"Do help me, do use your influence with your President. He"s afraid of race suicide; tell him I"m the father of forty-seven children--will not that touch his heart?"
"Not a mite!" sez I, "his heart is as true as steel to his one wife and six children. It is a good manly heart that can"t be led off by any such brazen statements."
His linement looked lurid and half demented as he sez, "Mebby some high church dignitaries would help me. Or no," sez he, "go to the head of it all, go to the Liquor Power--that"s the place to go to, that rules Church and State, that makes the laws. Oh, do go to the Liquor Power, and git it to let me set. I"ll pay their usual price for makin"
personal laws in a man"s favor."
The cold glare in my gray eye froze the words on his lip. "You ask me to go to the Liquor Power for help! Do you know who you"re speakin"
to?"
"Yes," sez he feebly, "I"m speakin" to Josiah Allen"s wife, and I want to set."
His axent wuz heartbroken and I fancied that there wuz a little tone of repentance in it. Could I influence him for the right? Could I frighten him into the right path? I felt I must try, and I sez in a low, deep voice:
"I"ll help you to set if you"ll set where I want you to."
"Oh, tell me! tell me," sez he, "where you want me to set."
"Not in the high halls where justice is administered, not up there with the pictures of your numerous wives on your heart to make laws condemnin" a man who has only one extra wife to prison for twenty years, which same law would condemn you to prison for "most a century.
That wouldn"t be reasonable. Presidents and senators are sot up there in Washington D. C. as examplers for the young to foller and stimulate "em to go and do likewise. Such a example as yourn would stimulate "em too much in matrimonial directions and land "em in prison."
He muttered sunthin" about lots of public men havin" other wives in secret.
"In secret?" sez I. "Well, mebby so, but it has to be in secret, hid away, wropped in disgrace, and if the law discovers it they are punished. That"s a very different thing from makin" such a life respectable, coverin" "em under the mantilly of the law, embroidered too with public honors."
He turned away despairin"ly and murmured mekanically the old heart-broken wail, "I want to set."
And I sez reasonably, "There is no objection to your settin" down, and if I had my way you would set right by them who have done only half or a quarter what you have and in the place the laws have made for them and you."
He turned quick as a wink, "Then you won"t help me?"
"Yes," sez I, "I"ll help all I can to put you right in with the others that have done jest what you have--openly set our laws at defiance.
But if I know myself I won"t help a tiger cat to hold a canary bird or a wolf to guard a sheep pen. I won"t help a felon up on the seat of justice to make laws for innocent men."
"Innocent men!" And agin he sez, "Ha! ha!"
And agin I didn"t care what he said. And I got up and sez, "You may as well leave the presence." And as he turned I sez in conclusion, thinkin" mebby I"d been too hash, "I dare say you have intellect and may be a good man so fur as I know only in this one iniquity and open defiance of our laws, and I advise you to turn right round in your tracks and git ready to set down on high, for you"ll find it a much worse thing to prance round through all eternity without settin" than it is to not set here."
He jest marched out of the door and didn"t say good bye or good day or anything. But I didn"t care. I knowed the minute his card wuz handed to me jest how many wives he had and how he wuz doin" all he could to uphold what he called his religion, but I did hope I"d done him some good but felt dubersome about it. But knowin" I"d clung to Duty"s ap.r.o.n strings I felt like leavin" the event. And when Miss Meechim come in I wuz settin" calm and serene in a big chair windin" some clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin" the skein. I"d brung along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to make me feel more homelike.
And the next day we proceeded on to California.
CHAPTER V
Miss Meechim and Dorothy looked brighter and happier as every revolution of the wheels brought us nearer their old home, and they talked about Robert Strong and other old friends I never see.
"Be it ever so humbly, There is no place like hum."
My heart sung them words and carried two parts, one sulferino and one bear tone. The high part caused by my lofty emotions and sweet recollections of home, that hallowed spot; the minor chords caused by feelin"s I have so often recapitulated. Tommy, as the day wore on, went to sleep, and I covered him tenderly on the seat with my little shoulder shawl, and sot there alone; alone, as the cars bore us onward, sometimes through broad green fields of alfalfa, anon over a bridge half a mile long, from whence you could look down and see the flowing stream beneath like a little skein of silver yarn glistening in the sun fur below, agin forests and valleys and farms and homesteads, and anon in an opening through a valley, high bluffs, beautifully colored, could be seen towering up over blue waters, up, up as if they wuz bent on touching the fleecy clouds overhead. And then a green sheltered valley, and then a high range of mountains seen fur off as if overlookin" things to see that all wuz well, anon a big city, then a village, then the green country agin, and so the pictures pa.s.sed before me as I sot there.
I had put on a pair of new cuffs and a collar, made for me and hemst.i.tched by Waitstill Webb, and gin to me by her, though I wanted to pay her. Sweet little creeter! how good she wuz to me and to everybody, and I thought of her sad history, and hoped that brighter days wuz ahead on her. I d"no as I"ve told the reader much about her history, and mebby I might as well whilst we are rushin" on so fast, and Tommy is asleep.
Alan Thorne, the young man she wuz engaged to, wuz brung up by a uncle who had a family of his own to love and tend to, but he did his duty by Alan, gin him a good education and a comfortable, if not affectionate, home in his family. But it wuz a big family all bound up in each other, and Alan had seemed like one who looks on through a winder at the banquet of Life and Love, kinder hungry and lonesome till he met Waitstill Webb. Then their two hearts and souls rushed together like two streams of water down an inclined plane. They literally seemed to be two bodies with one heart, one soul, one desire, one aspiration. He had always been industrious, honest and hard workin". Now he had sunthin" to work for; and for the three years after he met Waitstill he worked like a giant. He wuz earning a home for his wife, his idol; how happy he wuz in his efforts, his work, and how happy she wuz to see it, and to work herself in her quiet way for the future.
He had bought a home about a mile out of the city, where he was employed, and had got it all payed for. It wuz a beautiful little cottage with a few acres of land round it, and he had got his garden all laid out and a orchard of fruit trees of all kinds, and trees and flowering shrubs and vines around the pretty cottage. There wuz a little pasture where he wuz to keep his cow and a horse, that she could take him with to his work mornings and drive round where she wanted to, and there wuz a meadow lot with a little rivulet running through it, and they had already planned a rustic bridge over the dancing stream, and a trout pond, and she had set out on its borders some water lilies, pink and white, and Showy Ladies and other wild flowers, and she jest doted on her posy garden and strawberry beds, and they"d bought two or three hives of bees in pretty boxes and took them out there; they had rented the place to a old couple till they wanted it themselves. And every holiday and Sunday they walked out to their own place, and the sun did not shine any brighter on their little home than the sun of hope and happiness did in their hearts as they pictured their life there in that cozy nest.
And Alan Thorne, after he loved Waitstill, not only tried to win outward success for her sake; he tried to weed out all the weaknesses of his nater, to make himself more worthy of her. He said to himself when he would go to see her, he would "robe his soul in holiest purpose as for G.o.d himself." His pa had at one time in his life drank considerable, but he wuz not a drunkard, and he wuz a good bizness man when the fever carried him off, and his young wife out of the world the same year. Well, Alan wuz jest as industrious as he could be, and with his happy future to look forward to and Waitstill"s love and beloved presence to prop up his manhood, everything promised a fair and happy life for them both; till, like a thunder-cloud out of a clear sky come that deafening report from Spanish brutality that blew up the _Maine_ and this nation"s peace and tranquility. Dretful deed!
Awful calamity! that sent three hundred of our brave seamen onprepared to meet their G.o.d--without a second"s warning. Awful deed that cried to heaven for pity! But did it bring back these brave fellows sleeping in Havana harbor to their mothers, wives and sweethearts, to have thousands more added to the list of the slain?
"Remember the _Maine_!" How these words echoed from pulpit and Senate and palace and hovel; how they wuz sung in verse, printed in poems, printed in flaming lines of electric light everywhere! From city to country, you saw and heard these words, "Remember the _Maine_!"
I wondered then and I wonder now if the spirit of revenge that swep"
through our nation at that time wuz the spirit of the Master.
I d"no nor Josiah don"t, whether it wuz right and best to influence the souls of the young till they burnt at white heat with the spirit that our Lord said his disciples must avoid, for said he: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."
Well, it is a deep question, deeper than I"ve got a line to measure; and Josiah"s line and mine both tied together don"t begin to touch the bottom on"t, for we"ve tried it time and agin. We"ve argyed aginst each other about it, and jined on and hitched our arguments together, and they didn"t touch bottom then, nor begin to. As Mrs. Browning said (a woman I set store by, and always did, I"ve hearn Thomas J. read about her so much): "A country"s a thing men should die for at need."
Yes, to die for, if its safety is imperilled, that I believe and Josiah duz, but I have eppisoded about it a sight, I"ve had to. I methought how this nation wuz stirred to its deepest depths; how it seethed and boiled with indignation and wrath because three hundred of its sons wuz killed by ignorant and vicious means; how it breathed out vengeance on the cause that slew them; how it called To Arms! To Arms!
Remember the _Maine_! But how cool and demute it stood, or ruther sot, and see every year sixty thousand of its best sons slain by the saloon, ten-fold more cruel deaths, too, since the soul and mind wuz slain before their bodies went. No cry for vengeance as the long procession of the dead wheeled by the doors of the law-makers of the land; no cry: "To arms! to arms! Remember the Saloon." And more mysterious still, I eppisoded to myself, it would have looked to see the Government rig out and sell to the Spaniards a million more bombs and underground mines to blow up the rest of our ships and kill thousands more of our young men. Wouldn"t it have looked dog queer to the other nations of the world to have seen it done?
But there they sot, our law-makers, and if they lifted their eyes at all to witness the long procession of the dead drift by, sixty thousand corpses yearly slain by the Saloon, if they lifted their eyes at all to look at the ghastly procession, they dropped "em agin quick as they could so"s not to delay their work of signin" licenses, makin"
new laws, fixin" over old ones, and writin" permits to the murderers to go on with their butchery. Queer sight! queer in the sight of other nations, in the sight of men and angels, and of me and Josiah.
Well, to stop eppisodin" and resoom backwards for a spell. Alan Thorne hearn that cry: "To arms! To arms!" And his very soul listened. His grandfathers on both sides wuz fighting men; at school and college he"d been trained in a soldier regiment, and had been steeped full of warlike idees, and they all waked up at his cry for vengeance. He had just got to go; it wuz to be. Heaven and Waitstill couldn"t help it; he had to go; he went.
Well, Waitstill read his letters as well as she could through her blindin" tears; letters at first full of love--the very pa.s.sion of love and tenderness for his sweetheart, and deathless patriotism and love for his country.
But bime-by the letters changed a little in their tones--they wuzn"t so full of love for his country. "The country," so he writ, "wuz shamefully neglecting its sons, neglecting their comfort." He writ they wuz herded together in quarters not fit for a dog, with insufficient food; putrid, dretful food, that no dog would or could eat. No care taken of their health--and as for the health of their souls, no matter where they wuz, if half starved or half clad, the Canteen was always present with "em; if they could git nothin" else for their comfort, they could always git the cup that the Bible sez: "Cursed is he that puts it to his neighbor"s lips." Doubly cursed now--poisoned with adulteration, makin" it a still more deadly pizen.
Well, sickened with loathsome food he could not eat, half starved, the deadly typhoid hovering over the wretched soldier, is it any wonder that as the tempter held the gla.s.s to his lips (the tempter being the Government he wuz fightin" for) the tempted yielded and drank?
The letters Waitstill got grew shorter and cooler, as the tempter led Alan deeper and deeper into his castle of Ruin where the demon sets and gloats over its victims. When the Canteen had done its work on the crazed brain and imbruted body, other sins and evils our Government had furnished and licensed, stood ready to draw him still further along the down-grade whose end is death.
Finally the letters stopped, and then Waitstill, whose heart wuz broke, jined the n.o.ble army of nurses and went forward to the front, always hunting for the one beloved, and, as she feared, lost to her.
And she found him. The very day that Alan Thorne, in a drunken brawl, killed Arvilly"s husband with a bullet meant for another drunken youth, these wimmen met. A rough lookin" soldier knelt down by the dead man, a weepin" woman fell faintin" on his still, dead heart; this soldier ("twas Arville) wuz sick in bed for a week, Waitstill tendin"
him, or her I might as well say, for Arville owned to her in her weakness that she wuz a woman; yes, Waitstill tended her faithfully, white and demute with agony, but kep" up with the hope that the Government that had ruined her lover would be lenient towards the crime it had caused. For she reasoned it out in a woman"s way. She told Arvilly "that Alan would never have drank had not the Government put the cup to his lips, and of course the Government could not consistently condemn what it had caused to be." She reasoned it out from what she had learnt of justice and right in the Bible.
But Arvilly told her--for as quick as she got enough strength she wuz the same old Arvilly agin, only ten times more bent on fightin" aginst the Drink Demon that murdered her husband. Sez Arvilly: "You don"t take into consideration the Tariff and Saloon arguments of apologizin"
Church and State, the tax money raised from dead men, and ruined lives and broken hearts to support poor-houses and jails and police to take care of their victims." No; Waitstill reasoned from jest plain Bible, but of course she found out her mistake. Arvilly said: "You"ll find the nation that opens its sessions with prayer, and engraves on its money, "In G.o.d We Trust," don"t believe in such things. You"ll find their prayers are to the liquor dealers; their G.o.d is the huge idol of Expediency."
Alan Thorne wuz hung for the murder, guilty, so the earthly court said. But who wuz sot down guilty in G.o.d"s great book of Justice that day? Arvilly believes that over Alan Thorne"s name wuz printed:
"Alan Thorne, foolish boy, tempted and ondone by the country he was trying to save." And then this sentence in fiery flame: