainted pine for the accommodation of the public rose tier above tier, but most of them were empty. There were present several gentlemen of the legal profession, but they kept silence, and never interrupted the counsel's address. Nor did the judge utter a word; he sat at his desk sideways, with his boots resting on a chair. He wore neither wig nor gown, and had not even put on his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Neither had the lawyers.

If there was a court crier or constable present he was indistinguishable from the rest of the audience.

Near the judge's desk there was a bucket of water and three tumblers on a small table. It was a hot day. The counsel paused in his speech, went to the table, and took a drink; a juryman left the box and drank. The judge also came down from his seat, dipped a tumbler in the bucket and quenched his thirst; one spectator after another went to the bucket. There was equality and fraternity in the court of law; the speech about the Skemelhorne horse went on with the utmost gravity and decorum, until the nasal drawl of the learned counsel put me to sleep.

On awakening, I went into another hall, in which dealings in real estate were registered. Shelves fixed against the walls held huge volumes lettered on the back. One of these volumes was on a table in the centre of the hall, and in it the registrar was copying a deed.

Before him lay a pile of deeds with a lead weight on the top. A farmer came in with a paper, on which the registrar endorsed a number and placed at the bottom of the pile. There was no parchment used; each doc.u.ment was a half-sheet foolscap size, party printed and partly written. Another farmer came in, took up the pile and examined the numbers to see how soon his deed was likely to be copied, and if it was in its proper place according to the number endorsed. The registrar was not fenced off from the public by a wide counter; he was the servant of the citizens, and had to satisfy those who paid him for his labours. His pay was a fixed number of cents per folio, not dollars, nor pounds.

When I went back to gaol I found it deserted. Wilkins had sold his farm and disappeared. His wife remained in the hut. Sheriff Cunningham was still away among the Bluenoses, and Silas was 'functus officio', having accomplished a general gaol delivery. He did not pine away on account of the loss of his prisoners, nor grow any thinner--that was impossible. I remained four days longer, expecting something would happen; but nothing did happen, then I left the gaol.

I wrote out two notices informing the public that I was willing to sell my real estate; one of these I pasted up at the Post Office, the other on the bridge over the Aux Plaines River. Next day a German from Chicago agreed to pay the price asked, and we called on Colonel Smith, the Squire. The Colonel filled in a brief form of transfer, witnessed the payment of the money--which was in twenty-dollar gold pieces, and he charged one dollar as his fee. The German would have to pay about 35 cents for its registration. If the deed was lost or stolen, he would insert in a local journal a notice of his intention to apply for a copy, which would make the original of as little value to anybody as a Provincial and Suburban bank note.

In Illinois, transfers of land were registered in each county town.

To buy or sell a farm was as easy as horse-stealing, and safer.

Usually, no legal help was necessary for either transaction.

By this time California had a rival; gold had been found in Australia. I was fond of gold; I jingled the twenty dollar gold pieces in my pocket, and resolved to look for more at the fountainhead, by way of my native land. A railway from Chicago had just reached Joliet, and had been opened three days before. It was an invitation to start, and I accepted it.

n.o.body ever loved his native land better than I do when I am away from it. I can call to mind its innumerable beauties, and in fancy saunter once more through the summer woods, among the bracken, the bluebells, and the foxglove. I can wander by the banks of the Brock, where the sullen trout hide in the clear depths of the pools. I can walk along the path--the path to Paradise--still lined with the blue-eyed speedwell and red campion; I know where the copse is carpeted with the bluebell and ragged robin, where grow the alders, and the hazels rich with brown nuts, the beeches and the oaks; where the flower of the yellow broom blazes like gold in the noontide sun; where the stockdove coos overhead in the ivy; where the kingfisher darts past like a shaft of sapphire, and the water ouzel flies up stream; where the pheasant glides out from his home in the wood to feed on the headland of the wheat field; where the partridge broods in the dust with her young; where the green lane is bordered by the guelder-rose or wayfaring tree, the raspberry, strawberry, and cherry, the wild garlic of starlike flowers, the woodruff, fragrant as new-mown hay; the yellow pimpernel on the hedge side. I see in the fields and meadows the bird's foot trefoil, the oxeye daisy, the lady smocks, sweet hemlock, b.u.t.terbur, the st.i.tchwort, and the orchis, the ”long purpled” of Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped b.u.mble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what lies beyond it.

I have been twice to see what lies beyond it, and when I return once more my own land does not know me. There is another sea coast in sight now, and when I sail away from it I hope to land on some one of the Isles of the Blest.

I called on my oldest living love; she looked, I thought, even younger than when we last parted. She was sitting before the fire alone, pale and calm, but she gave me no greeting; she had forgotten me. I took a chair, sat down beside her, and waited. A strange la.s.s with a fair face and strong bare arms came in and stared at me steadily for a minute or two, but went away without saying a word. I looked around the old house room that I knew so well, with its floor of flags from Buckley Delph, scoured white with sandstone. There stood, large and solid, the mealark of black oak, with the date, 1644, carved just below the heavy lid, more than 200 years old, and as sound as ever. The sloping mirror over the chest of drawers was still supported by the four seasons, one at each corner. Above it was Queen Caroline, with the crown on her head, and the sceptre in her hand, seated in a magnificent Roman chariot, drawn by the lion and the unicorn. That team had tortured my young soul for years. I could never understand why that savage lion had not long ago devoured both the Queen and the unicorn.

My old love was looking at me, and at last she put one hand on my knee, and said:

”It's George.”

”Yes,” I said, ”it's George.”

She gazed a while into the fire and said:

”Alice is dead.”