_The Harringtons--The village magnate--A young hoodlum--On the road to school--The first woman--Disgrace, and a girl"s will--An unfortunate coincidence--In trouble again--May loses faith--The end of Jasonville--Discharged--A loan--Charity--The positive young lady hopes I shall start right--The lake front once more--I preach myself a good sermon_
The Harringtons were pretty well known in Greene County, Indiana. Father moved to Jasonville just after the war, when the place was not much more than a cross-roads with a prospect of a railroad sometime. Ours was the first brick house, built after the kind he and mother used to know back in York State. And he set up the largest general store in that district and made money. Then he lost most of it when the oil boom first came.
Mother and he set great store by education,--if father hadn"t gone to the war he wouldn"t have been keeping a country store,--and they helped start the first township high school in our part of the state. And he sent Will, my older brother, and me to the Methodist school at Eureka, which was the best he could do for us. There wasn"t much learning to be had in Eureka "College," however; the two or three old preachers and women who composed the faculty were too busy trying to keep the boys from playing cards and smoking or chewing to teach us much.
Perhaps I was a bit of a hoodlum as a boy, anyway. The trouble started with the judge--Judge Sorrell. He was a local light, who held a mortgage on "most everything in town (including our store--after father went into oil). We boys had always heard at home how hard and mean the judge was, and dishonest, too; for in some of the oil deals he had tricked folks out of their property. It wasn"t so strange, then, that we youngsters took liberties with the judge"s belongings that the older folks did not dare to. The judge"s fine stock used to come in from the field done up, raced to death, and the orchard by the creek just out of town (which had belonged to us once) rarely brought a good crop to maturity. We made ourselves believe that the judge didn"t really own it, and treated him as a trespa.s.ser. So one night, when the judge made a hasty visit to our house after one of the "raids," my father found me in bed with a wet suit of clothes on, which I had been forced to sacrifice in the creek.
The end of that lark was that father had to pay a good sum for my private interpretation of the laws of property, and I spent the rest of the summer on a farm doing a man"s work.
Perhaps if it hadn"t been for that ducking in the river and what followed, I might have come out just a plain thief. While I was sweating on that farm I saw the folly of running against common notions about property. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted what my neighbor considered to be his, I must get the law to do the business for me. For the first time it dawned on me how wonderful is that system which shuts up one man in jail for taking a few dollars" worth of truck that doesn"t belong to him, and honors the man who steals his millions--if he robs in the legal way! Yes, the old judge knocked some good worldly sense into me.
(Nevertheless, old Sorrell needn"t have hounded me after I came back to Jasonville, and carried his malice to the point of keeping me from getting a job when I was hoping to make a fair start so that I could ask May Rudge to marry me. But all that was some time later.)
May was one of that handful of young women who in those days stood being sneered at for wanting to go to college with their brothers. We were in the same cla.s.ses at Eureka two years before I noticed her much. She was little and pale and delicate--with serious, cold gray eyes, and a mouth that was always laughing at you. I can see to-day the very spot where she stood when I first spoke to her. Good weather I used to drive over from father"s to Eureka, and one spring morning I happened to drive by the Rudge farm on my way to school instead of taking the pike, which was shorter. There was a long level stretch of road straightaway between two pieces of green meadow, and there, ahead of me, I saw the girl, walking steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I slowed up with the idea that she might give me a nod or a word; but she kept her pace as though she were thinking of things too far off to notice a horse and buggy on the road. Somehow I wanted to make her speak. Pretty soon I said:--
"Won"t you ride to school with me, Miss May?"
Then she turned her head, not the least fl.u.s.tered like other girls, and looked me square in the eye for a minute. I knew she was wondering what made me speak to her then, for the boys at school never took notice of the college girls. But she got into the buggy and sat prim and solemn by my side. We jogged along between the meadows, which were bright with flowers and the soft, green gra.s.s of spring. The big timber along the roadside and between the pasture lands had just leaved out, and the long branches hung daintily in the misty morning air. All of a sudden I felt mighty happy to be there with her. I think her first words were,--"Do you come this way often?"
"Perhaps I shall be coming this way oftener now," I made bold to answer.
Her lips trembled in a little ironical smile, and the least bit of red sprang into her white face. I said, "It isn"t as short as the pike, but it is a prettier road."
The smile deepened, and I had it on my tongue to add, "I shall be coming this way every morning if you will ride with me." But I was afraid of that smiling mouth.
(Of course I didn"t tell his Honor all this, but I add it now, together with other matters that concern me and belong here. It will help to explain what happened later.)
So that fine spring morning, when I was seventeen, I first took note of what a woman is. The rest of that year I used to drive the prim little girl back and forth between her father"s farm and school. I was no scholar like her, and she never went about with the other girls to parties. She wasn"t in the least free and easy with the boys. In those days most girls didn"t think much of a fellow who wouldn"t take his chances to kiss them when he could. Evenings, when we called, we used to pull the parlor door to and sit holding hands with the young woman of our admiration. And no harm ever came of it that I know: most of those girls made good wives when the time came, for all they were easy and tender and ready to make love in the days of their youth.
But once, when I tried to put my arm about May Rudge, as we were driving along the lonely road, she turned and looked at me out of those cold gray eyes. Her mouth rippled in that little ironical way, as if she were laughing down in her mind. She never said a word or pulled away from me, but I didn"t care to go on.
May gave me ambition, and she made me want to be steady and good, though she never said anything about it. But now and then I would break away and get myself into some fool sc.r.a.pe. Such was the time when I came back from a Terre Haute party pretty light-headed, and went with some others to wake up the old Methodist president of the college. I don"t remember what happened then, but the next morning at chapel the old boy let loose on "wine and wantoning," and called me by name. I knew that I had done for myself at Eureka, and I was pretty mad to be singled out for reprobation from all the offenders. I got up from my seat and walked out while the school stared. As I was getting my horse from the place where I kept it, May Rudge came into the yard.
"You aren"t going this way?" she demanded quickly.
"I don"t see as there"s much use waiting for bouquets."
"You aren"t going without apologizing!" she flashed out.
To tell the truth, that had never occurred to me. It seemed she cared less for the disgrace than for the way I took it. So in the end, before I left town, I drove up to the president"s house, apologized, and got my dismissal in due form, and was told I should go to h.e.l.l unless I was converted straightway. Then May drove down the street with me in face of the whole school, who contrived to be there to see my departure.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then._]
"I guess this ends my education, and being a lawyer, and all that," I said gloomily, as we drew near the Rudge farm. "Dad will never forgive this. He thinks rum is the best road to h.e.l.l, the same as the old preacher. He won"t sell a gla.s.s of cider in the store."
"There are other kinds of work," she answered. "You can show them just the same you know what"s right."
"But you"ll never marry a man who isn"t educated," I said boldly.
"I"ll never marry a man who hasn"t principles--and religion," she replied without a blush.
"So I must be good and pious, as well as educated?"
"You must be a man"--and her lips curved ironically--"and now you are just a boy."
But I held her hand when I helped her from the buggy, and I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Earning mighty little but my keep._]
Father and mother took my expulsion from school very hard, as I expected. Father especially--who had begun to brag somewhat at the store about my being a lawyer and beating the judge out--was so bitter that I told him if he would give me fifty dollars I would go off somewhere and never trouble him again.
"You ask me to give you fifty dollars to go to h.e.l.l with!" he shouted out.
"Put me in the store, then, and let me earn it. Give me the same money you give Will."
But father didn"t want me around the store for folks to see. So I had to go out to a farm once more, to a place that father was working on shares with a Swede. I spent the better part of two years on that farm, living with the old Swede, and earning mighty little but my keep. For father gave me a dollar now and then, but no regular wages. I could get sight of May only on a Sunday. She was teaching her first school in another county. Father and mother Rudge had never liked me: they looked higher for May than to marry a poor farm-hand, who had a bad name in the town.
My brother Will, who was a quiet, church-going fellow, had learned his way to the Rudge place by this time, and the old people favored him.
After a while I heard of a chance in a surveyor"s office at Terre Haute, but old Sorrell, who had more business than any ten men in that part of the country, met the surveyor on the train, and when I reached the office there wasn"t any job for me. That night, when I got back from Terre Haute, I told my folks that I was going to Chicago. The next day I asked my father again for some money. Mother answered for him:--
"Will don"t ask us for money. It won"t be fair to him."
"So he"s to have the store and my girl too," I said bitterly.
"May Rudge isn"t the girl to marry a young man who"s wild."
"I"ll find that out for myself!"
Always having had a pretty fair opinion of myself, I found it hard to be patient and earn good-will by my own deserts. So I said rather foolishly to father:--
"Will you give me a few dollars to start me with? I have earned it all right, and I am asking you for the last time."
It was a kind of threat, and I am sorry enough for it now. I suspect he hadn"t the money, for things were going badly with him. He answered pretty warmly that I should wait a long time before he gave me another dollar to throw away. I turned on my heel without a word to him or mother, and went out of the house with the resolve not to return.
But before I left Jasonville to make my plunge into the world I would see May Rudge. I wanted to say to her: "Which will you have? Choose now!" So I turned about and started for the Rudge farm, which was about a mile from the town, beyond the old place on the creek that used to belong to us. Judge Sorrell had put up a large new barn on the place, where he kept some fine blooded stock that he had been at considerable expense to import. I had never been inside the barn, and as I pa.s.sed it that afternoon, it came into my mind, for no particular reason, to turn in at the judge"s farm and go by the new building. Maybe I thought the old judge would be around somewhere, and I should have the chance before I left Jasonville to tell him what I thought of his dirty, sneaking ways.
But there was no one in the big barn, apparently, or anywhere on the place, and after looking about for a little I went on to May"s. I came up to the Rudge farm from the back, having taken a cut across the fields.
As I drew near the house I saw Will and May sitting under an apple tree talking. I walked on slowly, my anger somehow rising against them both.
There was nothing wrong in their being there--nothing at all; but I was ready to fire at the first sign. By the looks of it, mother was right: they were already sweethearts. Will seemed to have something very earnest to say to May. He took hold of one of her hands, and she didn"t draw it away at once.... There wasn"t anything more to keep me in Jasonville.
I kept right on up the country road, without much notion of where I was going to, too hot and angry to think about anything but those two under the apple tree. I had not gone far before I heard behind me a great rushing noise, like the sudden sweep of a tornado, and then a following roar. I looked up across the fields, and there was the judge"s fine new barn one ma.s.s of red flame and black smoke. It was roaring so that I could hear it plainly a quarter of a mile away. Naturally, I started to run for the fire, and ran hard all the way across the fields. By the time I got there some men from town had arrived and were rushing around crazily. But they hadn"t got out the live stock, and there was no chance now to save a hen. The judge drove up presently, and we all stood around and stared at the fire. After a time I began to think it was time for me to move on if I was to get to any place that night. I slipped off and started up the road once more. I hadn"t gone far, however, before I was overtaken by a buggy in which was one of the men who had been at the fire.
"Where be yer goin", Van?" he asked peremptorily.
"I don"t know as I am called on to tell you, Sam," I answered back.
"Yes, you be," he said more kindly. "I guess you"ll have to jump right in here, anyways, and ride back with me. The judge wants to ask you a few questions about this here fire."