Copper Streak Trail Part 13

CHAPTER VIII

The hills send down a b.u.t.tress to the north; against it the Susquehanna flows swift and straight for a little s.p.a.ce, vainly chafing. Just where the high ridge breaks sharp and steep to the river's edge there is a gra.s.sy level, lulled by the sound of pleasant waters; there sleep the dead of Abingdon.

Here is a fair and n.o.ble prospect, which in Italy or in California had been world-famed; a beauty generous and gracious--valley, upland and hill and curving river. The hills are checkered to squares, cleared fields and green-black woods; inevitably the mind goes out to those who wrought here when the forest was unbroken, and so comes back to read on the headstones the names of the quiet dead: Hill, Barton, Clark, Green, Camp, Hunt, Catlin, Giles, Sherwood, Tracy, Jewett, Lane, Gibson, Holmes, Yates, Hopkins, Goodenow, Griswold, Steele. Something stirs at your hair-roots--these are the names of the English. A few st.u.r.dy Dutch names--Boyce, Steenburg, Van Lear--and a lonely French Mercereau; the rest are unmixed English.

Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in Abingdon; Abingdon is given over to fiery Dissenters--the Old-World word comes unbidden into your mouth. But you were not so far wrong; in prosperous Vesper, to westward, every one who pretends to be any one attends services at Saint Adalbert's, a church noted for its gracious and satisfying architecture. In Vesper the name of Henry VIII is revered and his example followed.

But the inquiring mind, seeking among the living bearers of these old names, suffers check and disillusion. There are no traditions. Their t.i.tle deeds trace back to c.o.xe's Manor, Nichols Patent, the Barton Tract, the Flint Purchase, Boston Ten Towns.h.i.+ps; but in-dwellers of the land know nothing of who or why was c.o.xe, or where stood his Manor House; have no memory of the Bostonians.

In Vesper there are genealogists who might tell you such things; old records that might prove them; old families, enjoying wealth and distinction without perceptible cause, with others of the ruling caste who may have some knowledge of these matters. Such grants were not uncommon in the Duke of York, his Province. In that good duke's day, and later, following the pleasant fas.h.i.+on set by that Pope who divided his world equally between Spain and Portugal, valleys and mountains were tossed to supple courtiers by men named Charles, James, William, or George, kings by the grace of G.o.d; the goodly land, the common wealth and birth-right of the unborn, was granted in princedom parcels to king's favorites, king's minions, to favorites of king's minions, for services often enough unspecified.

The toilers of Abingdon--of other Abingdons, perhaps--know none of these things. Winter has pushed them hard, summer been all too brief; life has been crowded with a feverish instancy of work. There is a vague memory of the Sullivan Expedition; once a year the early settlers, as a community enterprise, had brought salt from Syracuse; the forest had been rafted down the river; the rest is silence.

Perhaps this good old English stock, familiar for a thousand years with oppression and gentility, wonted to immemorial fraud, schooled by generations of cheerful teachers to speak no evil of dignities, to see everything for the best in the best of possible worlds, found no injustice in the granting of these broad manors--or, at least, no novelty worthy of mention to their sons. There is no whisper of ancient wrong; no hint or rankling of any irrevocable injustice.

Doubtless some of these land grants were made, at a later day, to soldiers of the Revolution. But the children of the Revolution maintain a not unbecoming unreticence as to all things Revolutionary; from their silence in this regard, as from the name of Manor, we may make safe inference. Doubtless many of the royalist estates were confiscated at that time. Doubtless, again, our Government, to encourage settlement, sold land in such large parcels in early days. Incurious Abingdon cares for none of these things. Singular Abingdon! And yet are these folk, indeed, so singular among citizens? So unseeing a people? Consider that, within the memory of men living, the wisdom of America has made free gift to the railroads, to encourage their building, of so much land as goes to the making of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; a notable encouragement!

History does not remark upon this little transaction, however. In some piecemeal fas.h.i.+on, a sentence here, a phrase elsewhere, with scores or hundreds of pages intervening, History does, indeed, make yawning allusion to some such trivial circ.u.mstance; refraining from comment in the most well-bred manner imaginable. It is only the ill-affected, the malcontents, who dwell upon such details. Is this not, indeed, a most beautiful world, and ours the land of opportunity, progress, education?

Let our faces, then, be ever glad and s.h.i.+ning. Let us tune ourselves with the Infinite; let a golden thread run through all our days; no frowns, no grouches, no scolding--no, no! No ingrat.i.tude for all the bounties of Providence. Let us, then, be up and doing.--Doing, certainly; but why not think a little too?

Why is thinking in such disfavor? Why is thinking, about subjects and things, the one crime never forgiven by respectability? We have given away our resources, what should have been our common wealth; we have squandered our land, wasted our forests. "Such trifles are not my business," interrupts History, rather feverish of manner; "my duty to record and magnify the affairs of the great."--Allow me, madam; we have given away our coal, the wealth of the past; our oil, the wealth of to-day; except we do presently think to some purpose, we shall give away our stored electricity, the wealth of the future--our water power which should, which must, remain ours and our children's. "_Socialist_!"

shrieks History.

The youth of Abingdon speak glibly of Shepherd Kings, Const.i.tution of Lycurgus, Thermopylae, Consul Duilius, or the Licinian Laws; the more advanced are even as far down as Elizabeth. For the rich and unmatched history of their own land, they have but a shallow patter of that; no guess at its high meaning, no hint of a possible destiny apart from glory and greed and war, a future and opportunity "too high for hate, too great for rivalry." The history of America is the story of the pioneer and the story of the immigrant. The students are taught nothing of the one or the other--except for the case of certain immigrant pioneers, enskied and sainted, who never left the hearing of the sea; a st.u.r.dy and stout-hearted folk enough, but something press-agented.

Outside of school the student hears no mention of living immigrant or pioneer save in terms of gibe and sneer and taunt. The color and high romance of his own towns.h.i.+p is a thing undreamed of, as vague and shapeless as the foundations of Enoch, the city of Cain. And for his own farmstead, though for the first time on earth a man made here a home; though valor blazed the path; though he laid the foundation of that house in hope and in love set up the gates of it, none knows the name of that man or of his bolder mate. There are no traditions--and no ballads.

A seven-mile stretch of the river follows the outlines of a sickle, or, if you are not familiar with sickles, of a handmade figure five. Abingdon lies at the sickle point, prosperous Vesper at the end of the handle; Vesper, the county seat, abode of lawyers and doctors--some bankers, too.

Home also of retired business men, of retired farmers; home of old families, hereditary county officials, legislators.

Overarched with maples, the old road parallels the river bend, a mile away. The broad and fertile bottom land within the loop of this figure five is divided into three great farms--"gentlemen's estates." The gentlemen are absentees all.

A most desirable neighborhood; the only traces of democracy on the river road are the schoolhouse and the cemetery. Malvern and Brookfield were owned respectively by two generals, gallant soldiers of the Civil War, successful lawyers, since, of New York City. Stately, high-columned Colonial houses, far back from the road; the cl.u.s.tered tenant houses, the vast barns, long red tobacco sheds--all are eloquent of a time when lumber was the cheapest factor of living.

The one description serves for the two farms. These men had been boys together, their careers the same; they had married sisters. But the red tobacco sheds of Malvern were only three hundred feet long--this general had left a leg at Malvern Hill--while the Brookfield sheds stretched full five hundred feet. At Brookfield, too, were the great racing-stables, of fabulous acreage; disused now and falling to decay. One hundred and sixty thoroughbreds had sheltered here of old, with an army of grooms and trainers. There had been a race-track--an oval mile at first, a kite-shaped mile in later days. Year by year now sees the stables torn down and carted away for other uses, but the strong-built paddocks remain to witness the greatness of days departed.

Nearest to Vesper, on the smallest of the three farms, stood the largest of the three houses--The Meadows; better known as the Mitch.e.l.l House.

McClintock, a foreigner from Philadelphia, married a Mitch.e.l.l in '67. A good family, highly connected, the Mitch.e.l.ls; brilliant, free-handed, great travelers; something wildish, the younger men--boys will be boys.

In a silent, undemonstrative manner of his own McClintock gathered the loose money in and about Vesper; a shrewd bargainer, ungiven to merrymakings; one who knew how to keep dollars at work. It is worthy of note that no after hint of ill dealing attached to these years. In his own bleak way the man dealt justly; not without a prudent liberality as well. For debtors deserving, industrious, and honest, he observed a careful and exact kindness, pa.s.sing by his dues cheerfully, to take them at a more convenient season. Where death had been, long sickness, unmerited misfortune--he did not stop there; advancing further sums for a tiding-over, after careful consideration of needs and opportunities, coupled with a reasonable expectation of repayment; cheerfully taking any security at hand, taking the security of character as cheerfully when he felt himself justified; in good time exacting his dues to the last penny--still cheerfully. Not heartless, either; in cases of extreme distress--more than once or twice--McClintock had both written off the obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but not unkindly fas.h.i.+on; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this; a dry, pa.s.sionless, pertinacious man.

McClintock bought the Mitch.e.l.l House in the seventies--boys still continuing to be boyish--and there, a decade later, his wife died, childless.

McClintock disposed of his takings un.o.bserved, holding Mitch.e.l.l House only, and slipped away to New York or elsewhere. The rents of Mitch.e.l.l House were absorbed by a shadowy, almost mythical agent, whose name you always forgot until you hunted up the spidery signature on the receipts given by the bank for your rent money.

Except for a curious circ.u.mstance connected with Mitch.e.l.l House, McClintock had been quite forgotten of Vesper and Abingdon. The great house was much in demand as a summer residence; those old oak-walled rooms were s.p.a.cious and comfortable, if not artistic; the house was admirably kept up. It was in the most desirable neighborhood; there was fis.h.i.+ng and boating; the situation was "sightly." We borrow the last word from the hill folk, the presentee landlords; the producers, or, to put it quite bluntly, the workers.

As the years slipped by, it crept into common knowledge that not every one could obtain a lease of Mitch.e.l.l House. Applicants, Vesperian or "foreigners," were kept waiting; almost as if the invisible agent were examining into their eligibility. And it began to be observed that leaseholders were invariably light, frivolous, pleasure-loving people, such as kept the big house crowded with youth and folly, to company youth of its own. Such lessees were like to make agriculture a mockery; the Mitch.e.l.l Place, as a farm, became a hissing, and a proverb, and an astonishment: a circ.u.mstance so singularly at variance with remembered thrift of the reputed owner as to keep green that owner's name. Nor was that all. As youth became mature and wise, in the sad heartrending fas.h.i.+on youth has, or flitted to new hearths, in that other heartbreaking way of youth, it was noted that leases were not to be renewed on any terms; and the new tenants, in turn, were ever such light and unthrift folk as the old, always with tall sons and gay daughters--as if the mythical agent or his ghostly princ.i.p.al had set apart that old house to mirth and joy and laughter, to youth and love. It was remembered then, on certain struggling hill farms, that old McClintock had been childless; and certain hill babies were cuddled the closer for that.

Then, thirty years later, or forty--some such matter--McClintock slipped back to Vesper unheralded--very many times a millionaire; incidentally a hopeless invalid, sentenced for life to a wheeled chair; Vesper's most successful citizen.

Silent, uncomplaining, unapproachable, and grim, he kept to his rooms in the Iroquois, oldest of Vesper's highly modern hotels; or was wheeled abroad by his one attendant, who was valet, confidant, factotum, and friend--Cornelius Van Lear, withered, parchment-faced, and brown, strikingly like Rameses II as to appearance and garrulity. It was to Van Lear that Vesper owed the known history of those forty years of McClintock's. Closely questioned, the trusted confidant had once yielded to cajolery.

"We've been away," said Van Lear.

It was remarked that the inexplicable Mitch.e.l.l House policy remained in force in the years since McClintock's return; witness the present inc.u.mbent, frivolous Thompson, foreigner from Buffalo--him and his house parties! It was Mitch.e.l.l House still, mauger the McClintock millions and a half-century of possession. Whether this clinging to the old name was tribute to the free-handed Mitch.e.l.ls or evidence of fine old English firmness is a matter not yet determined.

The free-handed Mitch.e.l.ls themselves, as a family, were no more. They had scattered, married or died, lost their money, gone to work, or otherwise disappeared. Vesper kept knowledge of but two of them: Lawyer Oscar, solid, steady, highly respectable, already in the way of becoming Squire Mitch.e.l.l, and like to better the Mitch.e.l.l tradition of prosperity--a warm man, a getting-on man, not to mention that he was the older nephew and probable heir to the McClintock millions; and Oscar's cousin, Stanley, youngest nephew of the millions, who, three years ago, had defied McClintock to his face. Stan Mitch.e.l.l had always been wild, even as a boy, they said; they remembered now.

It seemed that McClintock had commanded young Stan to break his engagement to that Selden girl--the schoolma'am at Brookfield, my dear--one of the hill people. There had been a terrible scene.

Earl Dawson was staying at the Iroquois and his door happened to be open a little.

"Then you'll get none of my money!" said the old gentleman.

"To h.e.l.l with your money!" Stan said, and slammed the door.

He was always a dreadful boy, my dear! So violent and headstrong! Always picking on my poor Johnny at school; Johnny came home once with the most dreadful bruise over his eye--Stanley's work.

So young Stan flung away to the West three years ago. The Selden girl still teaches the Brookfield District; Stan Mitch.e.l.l writes to her, the mail carrier says. No-o; not so bad-looking, exactly--in that common sort of way!

CHAPTER IX

"Far be it from me to--to--"

"Cavil or carp?"

"Exactly. Thank you. Beautiful line! Quite Kipling. Far from me to cavil or carp, Tum-tee-tum-tee-didy, Or s.h.i.+ft the shuttle from web or warp. And all for my dark-eyed lydy! Far be it from me, as above. Nevertheless--"

"Why, then, the exertion?"

"Duty. Friends.h.i.+p. Francis Charles Boland, you're lazy."

"Ferdie," said Francis Charles, "you are right. I am."

"Too lazy to defend yourself against the charge of being lazy?"

"Not at all. The calm repose; that sort of thing--what?"

Mr. Boland's face a.s.sumed the patient expression of one misjudged.