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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor White, by Sherwood Anderson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poor White
+
+Author: Sherwood Anderson
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7414]
+This file was first posted on April 26, 2003
+Last Updated: July 5, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR WHITE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, William Flis and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        POOR WHITE
+
+
+                        A NOVEL BY
+
+                    SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+                         AUTHOR OF
+
+                     WINESBURG, OHIO
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TO
+
+                TENNESSEE MITCHELL ANDERSON
+
+
+
+[Note: The evident misprint of Book Six for Book Five in the original is
+preserved here.]
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on
+the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri.
+It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a
+narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back
+from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was
+almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow
+and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who
+seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They
+were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the
+town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor
+tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system, could not get pay
+for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the
+shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work
+they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold
+their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who
+drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always
+could be found for the purpose of getting drunk.
+
+Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth
+but before Hugh was born had moved into town to find employment in a
+tannery. The tannery ran for a year or two and then failed, but John
+McVey stayed in town. He also became a drunkard. It was the easy obvious
+thing for him to do. During the time of his employment in the tannery he
+had been married and his son had been born. Then his wife died and the
+idle workman took his child and went to live in a tiny fishing shack
+by the river. How the boy lived through the next few years no one ever
+knew. John McVey loitered in the streets and on the river bank and
+only awakened out of his habitual stupor when, driven by hunger or the
+craving for drink, he went for a day's work in some farmer's field at
+harvest time or joined a number of other idlers for an adventurous trip
+down river on a lumber raft. The baby was left shut up in the shack by
+the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled blanket. Soon after he
+was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work in order that he
+might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town at the heels of his
+father. The two found work, which the boy did while the man lay sleeping
+in the sun. They cleaned cisterns, swept out stores and saloons and at
+night went with a wheelbarrow and a box to remove and dump in the river
+the contents of out-houses. At fourteen Hugh was as tall as his father
+and almost without education. He could read a little and could write his
+own name, had picked up these accomplishments from other boys who came
+to fish with him in the river, but he had never been to school. For days
+sometimes he did nothing but lie half asleep in the shade of a bush on
+the river bank. The fish he caught on his more industrious days he sold
+for a few cents to some housewife, and thus got money to buy food for
+his big growing indolent body. Like an animal that has come to its
+maturity he turned away from his father, not because of resentment for
+his hard youth, but because he thought it time to begin to go his own
+way.
+
+In his fourteenth year and when the boy was on the point of sinking into
+the sort of animal-like stupor in which his father had lived, something
+happened to him. A railroad pushed its way down along the river to his
+town and he got a job as man of all work for the station master. He
+swept out the station, put trunks on trains, mowed the grass in the
+station yard and helped in a hundred odd ways the man who held the
+combined jobs of ticket seller, baggage master and telegraph operator at
+the little out-of-the-way place.
+
+Hugh began a little to awaken. He lived with his employer, Henry
+Shepard, and his wife, Sarah Shepard, and for the first time in his life
+sat down regularly at table. His life, lying on the river bank through
+long summer afternoons or sitting perfectly still for endless hours in
+a boat, had bred in him a dreamy detached outlook on life. He found it
+hard to be definite and to do definite things, but for all his stupidity
+the boy had a great store of patience, a heritage perhaps from his
+mother. In his new place the station master's wife, Sarah Shepard, a
+sharp-tongued, good-natured woman, who hated the town and the people
+among whom fate had thrown her, scolded at him all day long. She treated
+him like a child of six, told him how to sit at table, how to hold his
+fork when he ate, how to address people who came to the house or to
+the station. The mother in her was aroused by Hugh's helplessness and,
+having no children of her own, she began to take the tall awkward boy
+to her heart. She was a small woman and when she stood in the house
+scolding the great stupid boy who stared down at her with his small
+perplexed eyes, the two made a picture that afforded endless amusement
+to her husband, a short fat bald-headed man who went about clad in blue
+overalls and a blue cotton shirt. Coming to the back door of his house,
+that was within a stone's throw of the station, Henry Shepard stood with
+his hand on the door-jamb and watched the woman and the boy. Above the
+scolding voice of the woman his own voice arose. "Look out, Hugh," he
+called. "Be on the jump, lad! Perk yourself up. She'll be biting you if
+you don't go mighty careful in there."
+
+Hugh got little money for his work at the railroad station but for the
+first time in his life he began to fare well. Henry Shepard bought
+the boy clothes, and his wife, Sarah, who was a master of the art of
+cooking, loaded the table with good things to eat. Hugh ate until both
+the man and woman declared he would burst if he did not stop. Then when
+they were not looking he went into the station yard and crawling under
+a bush went to sleep. The station master came to look for him. He cut a
+switch from the bush and began to beat the boy's bare feet. Hugh awoke
+and was overcome with confusion. He got to his feet and stood trembling,
+half afraid he was to be driven away from his new home. The man and the
+confused blushing boy confronted each other for a moment and then the
+man adopted the method of his wife and began to scold. He was annoyed at
+what he thought the boy's indolence and found a hundred little tasks
+for him to do. He devoted himself to finding tasks for Hugh, and when he
+could think of no new ones, invented them. "We will have to keep the big
+lazy fellow on the jump. That's the secret of things," he said to his
+wife.
+
+The boy learned to keep his naturally indolent body moving and his
+clouded sleepy mind fixed on definite things. For hours he plodded
+straight ahead, doing over and over some appointed task. He forgot the
+purpose of the job he had been given to do and did it because it was
+a job and would keep him awake. One morning he was told to sweep the
+station platform and as his employer had gone away without giving him
+additional tasks and as he was afraid that if he sat down he would fall
+into the odd detached kind of stupor in which he had spent so large
+a part of his life, he continued to sweep for two or three hours. The
+station platform was built of rough boards and Hugh's arms were very
+powerful. The broom he was using began to go to pieces. Bits of it flew
+about and after an hour's work the platform looked more uncleanly than
+when he began. Sarah Shepard came to the door of her house and stood
+watching. She was about to call to him and to scold him again for his
+stupidity when a new impulse came to her. She saw the serious determined
+look on the boy's long gaunt face and a flash of understanding came to
+her. Tears came into her eyes and her arms ached to take the great boy
+and hold him tightly against her breast. With all her mother's soul she
+wanted to protect Hugh from a world she was sure would treat him always
+as a beast of burden and would take no account of what she thought of
+as the handicap of his birth. Her morning's work was done and without
+saying anything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform
+laboriously sweeping, she went out at the front door of the house and
+to one of the town stores. There she bought a half dozen books, a
+geography, an arithmetic, a speller and two or three readers. She
+had made up her mind to become Hugh McVey's school teacher and with
+characteristic energy did not put the matter off, but went about it
+at once. When she got back to her house and saw the boy still going
+doggedly up and down the platform, she did not scold but spoke to him
+with a new gentleness in her manner. "Well, my boy, you may put the
+broom away now and come to the house," she suggested. "I've made up my
+mind to take you for my own boy and I don't want to be ashamed of you.
+If you're going to live with me I can't have you growing up to be a lazy
+good-for-nothing like your father and the other men in this hole of a
+place. You'll have to learn things and I suppose I'll have to be your
+teacher.
+
+"Come on over to the house at once," she added sharply, making a quick
+motion with her hand to the boy who with the broom in his hands stood
+stupidly staring. "When a job is to be done there's no use putting it
+off. It's going to be hard work to make an educated man of you, but it
+has to be done. We might as well begin on your lessons at once."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh McVey lived with Henry Shepard and his wife until he became a grown
+man. After Sarah Shepard became his school teacher things began to go
+better for him. The scolding of the New England woman, that had but
+accentuated his awkwardness and stupidity, came to an end and life in
+his adopted home became so quiet and peaceful that the boy thought of
+himself as one who had come into a kind of paradise. For a time the two
+older people talked of sending him to the town school, but the woman
+objected. She had begun to feel so close to Hugh that he seemed a part
+of her own flesh and blood and the thought of him, so huge and ungainly,
+sitting in a school room with the children of the town, annoyed and
+irritated her. In imagination she saw him being laughed at by other boys
+and could not bear the thought. She did not like the people of the town
+and did not want Hugh to associate with them.
+
+Sarah Shepard had come from a people and a country quite different in
+its aspect from that in which she now lived. Her own people, frugal New
+Englanders, had come West in the year after the Civil War to take up
+cut-over timber land in the southern end of the state of Michigan.
+The daughter was a grown girl when her father and mother took up the
+westward journey, and after they arrived at the new home, had worked
+with her father in the fields. The land was covered with huge stumps
+and was difficult to farm but the New Englanders were accustomed to
+difficulties and were not discouraged. The land was deep and rich and
+the people who had settled upon it were poor but hopeful. They felt
+that every day of hard work done in clearing the land was like laying
+up treasure against the future. In New England they had fought against
+a hard climate and had managed to find a living on stony unproductive
+soil. The milder climate and the rich deep soil of Michigan was, they
+felt, full of promise. Sarah's father like most of his neighbors had
+gone into debt for his land and for tools with which to clear and work
+it and every year spent most of his earnings in paying interest on a
+mortgage held by a banker in a nearby town, but that did not discourage
+him. He whistled as he went about his work and spoke often of a future
+of ease and plenty. "In a few years and when the land is cleared we'll
+make money hand over fist," he declared.
+
+When Sarah grew into young womanhood and went about among the young
+people in the new country, she heard much talk of mortgages and of
+the difficulty of making ends meet, but every one spoke of the hard
+conditions as temporary. In every mind the future was bright with
+promise. Throughout the whole Mid-American country, in Ohio, Northern
+Indiana and Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa a hopeful spirit prevailed.
+In every breast hope fought a successful war with poverty and
+discouragement. Optimism got into the blood of the children and later
+led to the same kind of hopeful courageous development of the whole
+western country. The sons and daughters of these hardy people no doubt
+had their minds too steadily fixed on the problem of the paying off of
+mortgages and getting on in the world, but there was courage in them. If
+they, with the frugal and sometimes niggardly New Englanders from whom
+they were sprung, have given modern American life a too material
+flavor, they have at least created a land in which a less determinedly
+materialistic people may in their turn live in comfort.
+
+In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellow
+defeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who had
+become Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed the blood
+of the pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She and her
+husband would, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while and then
+move on to a larger town and a better position in life. They would
+move on and up until the little fat man was a railroad president or a
+millionaire. It was the way things were done. She had no doubt of the
+future. "Do everything well," she said to her husband, who was perfectly
+satisfied with his position in life and had no exalted notions as to his
+future. "Remember to make your reports out neatly and clearly. Show them
+you can do perfectly the task given you to do, and you will be given
+a chance at a larger task. Some day when you least expect it something
+will happen. You will be called up into a position of power. We won't be
+compelled to stay in this hole of a place very long."
+
+The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the
+indolent farm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own
+people. Every afternoon when her housework was done she took the boy
+into the front room of the house and spent hours laboring with him over
+his lessons. She worked upon the problem of rooting the stupidity and
+dullness out of his mind as her father had worked at the problem of
+rooting the stumps out of the Michigan land. After the lesson for the
+day had been gone over and over until Hugh was in a stupor of mental
+weariness, she put the books aside and talked to him. With glowing
+fervor she made for him a picture of her own youth and the people and
+places where she had lived. In the picture she represented the New
+Englanders of the Michigan farming community as a strong god-like race,
+always honest, always frugal, and always pushing ahead. His own people
+she utterly condemned. She pitied him for the blood in his veins. The
+boy had then and all his life certain physical difficulties she could
+never understand. The blood did not flow freely through his long body.
+His feet and hands were always cold and there was for him an almost
+sensual satisfaction to be had from just lying perfectly still in the
+station yard and letting the hot sun beat down on him.
+
+Sarah Shepard looked upon what she called Hugh's laziness as a thing of
+the spirit. "You have got to get over it," she declared. "Look at your
+own people--poor white trash--how lazy and shiftless they are. You can't
+be like them. It's a sin to be so dreamy and worthless."
+
+Swept along by the energetic spirit of the woman, Hugh fought to
+overcome his inclination to give himself up to vaporous dreams. He
+became convinced that his own people were really of inferior stock, that
+they were to be kept away from and not to be taken into account. During
+the first year after he came to live with the Shepards, he sometimes
+gave way to a desire to return to his old lazy life with his father in
+the shack by the river. People got off steamboats at the town and took
+the train to other towns lying back from the river. He earned a little
+money by carrying trunks filled with clothes or traveling men's samples
+up an incline from the steamboat landing to the railroad station. Even
+at fourteen the strength in his long gaunt body was so great that he
+could out-lift any man in town, and he put one of the trunks on his
+shoulder and walked slowly and stolidly away with it as a farm horse
+might have walked along a country road with a boy of six perched on his
+back.
+
+The money earned in this way Hugh for a time gave to his father, and
+when the man had become stupid with drink he grew quarrelsome and
+demanded that the boy return to live with him. Hugh had not the spirit
+to refuse and sometimes did not want to refuse. When neither the station
+master nor his wife was about he slipped away and went with his father
+to sit for a half day with his back against the wall of the fishing
+shack, his soul at peace. In the sunlight he sat and stretched forth his
+long legs. His small sleepy eyes stared out over the river. A delicious
+feeling crept over him and for the moment he thought of himself as
+completely happy and made up his mind that he did not want to return
+again to the railroad station and to the woman who was so determined to
+arouse him and make of him a man of her own people.
+
+Hugh looked at his father asleep and snoring in the long grass on the
+river bank. An odd feeling of disloyalty crept over him and he became
+uncomfortable. The man's mouth was open and he snored lustily. From his
+greasy and threadbare clothing arose the smell of fish. Flies gathered
+in swarms and alighted on his face. Disgust took possession of Hugh.
+A flickering but ever recurring light came into his eyes. With all the
+strength of his awakening soul he struggled against the desire to give
+way to the inclination to stretch himself out beside the man and sleep.
+The words of the New England woman, who was, he knew, striving to lift
+him out of slothfulness and ugliness into some brighter and better way
+of life, echoed dimly in his mind. When he arose and went back along the
+street to the station master's house and when the woman there looked at
+him reproachfully and muttered words about the poor white trash of the
+town, he was ashamed and looked at the floor.
+
+Hugh began to hate his own father and his own people. He connected
+the man who had bred him with the dreaded inclination toward sloth in
+himself. When the farmhand came to the station and demanded the money
+he had earned by carrying trunks, he turned away and went across a
+dusty road to the Shepard's house. After a year or two he paid no more
+attention to the dissolute farmhand who came occasionally to the station
+to mutter and swear at him; and, when he had earned a little money, gave
+it to the woman to keep for him. "Well," he said, speaking slowly and
+with the hesitating drawl characteristic of his people, "if you give me
+time I'll learn. I want to be what you want me to be. If you stick to me
+I'll try to make a man of myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh McVey lived in the Missouri town under the tutelage of Sarah
+Shepard until he was nineteen years old. Then the station master gave up
+railroading and went back to Michigan. Sarah Shepard's father had died
+after having cleared one hundred and twenty acres of the cut-over timber
+land and it had been left to her. The dream that had for years lurked
+in the back of the little woman's mind and in which she saw bald-headed,
+good-natured Henry Shepard become a power in the railroad world had
+begun to fade. In newspapers and magazines she read constantly of other
+men who, starting from a humble position in the railroad service, soon
+became rich and powerful, but nothing of the kind seemed likely to
+happen to her husband. Under her watchful eye he did his work well and
+carefully but nothing came of it. Officials of the railroad sometimes
+passed through the town riding in private cars hitched to the end of one
+of the through trains, but the trains did not stop and the officials
+did not alight and, calling Henry out of the station, reward his
+faithfulness by piling new responsibilities upon him, as railroad
+officials did in such cases in the stories she read. When her father
+died and she saw a chance to again turn her face eastward and to live
+again among her own people, she told her husband to resign his position
+with the air of one accepting an undeserved defeat. The station master
+managed to get Hugh appointed in his place, and the two people went
+away one gray morning in October, leaving the tall ungainly young man in
+charge of affairs. He had books to keep, freight waybills to make out,
+messages to receive, dozens of definite things to do. Early in the
+morning before the train that was to take her away, came to the station,
+Sarah Shepard called the young man to her and repeated the instructions
+she had so often given her husband. "Do everything neatly and
+carefully," she said. "Show yourself worthy of the trust that has been
+given you."
+
+The New England woman wanted to assure the boy, as she had so often
+assured her husband, that if he would but work hard and faithfully
+promotion would inevitably come; but in the face of the fact that Henry
+Shepard had for years done without criticism the work Hugh was to do and
+had received neither praise nor blame from those above him, she found
+it impossible to say the words that arose to her lips. The woman and
+the son of the people among whom she had lived for five years and had
+so often condemned, stood beside each other in embarrassed silence.
+Stripped of her assurance as to the purpose of life and unable to repeat
+her accustomed formula, Sarah Shepard had nothing to say. Hugh's tall
+figure, leaning against the post that supported the roof of the front
+porch of the little house where she had taught him his lessons day after
+day, seemed to her suddenly old and she thought his long solemn face
+suggested a wisdom older and more mature than her own. An odd revulsion
+of feeling swept over her. For the moment she began to doubt the
+advisability of trying to be smart and to get on in life. If Hugh had
+been somewhat smaller of frame so that her mind could have taken hold of
+the fact of his youth and immaturity, she would no doubt have taken
+him into her arms and said words regarding her doubts. Instead she
+also became silent and the minutes slipped away as the two people stood
+before each other and stared at the floor of the porch. When the train
+on which she was to leave blew a warning whistle, and Henry Shepard
+called to her from the station platform, she put a hand on the lapel of
+Hugh's coat and drawing his face down, for the first time kissed him on
+the cheek. Tears came into her eyes and into the eyes of the young man.
+When he stepped across the porch to get her bag Hugh stumbled awkwardly
+against a chair. "Well, you do the best you can here," Sarah Shepard
+said quickly and then out of long habit and half unconsciously did
+repeat her formula. "Do little things well and big opportunities are
+bound to come," she declared as she walked briskly along beside Hugh
+across the narrow road and to the station and the train that was to bear
+her away.
+
+After the departure of Sarah and Henry Shepard Hugh continued to
+struggle with his inclination to give way to dreams. It seemed to him a
+struggle it was necessary to win in order that he might show his respect
+and appreciation of the woman who had spent so many long hours laboring
+with him. Although, under her tutelage, he had received a better
+education than any other young man of the river town, he had lost none
+of his physical desire to sit in the sun and do nothing. When he worked,
+every task had to be consciously carried on from minute to minute.
+After the woman left, there were days when he sat in the chair in the
+telegraph office and fought a desperate battle with himself. A queer
+determined light shone in his small gray eyes. He arose from the chair
+and walked up and down the station platform. Each time as he lifted one
+of his long feet and set it slowly down a special little effort had to
+be made. To move about at all was a painful performance, something he
+did not want to do. All physical acts were to him dull but necessary
+parts of his training for a vague and glorious future that was to come
+to him some day in a brighter and more beautiful land that lay in the
+direction thought of rather indefinitely as the East. "If I do not move
+and keep moving I'll become like father, like all of the people about
+here," Hugh said to himself. He thought of the man who had bred him
+and whom he occasionally saw drifting aimlessly along Main Street or
+sleeping away a drunken stupor on the river bank. He was disgusted with
+him and had come to share the opinion the station master's wife had
+always held concerning the people of the Missouri village. "They're a
+lot of miserable lazy louts," she had declared a thousand times, and
+Hugh, agreed with her, but sometimes wondered if in the end he might not
+also become a lazy lout. That possibility he knew was in him and for
+the sake of the woman as well as for his own sake he was determined it
+should not be so.
+
+The truth is that the people of Mudcat Landing were totally unlike any
+of the people Sarah Shepard had ever known and unlike the people Hugh
+was to know during his mature life. He who had come from a people not
+smart was to live among smart energetic men and women and be called
+a big man by them without in the least understanding what they were
+talking about.
+
+Practically all of the people of Hugh's home town were of Southern
+origin. Living originally in a land where all physical labor was
+performed by slaves, they had come to have a deep aversion to physical
+labor. In the South their fathers, having no money to buy slaves of
+their own and being unwilling to compete with slave labor, had tried to
+live without labor. For the most part they lived in the mountains
+and the hill country of Kentucky and Tennessee, on land too poor and
+unproductive to be thought worth cultivating by their rich slave-owning
+neighbors of the valleys and plains. Their food was meager and of an
+enervating sameness and their bodies degenerate. Children grew up long
+and gaunt and yellow like badly nourished plants. Vague indefinite
+hungers took hold of them and they gave themselves over to dreams.
+The more energetic among them, sensing dimly the unfairness of their
+position in life, became vicious and dangerous. Feuds started among them
+and they killed each other to express their hatred of life. When, in
+the years preceding the Civil War, a few of them pushed north along
+the rivers and settled in Southern Indiana and Illinois and in Eastern
+Missouri and Arkansas, they seemed to have exhausted their energy in
+making the voyage and slipped quickly back into their old slothful way
+of life. Their impulse to emigrate did not carry them far and but a few
+of them ever reached the rich corn lands of central Indiana, Illinois
+or Iowa or the equally rich land back from the river in Missouri or
+Arkansas. In Southern Indiana and Illinois they were merged into the
+life about them and with the infusion of new blood they a little awoke.
+They have tempered the quality of the peoples of those regions,
+made them perhaps less harshly energetic than their forefathers, the
+pioneers. In many of the Missouri and Arkansas river towns they have
+changed but little. A visitor to these parts may see them there to-day,
+long, gaunt, and lazy, sleeping their lives away and awakening out of
+their stupor only at long intervals and at the call of hunger.
+
+As for Hugh McVey, he stayed in his home town and among his own people
+for a year after the departure of the man and woman who had been father
+and mother to him, and then he also departed. All through the year he
+worked constantly to cure himself of the curse of indolence. When he
+awoke in the morning he did not dare lie in bed for a moment for fear
+indolence would overcome him and he would not be able to arise at all.
+Getting out of bed at once he dressed and went to the station. During
+the day there was not much work to be done and he walked for hours up
+and down the station platform. When he sat down he at once took up
+a book and put his mind to work. When the pages of the book became
+indistinct before his eyes and he felt within him the inclination
+to drift off into dreams, he again arose and walked up and down the
+platform. Having accepted the New England woman's opinion of his own
+people and not wanting to associate with them, his life became utterly
+lonely and his loneliness also drove him to labor.
+
+Something happened to him. Although his body would not and never did
+become active, his mind began suddenly to work with feverish eagerness.
+The vague thoughts and feelings that had always been a part of him but
+that had been indefinite, ill-defined things, like clouds floating far
+away in a hazy sky, began to grow definite. In the evening after his
+work was done and he had locked the station for the night, he did not go
+to the town hotel where he had taken a room and where he ate his meals,
+but wandered about town and along the road that ran south beside the
+great mysterious river. A hundred new and definite desires and hungers
+awoke in him. He began to want to talk with people, to know men and
+most of all to know women, but the disgust for his fellows in the town,
+engendered in him by Sarah Shepard's words and most of all by the things
+in his nature that were like their natures, made him draw back. When in
+the fall at the end of the year after the Shepards had left and he
+began living alone, his father was killed in a senseless quarrel with a
+drunken river man over the ownership of a dog, a sudden, and what seemed
+to him at the moment heroic resolution came to him. He went early one
+morning to one of the town's two saloon keepers, a man who had been his
+father's' nearest approach to a friend and companion, and gave him money
+to bury the dead man. Then he wired to the headquarters of the railroad
+company telling them to send a man to Mudcat Landing to take his place.
+On the afternoon of the day on which his father was buried, he bought
+himself a handbag and packed his few belongings. Then he sat down alone
+on the steps of the railroad station to wait for the evening train that
+would bring the man who was to replace him and that would at the same
+time take him away. He did not know where he intended to go, but knew
+that he wanted to push out into a new land and get among new people.
+He thought he would go east and north. He remembered the long summer
+evenings in the river town when the station master slept and his wife
+talked. The boy who listened had wanted to sleep also, but with the eyes
+of Sarah Shepard fixed on him, had not dared to do so. The woman had
+talked of a land dotted with towns where the houses were all painted in
+bright colors, where young girls dressed in white dresses went about in
+the evening, walking under trees beside streets paved with bricks, where
+there was no dust or mud, where stores were gay bright places filled
+with beautiful wares that the people had money to buy in abundance and
+where every one was alive and doing things worth while and none was
+slothful and lazy. The boy who had now become a man wanted to go to such
+a place. His work in the railroad station had given him some idea of the
+geography of the country and, although he could not have told whether
+the woman who had talked so enticingly had in mind her childhood in New
+England or her girlhood in Michigan, he knew in a general way that to
+reach the land and the people who were to show him by their lives the
+better way to form his own life, he must go east. He decided that the
+further east he went the more beautiful life would become, and that he
+had better not try going too far in the beginning. "I'll go into the
+northern part of Indiana or Ohio," he told himself. "There must be
+beautiful towns in those places."
+
+Hugh was boyishly eager to get on his way and to become at once a part
+of the life in a new place. The gradual awakening of his mind had
+given him courage, and he thought of himself as armed and ready for
+association with men. He wanted to become acquainted with and be
+the friend of people whose lives were beautifully lived and who were
+themselves beautiful and full of significance. As he sat on the steps
+of the railroad station in the poor little Missouri town with his bag
+beside him, and thought of all the things he wanted to do in life, his
+mind became so eager and restless that some of its restlessness was
+transmitted to his body. For perhaps the first time in his life he arose
+without conscious effort and walked up and down the station platform out
+of an excess of energy. He thought he could not bear to wait until the
+train came and brought the man who was to take his place. "Well, I'm
+going away, I'm going away to be a man among men," he said to himself
+over and over. The saying became a kind of refrain and he said
+it unconsciously. As he repeated the words his heart beat high in
+anticipation of the future he thought lay before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Hugh McVey left the town of Mudcat Landing in early September of the
+year eighteen eighty-six. He was then twenty years old and was six feet
+and four inches tall. The whole upper part of his body was immensely
+strong but his long legs were ungainly and lifeless. He secured a pass
+from the railroad company that had employed him, and rode north along
+the river in the night train until he came to a large town named
+Burlington in the State of Iowa. There a bridge went over the river, and
+the railroad tracks joined those of a trunk line and ran eastward toward
+Chicago; but Hugh did not continue his journey on that night. Getting
+off the train he went to a nearby hotel and took a room for the night.
+
+It was a cool clear evening and Hugh was restless. The town of
+Burlington, a prosperous place in the midst of a rich farming country,
+overwhelmed him with its stir and bustle. For the first time he saw
+brick-paved streets and streets lighted with lamps. Although it was
+nearly ten o'clock at night when he arrived, people still walked about
+in the streets and many stores were open.
+
+The hotel where he had taken a room faced the railroad tracks and stood
+at the corner of a brightly lighted street. When he had been shown to
+his room Hugh sat for a half hour by an open window, and then as he
+could not sleep, decided to go for a walk. For a time he walked in the
+streets where the people stood about before the doors of the stores but,
+as his tall figure attracted attention and he felt people staring at
+him, he went presently into a side street.
+
+In a few minutes he became utterly lost. He went through what seemed to
+him miles of streets lined with frame and brick houses, and occasionally
+passed people, but was too timid and embarrassed to ask his way. The
+street climbed upward and after a time he got into open country and
+followed a road that ran along a cliff overlooking the Mississippi
+River. The night was clear and the sky brilliant with stars. In the
+open, away from the multitude of houses, he no longer felt awkward and
+afraid, and went cheerfully along. After a time he stopped and stood
+facing the river. Standing on a high cliff and with a grove of trees
+at his back, the stars seemed to have all gathered in the eastern sky.
+Below him the water of the river reflected the stars. They seemed to be
+making a pathway for him into the East.
+
+The tall Missouri countryman sat down on a log near the edge of the
+cliff and tried to see the water in the river below. Nothing was visible
+but a bed of stars that danced and twinkled in the darkness. He had
+made his way to a place far above the railroad bridge, but presently a
+through passenger train from the West passed over it and the lights of
+the train looked also like stars, stars that moved and beckoned and that
+seemed to fly like flocks of birds out of the West into the East.
+
+For several hours Hugh sat on the log in the darkness. He decided that
+it was hopeless for him to find his way back to the hotel, and was glad
+of the excuse for staying abroad. His body for the first time in his
+life felt light and strong and his mind was feverishly awake. A buggy
+in which sat a young man and woman went along the road at his back,
+and after the voices had died away silence came, broken only at long
+intervals during the hours when he sat thinking of his future by
+the barking of a dog in some distant house or the churning of the
+paddle-wheels of a passing river boat.
+
+All of the early formative years of Hugh McVey's life had been spent
+within sound of the lapping of the waters of the Mississippi River. He
+had seen it in the hot summer when the water receded and the mud lay
+baked and cracked along the edge of the water; in the spring when the
+floods raged and the water went whirling past, bearing tree logs and
+even parts of houses; in the winter when the water looked deathly cold
+and ice floated past; and in the fall when it was quiet and still and
+lovely, and seemed to have sucked an almost human quality of warmth out
+of the red trees that lined its shores. Hugh had spent hours and days
+sitting or lying in the grass beside the river. The fishing shack in
+which he had lived with his father until he was fourteen years old was
+within a half dozen long strides of the river's edge, and the boy had
+often been left there alone for a week at a time. When his father had
+gone for a trip on a lumber raft or to work for a few days on some farm
+in the country back from the river, the boy, left often without money
+and with but a few loaves of bread, went fishing when he was hungry and
+when he was not did nothing but idle the days away in the grass on the
+river bank. Boys from the town came sometimes to spend an hour with him,
+but in their presence he was embarrassed and a little annoyed. He wanted
+to be left alone with his dreams. One of the boys, a sickly, pale,
+undeveloped lad of ten, often stayed with him through an entire summer
+afternoon. He was the son of a merchant in the town and grew quickly
+tired when he tried to follow other boys about. On the river bank he lay
+beside Hugh in silence. The two got into Hugh's boat and went fishing
+and the merchant's son grew animated and talked. He taught Hugh to write
+his own name and to read a few words. The shyness that kept them apart
+had begun to break down, when the merchant's son caught some childhood
+disease and died.
+
+In the darkness above the cliff that night in Burlington Hugh remembered
+things concerning his boyhood that had not come back to his mind in
+years. The very thoughts that had passed through his mind during those
+long days of idling on the river bank came streaming back.
+
+After his fourteenth year when he went to work at the railroad station
+Hugh had stayed away from the river. With his work at the station, and
+in the garden back of Sarah Shepard's house, and the lessons in the
+afternoons, he had little idle time. On Sundays however things were
+different. Sarah Shepard did not go to church after she came to
+Mudcat Landing, but she would have no work done on Sundays. On Sunday
+afternoons in the summer she and her husband sat in chairs beneath a
+tree beside the house and went to sleep. Hugh got into the habit of
+going off by himself. He wanted to sleep also, but did not dare. He went
+along the river bank by the road that ran south from the town, and when
+he had followed it two or three miles, turned into a grove of trees and
+lay down in the shade.
+
+The long summer Sunday afternoons had been delightful times for Hugh, so
+delightful that he finally gave them up, fearing they might lead him to
+take up again his old sleepy way of life. Now as he sat in the darkness
+above the same river he had gazed on through the long Sunday afternoons,
+a spasm of something like loneliness swept over him. For the first time
+he thought about leaving the river country and going into a new land
+with a keen feeling of regret.
+
+On the Sunday afternoons in the woods south of Mudcat Landing Hugh had
+lain perfectly still in the grass for hours. The smell of dead fish that
+had always been present about the shack where he spent his boyhood, was
+gone and there were no swarms of flies. Above his head a breeze played
+through the branches of the trees, and insects sang in the grass.
+Everything about him was clean. A lovely stillness pervaded the river
+and the woods. He lay on his belly and gazed down over the river out of
+sleep-heavy eyes into hazy distances. Half formed thoughts passed like
+visions through his mind. He dreamed, but his dreams were unformed and
+vaporous. For hours the half dead, half alive state into which he had
+got, persisted. He did not sleep but lay in a land between sleeping and
+waking. Pictures formed in his mind. The clouds that floated in the sky
+above the river took on strange, grotesque shapes. They began to move.
+One of the clouds separated itself from the others. It moved swiftly
+away into the dim distance and then returned. It became a half human
+thing and seemed to be marshaling the other clouds. Under its influence
+they became agitated and moved restlessly about. Out of the body of the
+most active of the clouds long vaporous arms were extended. They pulled
+and hauled at the other clouds making them also restless and agitated.
+
+Hugh's mind, as he sat in the darkness on the cliff above the river that
+night in Burlington, was deeply stirred. Again he was a boy lying in
+the woods above his river, and the visions that had come to him there
+returned with startling clearness. He got off the log and lying in the
+wet grass, closed his eyes. His body became warm.
+
+Hugh thought his mind had gone out of his body and up into the sky
+to join the clouds and the stars, to play with them. From the sky he
+thought he looked down on the earth and saw rolling fields, hills and
+forests. He had no part in the lives of the men and women of the earth,
+but was torn away from them, left to stand by himself. From his place in
+the sky above the earth he saw the great river going majestically along.
+For a time it was quiet and contemplative as the sky had been when he
+was a boy down below lying on his belly in the wood. He saw men pass in
+boats and could hear their voices dimly. A great quiet prevailed and he
+looked abroad beyond the wide expanse of the river and saw fields and
+towns. They were all hushed and still. An air of waiting hung over
+them. And then the river was whipped into action by some strange unknown
+force, something that had come out of a distant place, out of the place
+to which the cloud had gone and from which it had returned to stir and
+agitate the other clouds.
+
+The river now went tearing along. It overflowed its banks and swept
+over the land, uprooting trees and forests and towns. The white faces of
+drowned men and children, borne along by the flood, looked up into the
+mind's eye of the man Hugh, who, in the moment of his setting out into
+the definite world of struggle and defeat, had let himself slip back
+into the vaporous dreams of his boyhood.
+
+As he lay in the wet grass in the darkness on the cliff Hugh tried
+to force his way back to consciousness, but for a long time was
+unsuccessful. He rolled and writhed about and his lips muttered words.
+It was useless. His mind also was swept away. The clouds of which he
+felt himself a part flew across the face of the sky. They blotted out
+the sun from the earth, and darkness descended on the land, on the
+troubled towns, on the hills that were torn open, on the forests that
+were destroyed, on the peace and quiet of all places. In the country
+stretching away from the river where all had been peace and quiet,
+all was now agitation and unrest. Houses were destroyed and instantly
+rebuilt. People gathered in whirling crowds.
+
+The dreaming man felt himself a part of something significant and
+terrible that was happening to the earth and to the peoples of the
+earth. Again he struggled to awake, to force himself back out of the
+dream world into consciousness. When he did awake, day was breaking
+and he sat on the very edge of the cliff that looked down upon the
+Mississippi River, gray now in the dim morning light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The towns in which Hugh lived during the first three years after he
+began his eastward journey were all small places containing a few
+hundred people, and were scattered through Illinois, Indiana and western
+Ohio. All of the people among whom he worked and lived during that
+time were farmers and laborers. In the spring of the first year of his
+wandering he passed through the city of Chicago and spent two hours
+there, going in and out at the same railroad station.
+
+He was not tempted to become a city man. The huge commercial city at the
+foot of Lake Michigan, because of its commanding position in the very
+center of a vast farming empire, had already become gigantic. He never
+forgot the two hours he spent standing in the station in the heart of
+the city and walking in the street adjoining the station. It was evening
+when he came into the roaring, clanging place. On the long wide plains
+west of the city he saw farmers at work with their spring plowing as the
+train went flying along. Presently the farms grew small and the whole
+prairie dotted with towns. In these the train did not stop but ran into
+a crowded network of streets filled with multitudes of people. When he
+got into the big dark station Hugh saw thousands of people rushing about
+like disturbed insects. Unnumbered thousands of people were going out of
+the city at the end of their day of work and trains waited to take
+them to towns on the prairies. They came in droves, hurrying along like
+distraught cattle, over a bridge and into the station. The in-bound
+crowds that had alighted from through trains coming from cities of the
+East and West climbed up a stairway to the street, and those that were
+out-bound tried to descend by the same stairway and at the same time.
+The result was a whirling churning mass of humanity. Every one pushed
+and crowded his way along. Men swore, women grew angry, and children
+cried. Near the doorway that opened into the street a long line of cab
+drivers shouted and roared.
+
+Hugh looked at the people who were whirled along past him, and shivered
+with the nameless fear of multitudes, common to country boys in the
+city. When the rush of people had a little subsided he went out of the
+station and, walking across a narrow street, stood by a brick store
+building. Presently the rush of people began again, and again men,
+women, and boys came hurrying across the bridge and ran wildly in at
+the doorway leading into the station. They came in waves as water washes
+along a beach during a storm. Hugh had a feeling that if he were by
+some chance to get caught in the crowd he would be swept away into
+some unknown and terrible place. Waiting until the rush had a little
+subsided, he went across the street and on to the bridge to look at the
+river that flowed past the station. It was narrow and filled with ships,
+and the water looked gray and dirty. A pall of black smoke covered the
+sky. From all sides of him and even in the air above his head a great
+clatter and roar of bells and whistles went on.
+
+With the air of a child venturing into a dark forest Hugh went a little
+way into one of the streets that led westward from the station. Again
+he stopped and stood by a building. Near at hand a group of young
+city roughs stood smoking and talking before a saloon. Out of a nearby
+building came a young girl who approached and spoke to one of them.
+The man began to swear furiously. "You tell her I'll come in there in
+a minute and smash her face," he said, and, paying no more attention to
+the girl, turned to stare at Hugh. All of the young men lounging before
+the saloon turned to stare at the tall countryman. They began to laugh
+and one of them walked quickly toward him.
+
+Hugh ran along the street and into the station followed by the shouts of
+the young roughs. He did not venture out again, and when his train
+was ready, got aboard and went gladly out of the great complex
+dwelling-place of modern Americans.
+
+Hugh went from town to town always working his way eastward, always
+seeking the place where happiness was to come to him and where he was to
+achieve companionship with men and women. He cut fence posts in a forest
+on a large farm in Indiana, worked in the fields, and in one place was a
+section hand on the railroad.
+
+On a farm in Indiana, some forty miles east of Indianapolis, he was for
+the first time powerfully touched by the presence of a woman. She was
+the daughter of the farmer who was Hugh's employer, and was an alert,
+handsome woman of twenty-four who had been a school teacher but had
+given up the work because she was about to be married. Hugh thought the
+man who was to marry her the most fortunate being in the world. He lived
+in Indianapolis and came by train to spend the week-ends at the farm.
+The woman prepared for his coming by putting on a white dress and
+fastening a rose in her hair. The two people walked about in an orchard
+beside the house or went for a ride along the country roads. The
+young man, who, Hugh had been told, worked in a bank, wore stiff white
+collars, a black suit and a black derby hat.
+
+On the farm Hugh worked in the field with the farmer and ate at table
+with his family, but did not get acquainted with them. On Sunday when
+the young man came he took the day off and went into a nearby town. The
+courtship became a matter very close to him and he lived through
+the excitement of the weekly visits as though he had been one of the
+principals. The daughter of the house, sensing the fact that the
+silent farm hand was stirred by her presence, became interested in him.
+Sometimes in the evening as he sat on a little porch before the house,
+she came to join him, and sat looking at him with a peculiarly detached
+and interested air. She tried to make talk, but Hugh answered all her
+advances so briefly and with such a half frightened manner that she gave
+up the attempt. One Saturday evening when her sweetheart had come she
+took him for a ride in the family carriage, and Hugh concealed himself
+in the hay loft of the barn to wait for their return.
+
+Hugh had never seen or heard a man express in any way his affection for
+a woman. It seemed to him a terrifically heroic thing to do and he
+hoped by concealing himself in the barn to see it done. It was a bright
+moonlight night and he waited until nearly eleven o'clock before the
+lovers returned. In the hayloft there was an opening high up under the
+roof. Because of his great height he could reach and pull himself up,
+and when he had done so, found a footing on one of the beams that formed
+the framework of the barn. The lovers stood unhitching the horse in the
+barnyard below. When the city man had led the horse into the stable he
+hurried quickly out again and went with the farmer's daughter along a
+path toward the house. The two people laughed and pulled at each other
+like children. They grew silent and when they had come near the house,
+stopped by a tree to embrace. Hugh saw the man take the woman into his
+arms and hold her tightly against his body. He was so excited that he
+nearly fell off the beam. His imagination was inflamed and he tried
+to picture himself in the position of the young city man. His fingers
+gripped the boards to which he clung and his body trembled. The two
+figures standing in the dim light by the tree became one. For a long
+time they clung tightly to each other and then drew apart. They went
+into the house and Hugh climbed down from his place on the beam and
+lay in the hay. His body shook as with a chill and he was half ill of
+jealousy, anger, and an overpowering sense of defeat. It did not seem to
+him at the moment that it was worth while for him to go further east or
+to try to find a place where he would be able to mingle freely with men
+and women, or where such a wonderful thing as had happened to the man in
+the barnyard below might happen to him.
+
+Hugh spent the night in the hayloft and at daylight crept out and went
+into a nearby town. He returned to the farmhouse late on Monday when
+he was sure the city man had gone away. In spite of the protest of
+the farmer he packed his clothes at once and declared his intention of
+leaving. He did not wait for the evening meal but hurried out of the
+house. When he got into the road and had started to walk away, he looked
+back and saw the daughter of the house standing at an open door and
+looking at him. Shame for what he had done on the night before swept
+over him. For a moment he stared at the woman who, with an intense,
+interested air stared back at him, and then putting down his head he
+hurried away. The woman watched him out of sight and later, when her
+father stormed about the house, blaming Hugh for leaving so suddenly and
+declaring the tall Missourian was no doubt a drunkard who wanted to go
+off on a drunk, she had nothing to say. In her own heart she knew what
+was the matter with her father's farm hand and was sorry he had gone
+before she had more completely exercised her power over him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+None of the towns Hugh visited during his three years of wandering
+approached realization of the sort of life Sarah Shepard had talked to
+him about. They were all very much alike. There was a main street with
+a dozen stores on each side, a blacksmith shop, and perhaps an elevator
+for the storage of grain. All day the town was deserted, but in the
+evening the citizens gathered on Main Street. On the sidewalks before
+the stores young farm hands and clerks sat on store boxes or on the
+curbing. They did not pay any attention to Hugh who, when he went to
+stand near them, remained silent and kept himself in the background. The
+farm hands talked of their work and boasted of the number of bushels of
+corn they could pick in a day, or of their skill in plowing. The clerks
+were intent upon playing practical jokes which pleased the farm hands
+immensely. While one of them talked loudly of his skill in his work a
+clerk crept out at the door of one of the stores and approached him. He
+held a pin in his hand and with it jabbed the talker in the back. The
+crowd yelled and shouted with delight. If the victim became angry a
+quarrel started, but this did not often happen. Other men came to join
+the party and the joke was told to them. "Well, you should have seen
+the look on his face. I thought I would die," one of the bystanders
+declared.
+
+Hugh got a job with a carpenter who specialized in the building of barns
+and stayed with him all through one fall. Later he went to work as a
+section hand on a railroad. Nothing happened to him. He was like one
+compelled to walk through life with a bandage over his eyes. On all
+sides of him, in the towns and on the farms, an undercurrent of life
+went on that did not touch him. In even the smallest of the towns,
+inhabited only by farm laborers, a quaint interesting civilization was
+being developed. Men worked hard but were much in the open air and
+had time to think. Their minds reached out toward the solution of the
+mystery of existence. The schoolmaster and the country lawyer read Tom
+Paine's "Age of Reason" and Bellamy's "Looking Backward." They discussed
+these books with their fellows. There was a feeling, ill expressed, that
+America had something real and spiritual to offer to the rest of the
+world. Workmen talked to each other of the new tricks of their trades,
+and after hours of discussion of some new way to cultivate corn, shape
+a horseshoe or build a barn, spoke of God and his intent concerning
+man. Long drawn out discussions of religious beliefs and the political
+destiny of America were carried on.
+
+And across the background of these discussions ran tales of action in
+a sphere outside the little world in which the inhabitants of the towns
+lived. Men who had been in the Civil War and who had climbed fighting
+over hills and in the terror of defeat had swum wide rivers, told the
+tale of their adventures.
+
+In the evening, after his day of work in the field or on the railroad
+with the section hands, Hugh did not know what to do with himself. That
+he did not go to bed immediately after the evening meal was due to the
+fact that he looked upon his tendency to sleep and to dream as an enemy
+to his development; and a peculiarly persistent determination to make
+something alive and worth while out of himself--the result of the five
+years of constant talking on the subject by the New England woman--had
+taken possession of him. "I'll find the right place and the right people
+and then I'll begin," he continually said to himself.
+
+And then, worn out with weariness and loneliness, he went to bed in
+one of the little hotels or boarding houses where he lived during those
+years, and his dreams returned. The dream that had come that night as
+he lay on the cliff above the Mississippi River near the town of
+Burlington, came back time after time. He sat upright in bed in the
+darkness of his room and after he had driven the cloudy, vague sensation
+out of his brain, was afraid to go to sleep again. He did not want to
+disturb the people of the house and so got up and dressed and without
+putting on his shoes walked up and down in the room. Sometimes the room
+he occupied had a low ceiling and he was compelled to stoop. He crept
+out of the house carrying his shoes in his hand and sat down on the
+sidewalk to put them on. In all the towns he visited, people saw him
+walking alone through the streets late at night or in the early hours of
+the morning. Whispers concerning the matter ran about. The story of what
+was spoken of as his queerness came to the men with whom he worked,
+and they found themselves unable to talk freely and naturally in his
+presence. At the noon hour when the men ate the lunch they had carried
+to work, when the boss was gone and it was customary among the workers
+to talk of their own affairs, they went off by themselves. Hugh followed
+them about. They went to sit under a tree, and when Hugh came to stand
+nearby, they became silent or the more vulgar and shallow among them
+began to show off. While he worked with a half dozen other men as a
+section hand on the railroad, two men did all the talking. Whenever the
+boss went away an old man who had a reputation as a wit told stories
+concerning his relations with women. A young man with red hair took the
+cue from him. The two men talked loudly and kept looking at Hugh. The
+younger of the two wits turned to another workman who had a weak, timid
+face. "Well, you," he cried, "what about your old woman? What about her?
+Who is the father of your son? Do you dare tell?"
+
+In the towns Hugh walked about in the evening and tried always to keep
+his mind fixed on definite things. He felt that humanity was for some
+unknown reason drawing itself away from him, and his mind turned back
+to the figure of Sarah Shepard. He remembered that she had never been
+without things to do. She scrubbed her kitchen floor and prepared food
+for cooking; she washed, ironed, kneaded dough for bread, and mended
+clothes. In the evening, when she made the boy read to her out of one of
+the school books or do sums on a slate, she kept her hands busy knitting
+socks for him or for her husband. Except when something had crossed her
+so that she scolded and her face grew red, she was always cheerful.
+When the boy had nothing to do at the station and had been sent by the
+station master to work about the house, to draw water from the cistern
+for a family washing, or pull weeds in the garden, he heard the woman
+singing as she went about the doing of her innumerable petty tasks. Hugh
+decided that he also must do small tasks, fix his mind upon definite
+things. In the town where he was employed as a section hand, the cloud
+dream in which the world became a whirling, agitated center of disaster
+came to him almost every night. Winter came on and he walked through
+the streets at night in the darkness and through the deep snow. He was
+almost frozen; but as the whole lower part of his body was habitually
+cold he did not much mind the added discomfort, and so great was the
+reserve of strength in his big frame that the loss of sleep did not
+affect his ability to labor all day without effort.
+
+Hugh went into one of the residence streets of the town and counted the
+pickets in the fences before the houses. He returned to the hotel and
+made a calculation as to the number of pickets in all the fences in
+town. Then he got a rule at the hardware store and carefully measured
+the pickets. He tried to estimate the number of pickets that could be
+cut out of certain sized trees and that gave his mind another opening.
+He counted the number of trees in every street in town. He learned to
+tell at a glance and with relative accuracy how much lumber could be cut
+out of a tree. He built imaginary houses with lumber cut from the trees
+that lined the streets. He even tried to figure out a way to utilize the
+small limbs cut from the tops of the trees, and one Sunday went into the
+wood back of the town and cut a great armful of twigs, which he carried
+to his room and later with great patience wove into the form of a
+basket.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Bidwell, Ohio, was an old town as the ages of towns go in the Central
+West, long before Hugh McVey, in his search for a place where he could
+penetrate the wall that shut him off from humanity, went there to live
+and to try to work out his problem. It is a busy manufacturing town now
+and has a population of nearly a hundred thousand people; but the time
+for the telling of the story of its sudden and surprising growth has not
+yet come.
+
+From the beginning Bidwell has been a prosperous place. The town lies
+in the valley of a deep, rapid-flowing river that spreads out just
+above the town, becomes for the time wide and shallow, and goes singing
+swiftly along over stones. South of the town the river not only spreads
+out, but the hills recede. A wide flat valley stretches away to the
+north. In the days before the factories came the land immediately about
+town was cut up into small farms devoted to fruit and berry raising,
+and beyond the area of small farms lay larger tracts that were immensely
+productive and that raised huge crops of wheat, corn, and cabbage.
+
+When Hugh was a boy sleeping away his days in the grass beside his
+father's fishing shack by the Mississippi River, Bidwell had already
+emerged out of the hardships of pioneer days. On the farms that lay in
+the wide valley to the north the timber had been cut away and the stumps
+had all been rooted out of the ground by a generation of men that had
+passed. The soil was easy to cultivate and had lost little of its virgin
+fertility. Two railroads, the Lake Shore and Michigan Central--later
+a part of the great New York Central System--and a less important
+coal-carrying road, called the Wheeling and Lake Erie, ran through the
+town. Twenty-five hundred people lived then in Bidwell. They were for
+the most part descendants of the pioneers who had come into the country
+by boat through the Great Lakes or by wagon roads over the mountains
+from the States of New York and Pennsylvania.
+
+The town stood on a sloping incline running up from the river, and the
+Lake Shore and Michigan Central Railroad had its station on the river
+bank at the foot of Main Street. The Wheeling Station was a mile away to
+the north. It was to be reached by going over a bridge and along a piked
+road that even then had begun to take on the semblance of a street. A
+dozen houses had been built facing Turner's Pike and between these were
+berry fields and an occasional orchard planted to cherry, peach or apple
+trees. A hard path went down to the distant station beside the road,
+and in the evening this path, wandering along under the branches of
+the fruit trees that extended out over the farm fences, was a favorite
+walking place for lovers.
+
+The small farms lying close about the town of Bidwell raised berries
+that brought top prices in the two cities, Cleveland and Pittsburgh,
+reached by its two railroads, and all of the people of the town who
+were not engaged in one of the trades--in shoe making, carpentry, horse
+shoeing, house painting or the like--or who did not belong to the small
+merchant and professional classes, worked in summer on the land. On
+summer mornings, men, women and children went into the fields. In the
+early spring when planting went on and all through late May, June and
+early July when berries and fruit began to ripen, every one was rushed
+with work and the streets of the town were deserted. Every one went to
+the fields. Great hay wagons loaded with children, laughing girls, and
+sedate women set out from Main Street at dawn. Beside them walked tall
+boys, who pelted the girls with green apples and cherries from the trees
+along the road, and men who went along behind smoking their morning
+pipes and talking of the prevailing prices of the products of their
+fields. In the town after they had gone a Sabbath quiet prevailed. The
+merchants and clerks loitered in the shade of the awnings before the
+doors of the stores, and only their wives and the wives of the two or
+three rich men in town came to buy and to disturb their discussions of
+horse racing, politics and religion.
+
+In the evening when the wagons came home, Bidwell awoke. The tired berry
+pickers walked home from the fields in the dust of the roads swinging
+their dinner pails. The wagons creaked at their heels, piled high with
+boxes of berries ready for shipment. In the stores after the evening
+meal crowds gathered. Old men lit their pipes and sat gossiping along
+the curbing at the edge of the sidewalks on Main Street; women with
+baskets on their arms did the marketing for the next day's living;
+the young men put on stiff white collars and their Sunday clothes, and
+girls, who all day had been crawling over the fields between the rows
+of berries or pushing their way among the tangled masses of raspberry
+bushes, put on white dresses and walked up and down before the men.
+Friendships begun between boys and girls in the fields ripened into
+love. Couples walked along residence streets under the trees and talked
+with subdued voices. They became silent and embarrassed. The bolder
+ones kissed. The end of the berry picking season brought each year a new
+outbreak of marriages to the town of Bidwell.
+
+In all the towns of mid-western America it was a time of waiting. The
+country having been cleared and the Indians driven away into a vast
+distant place spoken of vaguely as the West, the Civil War having been
+fought and won, and there being no great national problems that touched
+closely their lives, the minds of men were turned in upon themselves.
+The soul and its destiny was spoken of openly on the streets. Robert
+Ingersoll came to Bidwell to speak in Terry's Hall, and after he had
+gone the question of the divinity of Christ for months occupied the
+minds of the citizens. The ministers preached sermons on the subject
+and in the evening it was talked about in the stores. Every one had
+something to say. Even Charley Mook, who dug ditches, who stuttered so
+that not a half dozen people in town could understand him, expressed his
+opinion.
+
+In all the great Mississippi Valley each town came to have a character
+of its own, and the people who lived in the towns were to each other
+like members of a great family. The individual idiosyncrasies of each
+member of the great family stood forth. A kind of invisible roof beneath
+which every one lived spread itself over each town. Beneath the roof
+boys and girls were born, grew up, quarreled, fought, and formed
+friendships with their fellows, were introduced into the mysteries of
+love, married, and became the fathers and mothers of children, grew old,
+sickened, and died.
+
+Within the invisible circle and under the great roof every one knew his
+neighbor and was known to him. Strangers did not come and go swiftly and
+mysteriously and there was no constant and confusing roar of machinery
+and of new projects afoot. For the moment mankind seemed about to take
+time to try to understand itself.
+
+In Bidwell there was a man named Peter White who was a tailor and worked
+hard at his trade, but who once or twice a year got drunk and beat his
+wife. He was arrested each time and had to pay a fine, but there was a
+general understanding of the impulse that led to the beating. Most of
+the women knowing the wife sympathized with Peter. "She is a noisy thing
+and her jaw is never still," the wife of Henry Teeters, the grocer, said
+to her husband. "If he gets drunk it's only to forget he's married to
+her. Then he goes home to sleep it off and she begins jawing at him. He
+stands it as long as he can. It takes a fist to shut up that woman. If
+he strikes her it's the only thing he can do."
+
+Allie Mulberry the half-wit was one of the highlights of life in the
+town. He lived with his mother in a tumble-down house at the edge of
+town on Medina Road. Beside being a half-wit he had something the matter
+with his legs. They were trembling and weak and he could only move
+them with great difficulty. On summer afternoons when the streets were
+deserted, he hobbled along Main Street with his lower jaw hanging down.
+Allie carried a large club, partly for the support of his weak legs and
+partly to scare off dogs and mischievous boys. He liked to sit in the
+shade with his back against a building and whittle, and he liked to be
+near people and have his talent as a whittler appreciated. He made fans
+out of pieces of pine, long chains of wooden beads, and he once achieved
+a singular mechanical triumph that won him wide renown. He made a ship
+that would float in a beer bottle half filled with water and laid on
+its side. The ship had sails and three tiny wooden sailors who stood
+at attention with their hands to their caps in salute. After it was
+constructed and put into the bottle it was too large to be taken out
+through the neck. How Allie got it in no one ever knew. The clerks and
+merchants who crowded about to watch him at work discussed the matter
+for days. It became a never-ending wonder among them. In the evening
+they spoke of the matter to the berry pickers who came into the stores,
+and in the eyes of the people of Bidwell Allie Mulberry became a hero.
+The bottle, half-filled with water and securely corked, was laid on a
+cushion in the window of Hunter's Jewelry Store. As it floated about on
+its own little ocean crowds gathered to look at it. Over the bottle
+was a sign with the words--"Carved by Allie Mulberry of
+Bidwell"--prominently displayed. Below these words a query had been
+printed. "How Did He Get It Into The Bottle?" was the question asked.
+The bottle stayed in the window for months and merchants took the
+traveling men who visited them, to see it. Then they escorted their
+guests to where Allie, with his back against the wall of a building and
+his club beside him, was at work on some new creation of the whittler's
+art. The travelers were impressed and told the tale abroad. Allie's fame
+spread to other towns. "He has a good brain," the citizen of Bidwell
+said, shaking his head. "He don't appear to know very much, but look
+what he does! He must be carrying all sorts of notions around inside of
+his head."
+
+Jane Orange, widow of a lawyer, and with the single exception of Thomas
+Butterworth, a farmer who owned over a thousand acres of land and lived
+with his daughter on a farm a mile south of town, the richest person
+in town, was known to every one in Bidwell, but was not liked. She was
+called stingy and it was said that she and her husband had cheated every
+one with whom they had dealings in order to get their start in life. The
+town ached for the privilege of doing what they called "bringing them
+down a peg." Jane's husband had once been the Bidwell town attorney and
+later had charge of the settlement of an estate belonging to Ed Lucas, a
+farmer who died leaving two hundred acres of land and two daughters. The
+farmer's daughters, every one said, "came out at the small end of the
+horn," and John Orange began to grow rich. It was said he was worth
+fifty thousand dollars. All during the latter part of his life the
+lawyer went to the city of Cleveland on business every week, and when he
+was at home and even in the hottest weather he went about dressed in
+a long black coat. When she went to the stores to buy supplies for
+her house Jane Orange was watched closely by the merchants. She was
+suspected of carrying away small articles that could be slipped into
+the pockets of her dress. One afternoon in Toddmore's grocery, when she
+thought no one was looking, she took a half dozen eggs out of a basket
+and looking quickly around to be sure she was unobserved, put them into
+her dress pocket. Harry Toddmore, the grocer's son who had seen the
+theft, said nothing, but went unobserved out at the back door. He got
+three or four clerks from other stores and they waited for Jane Orange
+at a corner. When she came along they hurried out and Harry Toddmore
+fell against her. Throwing out his hand he struck the pocket containing
+the eggs a quick, sharp blow. Jane Orange turned and hurried away toward
+home, but as she half ran through Main Street clerks and merchants came
+out of the stores, and from the assembled crowd a voice called attention
+to the fact that the contents of the stolen eggs having run down the
+inside of her dress and over her stockings began to make a stream on the
+sidewalk. A pack of town dogs excited by the shouts of the crowd ran at
+her heels, barking and sniffing at the yellow stream that dripped from
+her shoes.
+
+An old man with a long white beard came to Bidwell to live. He had been
+a carpet-bag Governor of a southern state in the reconstruction days
+after the Civil War and had made money. He bought a house on Turner's
+Pike close beside the river and spent his days puttering about in a
+small garden. In the evening he came across the bridge into Main Street
+and went to loaf in Birdie Spink's drug store. He talked with great
+frankness and candor of his life in the South during the terrible time
+when the country was trying to emerge from the black gloom of defeat,
+and brought to the Bidwell men a new point of view on their old enemies,
+the "Rebs."
+
+The old man--the name by which he had introduced himself in Bidwell was
+that of Judge Horace Hanby--believed in the manliness and honesty of
+purpose of the men he had for a time governed and who had fought a
+long grim war with the North, with the New Englanders and sons of New
+Englanders from the West and Northwest. "They're all right," he said
+with a grin. "I cheated them and made some money, but I liked them. Once
+a crowd of them came to my house and threatened to kill me and I told
+them that I did not blame them very much, so they let me alone." The
+judge, an ex-politician from the city of New York who had been involved
+in some affair that made it uncomfortable for him to return to live
+in that city, grew prophetic and philosophic after he came to live in
+Bidwell. In spite of the doubt every one felt concerning his past, he
+was something of a scholar and a reader of books, and won respect by his
+apparent wisdom. "Well, there's going to be a new war here," he said.
+"It won't be like the Civil War, just shooting off guns and killing
+peoples' bodies. At first it's going to be a war between individuals
+to see to what class a man must belong; then it is going to be a long,
+silent war between classes, between those who have and those who can't
+get. It'll be the worst war of all."
+
+The talk of Judge Hanby, carried along and elaborated almost every
+evening before a silent, attentive group in the drug store, began to
+have an influence on the minds of Bidwell young men. At his suggestion
+several of the town boys, Cliff Bacon, Albert Small, Ed Prawl, and two
+or three others, began to save money for the purpose of going east to
+college. Also at his suggestion Tom Butterworth the rich farmer sent
+his daughter away to school. The old man made many prophecies concerning
+what would happen in America. "I tell you, the country isn't going to
+stay as it is," he said earnestly. "In eastern towns the change has
+already come. Factories are being built and every one is going to work
+in the factories. It takes an old man like me to see how that changes
+their lives. Some of the men stand at one bench and do one thing not
+only for hours but for days and years. There are signs hung up saying
+they mustn't talk. Some of them make more money than they did before the
+factories came, but I tell you it's like being in prison. What would
+you say if I told you all America, all you fellows who talk so big about
+freedom, are going to be put in a prison, eh?
+
+"And there's something else. In New York there are already a dozen
+men who are worth a million dollars. Yes, sir, I tell you it's true, a
+million dollars. What do you think of that, eh?"
+
+Judge Hanby grew excited and, inspired by the absorbed attention of his
+audience, talked of the sweep of events. In England, he explained, the
+cities were constantly growing larger, and already almost every one
+either worked in a factory or owned stock in a factory. "In New England
+it is getting the same way fast," he explained. "The same thing'll
+happen here. Farming'll be done with tools. Almost everything now done
+by hand'll be done by machinery. Some'll grow rich and some poor. The
+thing is to get educated, yes, sir, that's the thing, to get ready for
+what's coming. It's the only way. The younger generation has got to be
+sharper and shrewder."
+
+The words of the old man, who had been in many places and had seen men
+and cities, were repeated in the streets of Bidwell. The blacksmith and
+the wheelwright repeated his words when they stopped to exchange news of
+their affairs before the post-office. Ben Peeler, the carpenter, who
+had been saving money to buy a house and a small farm to which he
+could retire when he became too old to climb about on the framework of
+buildings, used the money instead to send his son to Cleveland to a new
+technical school. Steve Hunter, the son of Abraham Hunter the Bidwell
+jeweler, declared that he was going to get up with the times, and when
+he went into a factory, would go into the office, not into the shop. He
+went to Buffalo, New York, to attend a business college.
+
+The air of Bidwell began to stir with talk of new times. The evil
+things said of the new life coming were soon forgotten. The youth and
+optimistic spirit of the country led it to take hold of the hand of the
+giant, industrialism, and lead him laughing into the land. The cry,
+"get on in the world," that ran all over America at that period and that
+still echoes in the pages of American newspapers and magazines, rang in
+the streets of Bidwell.
+
+In the harness shop belonging to Joseph Wainsworth it one day struck a
+new note. The harness maker was a tradesman of the old school and was
+vastly independent. He had learned his trade after five years' service
+as apprentice, and had spent an additional five years in going from
+place to place as a journeyman workman, and felt that he knew his
+business. Also he owned his shop and his home and had twelve hundred
+dollars in the bank. At noon one day when he was alone in the shop, Tom
+Butterworth came in and told him he had ordered four sets of farm work
+harness from a factory in Philadelphia. "I came in to ask if you'll
+repair them if they get out of order," he said.
+
+Joe Wainsworth began to fumble with the tools on his bench. Then he
+turned to look the farmer in the eye and to do what he later spoke of to
+his cronies as "laying down the law." "When the cheap things begin to
+go to pieces take them somewhere else to have them repaired," he said
+sharply. He grew furiously angry. "Take the damn things to Philadelphia
+where you got 'em," he shouted at the back of the farmer who had turned
+to go out of the shop.
+
+Joe Wainsworth was upset and thought about the incident all the
+afternoon. When farmer-customers came in and stood about to talk of
+their affairs he had nothing to say. He was a talkative man and his
+apprentice, Will Sellinger, son of the Bidwell house painter, was
+puzzled by his silence.
+
+When the boy and the man were alone in the shop, it was Joe Wainsworth's
+custom to talk of his days as a journeyman workman when he had gone from
+place to place working at his trade. If a trace were being stitched or a
+bridle fashioned, he told how the thing was done at a shop where he had
+worked in the city of Boston and in another shop at Providence, Rhode
+Island. Getting a piece of paper he made drawings illustrating the
+cuts of leather that were made in the other places and the methods
+of stitching. He claimed to have worked out his own method for doing
+things, and that his method was better than anything he had seen in all
+his travels. To the men who came into the shop to loaf during winter
+afternoons he presented a smiling front and talked of their affairs, of
+the price of cabbage in Cleveland or the effect of a cold snap on the
+winter wheat, but alone with the boy, he talked only of harness making.
+"I don't say anything about it. What's the good bragging? Just the same,
+I could learn something to all the harness makers I've ever seen, and
+I've seen the best of them," he declared emphatically.
+
+During the afternoon, after he had heard of the four factory-made work
+harnesses brought into what he had always thought of as a trade that
+belonged to him by the rights of a first-class workman, Joe remained
+silent for two or three hours. He thought of the words of old Judge
+Hanby and the constant talk of the new times now coming. Turning
+suddenly to his apprentice, who was puzzled by his long silence and who
+knew nothing of the incident that had disturbed his employer, he broke
+forth into words. He was defiant and expressed his defiance. "Well,
+then, let 'em go to Philadelphia, let 'em go any damn place
+they please," he growled, and then, as though his own words had
+re-established his self-respect, he straightened his shoulders and
+glared at the puzzled and alarmed boy. "I know my trade and do not have
+to bow down to any man," he declared. He expressed the old tradesman's
+faith in his craft and the rights it gave the craftsman. "Learn your
+trade. Don't listen to talk," he said earnestly. "The man who knows his
+trade is a man. He can tell every one to go to the devil."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Hugh McVey was twenty-three years old when he went to live in Bidwell.
+The position of telegraph operator at the Wheeling station a mile north
+of town became vacant and, through an accidental encounter with a former
+resident of a neighboring town, he got the place.
+
+The Missourian had been at work during the winter in a sawmill in the
+country near a northern Indiana town. During the evenings he wandered on
+country roads and in the town streets, but he did not talk to any one.
+As had happened to him in other places, he had the reputation of being
+queer. His clothes were worn threadbare and, although he had money
+in his pockets, he did not buy new ones. In the evening when he went
+through the town streets and saw the smartly dressed clerks standing
+before the stores, he looked at his own shabby person and was ashamed to
+enter. In his boyhood Sarah Shepard had always attended to the buying
+of his clothes, and he made up his mind that he would go to the place in
+Michigan to which she and her husband had retired, and pay her a visit.
+He wanted Sarah Shepard to buy him a new outfit of clothes, but wanted
+also to talk with her.
+
+Out of the three years of going from place to place and working with
+other men as a laborer, Hugh had got no big impulse that he felt would
+mark the road his life should take; but the study of mathematical
+problems, taken up to relieve his loneliness and to cure his inclination
+to dreams, was beginning to have an effect on his character. He thought
+that if he saw Sarah Shepard again he could talk to her and through her
+get into the way of talking to others. In the sawmill where he worked he
+answered the occasional remarks made to him by his fellow workers in
+a slow, hesitating drawl, and his body was still awkward and his gait
+shambling, but he did his work more quickly and accurately. In the
+presence of his foster-mother and garbed in new clothes, he believed
+he could now talk to her in a way that had been impossible during his
+youth. She would see the change in his character and would be encouraged
+about him. They would get on to a new basis and he would feel respect
+for himself in another.
+
+Hugh went to the railroad station to make inquiry regarding the fare to
+the Michigan town and there had the adventure that upset his plans. As
+he stood at the window of the ticket office, the ticket seller, who was
+also the telegraph operator, tried to engage him in conversation. When
+he had given the information asked, he followed Hugh out of the building
+and into the darkness of a country railroad station at night, and the
+two men stopped and stood together beside an empty baggage truck. The
+ticket agent spoke of the loneliness of life in the town and said he
+wished he could go back to his own place and be again with his own
+people. "It may not be any better in my own town, but I know everybody
+there," he said. He was curious concerning Hugh as were all the people
+of the Indiana town, and hoped to get him into talk in order that he
+might find out why he walked alone at night, why he sometimes worked all
+evening over books and figures in his room at the country hotel, and why
+he had so little to say to his fellows. Hoping to fathom Hugh's silence
+he abused the town in which they both lived. "Well," he began, "I
+guess I understand how you feel. You want to get out of this place."
+He explained his own predicament in life. "I got married," he said.
+"Already I have three children. Out here a man can make more money
+railroading than he can in my state, and living is pretty cheap. Just
+to-day I had an offer of a job in a good town near my own place in Ohio,
+but I can't take it. The job only pays forty a month. The town's all
+right, one of the best in the northern part of the State, but you see
+the job's no good. Lord, I wish I could go. I'd like to live again among
+people such as live in that part of the country."
+
+The railroad man and Hugh walked along the street that ran from the
+station up into the main street of the town. Wanting to meet the
+advances that had been made by his companion and not knowing how to go
+about it, Hugh adopted the method he had heard his fellow laborers use
+with one another. "Well," he said slowly, "come have a drink."
+
+The two men went into a saloon and stood by the bar. Hugh made a
+tremendous effort to overcome his embarrassment. As he and the railroad
+man drank foaming glasses of beer he explained that he also had once
+been a railroad man and knew telegraphy, but that for several years he
+had been doing other work. His companion looked at his shabby clothes
+and nodded his head. He made a motion with his head to indicate that he
+wanted Hugh to come with him outside into the darkness. "Well, well,"
+he exclaimed, when they had again got outside and had started along the
+street toward the station. "I understand now. They've all been wondering
+about you and I've heard lots of talk. I won't say anything, but I'm
+going to do something for you."
+
+Hugh went to the station with his new-found friend and sat down in the
+lighted office. The railroad man got out a sheet of paper and began to
+write a letter. "I'm going to get you that job," he said. "I'm writing
+the letter now and I'll get it off on the midnight train. You've got to
+get on your feet. I was a boozer myself, but I cut it all out. A glass
+of beer now and then, that's my limit."
+
+He began to talk of the town in Ohio where he proposed to get Hugh the
+job that would set him up in the world and save him from the habit of
+drinking, and described it as an earthly paradise in which lived bright,
+clear-thinking men and beautiful women. Hugh was reminded sharply of the
+talk he had heard from the lips of Sarah Shepard, when in his youth she
+spent long evenings telling him of the wonder of her own Michigan and
+New England towns and people, and contrasted the life lived there with
+that lived by the people of his own place.
+
+Hugh decided not to try to explain away the mistake made by his new
+acquaintance, and to accept the offer of assistance in getting the
+appointment as telegraph operator.
+
+The two men walked out of the station and stood again in the darkness.
+The railroad man felt like one who has been given the privilege of
+plucking a human soul out of the darkness of despair. He was full of
+words that poured from his lips and he assumed a knowledge of Hugh and
+his character entirely unwarranted by the circumstances. "Well," he
+exclaimed heartily, "you see I've given you a send-off. I have told them
+you're a good man and a good operator, but that you will take the place
+with its small salary because you've been sick and just now can't work
+very hard." The excited man followed Hugh along the street. It was
+late and the store lights had been put out. From one of the town's two
+saloons that lay in their way arose a clatter of voices. The old boyhood
+dream of finding a place and a people among whom he could, by sitting
+still and inhaling the air breathed by others, come into a warm
+closeness with life, came back to Hugh. He stopped before the saloon to
+listen to the voices within, but the railroad man plucked at his coat
+sleeve and protested. "Now, now, you're going to cut it out, eh?" he
+asked anxiously and then hurriedly explained his anxiety. "Of course
+I know what's the matter with you. Didn't I tell you I've been there
+myself? You've been working around. I know why that is. You don't have
+to tell me. If there wasn't something the matter with him, no man who
+knows telegraphy would work in a sawmill.
+
+"Well, there's no good talking about it," he added thoughtfully. "I've
+given you a send-off. You're going to cut it out, eh?"
+
+Hugh tried to protest and to explain that he was not addicted to the
+habit of drinking, but the Ohio man would not listen. "It's all right,"
+he said again, and then they came to the hotel where Hugh lived and he
+turned to go back to the station and wait for the midnight train that
+would carry the letter away and that would, he felt, carry also his
+demand that a fellow-human, who had slipped from the modern path of
+work and progress should be given a new chance. He felt magnanimous and
+wonderfully gracious. "It's all right, my boy," he said heartily. "No
+use talking to me. To-night when you came to the station to ask the fare
+to that hole of a place in Michigan I saw you were embarrassed. 'What's
+the matter with that fellow?' I said to myself. I got to thinking. Then
+I came up town with you and right away you bought me a drink. I wouldn't
+have thought anything about that if I hadn't been there myself. You'll
+get on your feet. Bidwell, Ohio, is full of good men. You get in with
+them and they'll help you and stick by you. You'll like those people.
+They've got get-up to them. The place you'll work at there is far out of
+town. It's away out about a mile at a little kind of outside-like place
+called Pickleville. There used to be a saloon there and a factory for
+putting up cucumber pickles, but they've both gone now. You won't be
+tempted to slip in that place. You'll have a chance to get on your feet.
+I'm glad I thought of sending you there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Wheeling and Lake Erie ran along a little wooded depression that cut
+across the wide expanse of open farm lands north of the town of Bidwell.
+It brought coal from the hill country of West Virginia and southeastern
+Ohio to ports on Lake Erie, and did not pay much attention to the
+carrying of passengers. In the morning a train consisting of a combined
+express and baggage car and two passenger coaches went north and west
+toward the lake, and in the evening the same train returned, bound
+southeast into the Hills, The Bidwell station of the road was, in an odd
+way, detached from the town's life. The invisible roof under which the
+life of the town and the surrounding country was lived did not cover it.
+As the Indiana railroad man had told Hugh, the station itself stood on a
+spot known locally as Pickleville. Back of the station there was a small
+building for the storage of freight and near at hand four or five houses
+facing Turner's Pike. The pickle factory, now deserted and with its
+windows gone, stood across the tracks from the station and beside a
+small stream that ran under a bridge and across country through a grove
+of trees to the river. On hot summer days a sour, pungent smell arose
+from the old factory, and at night its presence lent a ghostly flavor to
+the tiny corner of the world in which lived perhaps a dozen people.
+
+All day and at night an intense persistent silence lay over Pickleville,
+while in Bidwell a mile away the stir of new life began. In the evenings
+and on rainy afternoons when men could not work in the fields, old Judge
+Hanby went along Turner's Pike and across the wagon bridge into Bidwell
+and sat in a chair at the back of Birdie Spink's drug store. He talked.
+Men came in to listen to him and went out. New talk ran through the
+town. A new force that was being born into American life and into
+life everywhere all over the world was feeding on the old dying
+individualistic life. The new force stirred and aroused the people. It
+met a need that was universal. It was meant to seal men together, to
+wipe out national lines, to walk under seas and fly through the air,
+to change the entire face of the world in which men lived. Already the
+giant that was to be king in the place of old kings was calling his
+servants and his armies to serve him. He used the methods of old
+kings and promised his followers booty and gain. Everywhere he went
+unchallenged, surveying the land, raising a new class of men to
+positions of power. Railroads had already been pushed out across the
+plains; great coal fields from which was to be taken food to warm the
+blood in the body of the giant were being opened up; iron fields were
+being discovered; the roar and clatter of the breathing of the terrible
+new thing, half hideous, half beautiful in its possibilities, that was
+for so long to drown the voices and confuse the thinking of men, was
+heard not only in the towns but even in lonely farm houses, where its
+willing servants, the newspapers and magazines, had begun to circulate
+in ever increasing numbers. At the town of Gibsonville, near Bidwell,
+Ohio, and at Lima and Finley, Ohio, oil and gas fields were discovered.
+At Cleveland, Ohio, a precise, definite-minded man named Rockefeller
+bought and sold oil. From the first he served the new thing well and
+he soon found others to serve with him. The Morgans, Fricks, Goulds,
+Carnegies, Vanderbilts, servants of the new king, princes of the new
+faith, merchants all, a new kind of rulers of men, defied the world-old
+law of class that puts the merchant below the craftsman, and added
+to the confusion of men by taking on the air of creators. They were
+merchants glorified and dealt in giant things, in the lives of men and
+in mines, forests, oil and gas fields, factories, and railroads.
+
+And all over the country, in the towns, the farm houses, and the growing
+cities of the new country, people stirred and awakened. Thought and
+poetry died or passed as a heritage to feeble fawning men who also
+became servants of the new order. Serious young men in Bidwell and in
+other American towns, whose fathers had walked together on moonlight
+nights along Turner's Pike to talk of God, went away to technical
+schools. Their fathers had walked and talked and thoughts had grown
+up in them. The impulse had reached back to their father's fathers on
+moonlit roads of England, Germany, Ireland, France, and Italy, and
+back of these to the moonlit hills of Judea where shepherds talked and
+serious young men, John and Matthew and Jesus, caught the drift of the
+talk and made poetry of it; but the serious-minded sons of these men in
+the new land were swept away from thinking and dreaming. From all sides
+the voice of the new age that was to do definite things shouted at them.
+Eagerly they took up the cry and ran with it. Millions of voices arose.
+The clamor became terrible, and confused the minds of all men. In making
+way for the newer, broader brotherhood into which men are some day to
+emerge, in extending the invisible roofs of the towns and cities to
+cover the world, men cut and crushed their way through the bodies of
+men.
+
+And while the voices became louder and more excited and the new giant
+walked about making a preliminary survey of the land, Hugh spent his
+days at the quiet, sleepy railroad station at Pickleville and tried to
+adjust his mind to the realization of the fact that he was not to be
+accepted as fellow by the citizens of the new place to which he had
+come. During the day he sat in the tiny telegraph office or, pulling an
+express truck to the open window near his telegraph instrument, lay on
+his back with a sheet of paper propped on his bony knees and did sums.
+Farmers driving past on Turner's Pike saw him there and talked of him
+in the stores in town. "He's a queer silent fellow," they said. "What do
+you suppose he's up to?"
+
+Hugh walked in the streets of Bidwell at night as he had walked in the
+streets of towns in Indiana and Illinois. He approached groups of men
+loafing on a street corner and then went hurriedly past them. On quiet
+streets as he went along under the trees, he saw women sitting in the
+lamplight in the houses and hungered to have a house and a woman of his
+own. One afternoon a woman school teacher came to the station to make
+inquiry regarding the fare to a town in West Virginia. As the station
+agent was not about Hugh gave her the information she sought and she
+lingered for a few moments to talk with him. He answered the questions
+she asked with monosyllables and she soon went away, but he was
+delighted and looked upon the incident as an adventure. At night he
+dreamed of the school teacher and when he awoke, pretended she was with
+him in his bedroom. He put out his hand and touched the pillow. It was
+soft and smooth as he imagined the cheek of a woman would be. He did
+not know the school teacher's name but invented one for her. "Be quiet,
+Elizabeth. Do not let me disturb your sleep," he murmured into the
+darkness. One evening he went to the house where the school teacher
+boarded and stood in the shadow of a tree until he saw her come out and
+go toward Main Street. Then he went by a roundabout way and walked past
+her on the sidewalk before the lighted stores. He did not look at her,
+but in passing her dress touched his arm and he was so excited later
+that he could not sleep and spent half the night walking about and
+thinking of the wonderful thing that had happened to him.
+
+The ticket, express, and freight agent for the Wheeling and Lake Erie
+at Bidwell, a man named George Pike, lived in one of the houses near the
+station, and besides attending to his duties for the railroad company,
+owned and worked a small farm. He was a slender, alert, silent man with
+a long drooping mustache. Both he and his wife worked as Hugh had never
+seen a man and woman work before. Their arrangement of the division of
+labor was not based on sex but on convenience. Sometimes Mrs. Pike came
+to the station to sell tickets, load express boxes and trunks on the
+passenger trains and deliver heavy boxes of freight to draymen and
+farmers, while her husband worked in the fields back of his house or
+prepared the evening meal, and sometimes the matter was reversed and
+Hugh did not see Mrs. Pike for several days at a time.
+
+During the day there was little for the station agent or his wife to do
+at the station and they disappeared. George Pike had made an arrangement
+of wires and pulleys connecting the station with a large bell hung on
+top of his house, and when some one came to the station to receive or
+deliver freight Hugh pulled at the wire and the bell began to ring. In
+a few minutes either George Pike or his wife came running from the house
+or fields, dispatched the business and went quickly away again.
+
+Day after day Hugh sat in a chair by a desk in the station or went
+outside and walked up and down the station platform. Engines pulling
+long caravans of coal cars ground past. The brakemen waved their hands
+to him and then the train disappeared into the grove of trees that
+grew beside the creek along which the tracks of the road were laid. In
+Turner's Pike a creaking farm wagon appeared and then disappeared along
+the tree-lined road that led to Bidwell. The farmer turned on his wagon
+seat to stare at Hugh but unlike the railroad men did not wave his hand.
+Adventurous boys came out along the road from town and climbed, shouting
+and laughing, over the rafters in the deserted pickle factory across the
+tracks or went to fish in the creek in the shade of the factory walls.
+Their shrill voices added to the loneliness of the spot. It became
+almost unbearable to Hugh. In desperation he turned from the rather
+meaningless doing of sums and working out of problems regarding the
+number of fence pickets that could be cut from a tree or the number of
+steel rails or railroad ties consumed in building a mile of railroad,
+the innumerable petty problems with which he had been keeping his mind
+busy, and turned to more definite and practical problems. He remembered
+an autumn he had put in cutting corn on a farm in Illinois and, going
+into the station, waved his long arms about, imitating the movements of
+a man in the act of cutting corn. He wondered if a machine might not be
+made that would do the work, and tried to make drawings of the parts of
+such a machine. Feeling his inability to handle so difficult a problem
+he sent away for books and began the study of mechanics. He joined a
+correspondence school started by a man in Pennsylvania, and worked for
+days on the problems the man sent him to do. He asked questions and
+began a little to understand the mystery of the application of power.
+Like the other young men of Bidwell he began to put himself into touch
+with the spirit of the age, but unlike them he did not dream of suddenly
+acquired wealth. While they embraced new and futile dreams he worked to
+destroy the tendency to dreams in himself.
+
+Hugh came to Bidwell in the early spring and during May, June and July
+the quiet station at Pickleville awoke for an hour or two each evening.
+A certain percentage of the sudden and almost overwhelming increase in
+express business that came with the ripening of the fruit and berry crop
+came to the Wheeling, and every evening a dozen express trucks, piled
+high with berry boxes, waited for the south bound train. When the train
+came into the station a small crowd had assembled. George Pike and
+his stout wife worked madly, throwing the boxes in at the door of the
+express car. Idlers standing about became interested and lent a hand.
+The engineer climbed out of his locomotive, stretched his legs and
+crossing a narrow road got a drink from the pump in George Pike's yard.
+
+Hugh walked to the door of his telegraph office and standing in the
+shadows watched the busy scene. He wanted to take part in it, to laugh
+and talk with the men standing about, to go to the engineer and ask
+questions regarding the locomotive and its construction, to help George
+Pike and his wife, and perhaps cut through their silence and his own
+enough to become acquainted with them. He thought of all these things
+but stayed in the shadow of the door that led to the telegraph office
+until, at a signal given by the train conductor, the engineer climbed
+into his engine and the train began to move away into the evening
+darkness. When Hugh came out of his office the station platform was
+deserted again. In the grass across the tracks and beside the ghostly
+looking old factory, crickets sang. Tom Wilder, the Bidwell hack driver,
+had got a traveling man off the train and the dust left by the heels
+of his team still hung in the air over Turner's Pike. From the darkness
+that brooded over the trees that grew along the creek beyond the factory
+came the hoarse croak of frogs. On Turner's Pike a half dozen Bidwell
+young men accompanied by as many town girls walked along the path beside
+the road under the trees. They had come to the station to have somewhere
+to go, had made up a party to come, but now the half unconscious purpose
+of their coming was apparent. The party split itself up into couples and
+each strove to get as far away as possible from the others. One of the
+couples came back along the path toward the station and went to the pump
+in George Pike's yard. They stood by the pump, laughing and pretending
+to drink out of a tin cup, and when they got again into the road the
+others had disappeared. They became silent. Hugh went to the end of the
+platform and watched as they walked slowly along. He became furiously
+jealous of the young man who put his arm about the waist of his
+companion and then, when he turned and saw Hugh staring at him, took it
+away again.
+
+The telegraph operator went quickly along the platform until he was out
+of range of the young man's eyes, and, when he thought the gathering
+darkness would hide him, returned and crept along the path beside the
+road after him. Again a hungry desire to enter into the lives of the
+people about him took possession of the Missourian. To be a young man
+dressed in a stiff white collar, wearing neatly made clothes, and in the
+evening to walk about with young girls seemed like getting on the road
+to happiness. He wanted to run shouting along the path beside the road
+until he had overtaken the young man and woman, to beg them to take him
+with them, to accept him as one of themselves, but when the momentary
+impulse had passed and he returned to the telegraph office and lighted
+a lamp, he looked at his long awkward body and could not conceive
+of himself as ever by any chance becoming the thing he wanted to be.
+Sadness swept over him and his gaunt face, already cut and marked with
+deep lines, became longer and more gaunt. The old boyhood notion, put
+into his mind by the words of his foster-mother, Sarah Shepard, that a
+town and a people could remake him and erase from his body the marks
+of what he thought of as his inferior birth, began to fade. He tried to
+forget the people about him and turned with renewed energy to the study
+of the problems in the books that now lay in a pile upon his desk. His
+inclination to dreams, balked by the persistent holding of his mind to
+definite things, began to reassert itself in a new form, and his brain
+played no more with pictures of clouds and men in agitated movement but
+took hold of steel, wood, and iron. Dumb masses of materials taken out
+of the earth and the forests were molded by his mind into fantastic
+shapes. As he sat in the telegraph office during the day or walked alone
+through the streets of Bidwell at night, he saw in fancy a thousand new
+machines, formed by his hands and brain, doing the work that had been
+done by the hands of men. He had come to Bidwell, not only in the hope
+that there he would at last find companionship, but also because his
+mind was really aroused and he wanted leisure to begin trying to do
+tangible things. When the citizens of Bidwell would not take him into
+their town life but left him standing to one side, as the tiny dwelling
+place for men called Pickleville where he lived stood aside out from
+under the invisible roof of the town, he decided to try to forget men
+and to express himself wholly in work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Hugh's first inventive effort stirred the town of Bidwell deeply. When
+word of it ran about, the men who had been listening to the talk of
+Judge Horace Hanby and whose minds had turned toward the arrival of the
+new forward-pushing impulse in American life thought they saw in Hugh
+the instrument of its coming to Bidwell. From the day of his coming to
+live among them, there had been much curiosity in the stores and houses
+regarding the tall, gaunt, slow-speaking stranger at Pickleville. George
+Pike had told Birdie Spinks the druggist how Hugh worked all day over
+books, and how he made drawings for parts of mysterious machines and
+left them on his desk in the telegraph office. Birdie Spinks told others
+and the tale grew. When Hugh walked alone in the streets during the
+evening and thought no one took account of his presence, hundreds of
+pairs of curious eyes followed him about.
+
+A tradition in regard to the telegraph operator began to grow up. The
+tradition made Hugh a gigantic figure, one who walked always on a plane
+above that on which other men lived. In the imagination of his fellow
+citizens of the Ohio town, he went about always thinking great thoughts,
+solving mysterious and intricate problems that had to do with the new
+mechanical age Judge Hanby talked about to the eager listeners in the
+drug-store. An alert, talkative people saw among them one who could not
+talk and whose long face was habitually serious, and could not think
+of him as having daily to face the same kind of minor problems as
+themselves.
+
+The Bidwell young man who had come down to the Wheeling station with a
+group of other young men, who had seen the evening train go away to
+the south, who had met at the station one of the town girls and had, in
+order to escape the others and be alone with her, taken her to the pump
+in George Pike's yard on the pretense of wanting a drink, walked away
+with her into the darkness of the summer evening with his mind fixed
+on Hugh. The young man's name was Ed Hall and he was apprentice to Ben
+Peeler, the carpenter who had sent his son to Cleveland to a technical
+school. He wanted to marry the girl he had met at the station and
+did not see how he could manage it on his salary as a carpenter's
+apprentice. When he looked back and saw Hugh standing on the station
+platform, he took the arm he had put around the girl's waist quickly
+away and began to talk. "I'll tell you what," he said earnestly, "if
+things don't pretty soon get on the stir around here I'm going to get
+out. I'll go over by Gibsonburg and get a job in the oil fields, that's
+what I'll do. I got to have more money." He sighed heavily and looked
+over the girl's head into the darkness. "They say that telegraph fellow
+back there at the station is up to something," he ventured. "It's all
+the talk. Birdie Spinks says he is an inventor; says George Pike told
+him; says he is working all the time on new inventions to do things by
+machinery; that his passing off as a telegraph operator is only a bluff.
+Some think maybe he was sent here to see about starting a factory to
+make one of his inventions, sent by rich men maybe in Cleveland or some
+other place. Everybody says they'll bet there'll be factories here in
+Bidwell before very long now. I wish I knew. I don't want to go away if
+I don't have to, but I got to have more money. Ben Peeler won't never
+give me a raise so I can get married or nothing. I wish I knew that
+fellow back there so I could ask him what's up. They say he's smart. I
+suppose he wouldn't tell me nothing. I wish I was smart enough to invent
+something and maybe get rich. I wish I was the kind of fellow they say
+he is."
+
+Ed Hall again put his arm about the girl's waist and walked away. He
+forgot Hugh and thought of himself and of how he wanted to marry the
+girl whose young body nestled close to his own--wanted her to be utterly
+his. For a few hours he passed out of Hugh's growing sphere of influence
+on the collective thought of the town, and lost himself in the immediate
+deliciousness of kisses.
+
+And as he passed out of Hugh's influence others came in. On Main Street
+in the evening every one speculated on the Missourian's purpose in
+coming to Bidwell. The forty dollars a month paid him by the Wheeling
+railroad could not have tempted such a man. They were sure of that.
+Steve Hunter the jeweler's son had returned to town from a course in
+a business college at Buffalo, New York, and hearing the talk became
+interested. Steve had in him the making of a live man of affairs, and
+he decided to investigate. It was not, however, Steve's method to go
+at things directly, and he was impressed by the notion, then abroad in
+Bidwell, that Hugh had been sent to town by some one, perhaps by a group
+of capitalists who intended to start factories there.
+
+Steve thought he would go easy. In Buffalo, where he had gone to the
+business college, he had met a girl whose father, E. P. Horn, owned
+a soap factory; had become acquainted with her at church and had been
+introduced to her father. The soap maker, an assertive positive man who
+manufactured a product called Horn's Household Friend Soap, had his own
+notion of what a young man should be and how he should make his way
+in the world, and had taken pleasure in talking to Steve. He told the
+Bidwell jeweler's son of how he had started his own factory with but
+little money and had succeeded and gave Steve many practical hints on
+the organization of companies. He talked a great deal of a thing called
+"control." "When you get ready to start for yourself keep that in mind,"
+he said. "You can sell stock and borrow money at the bank, all you can
+get, but don't give up control. Hang on to that. That's the way I made
+my success. I always kept the control."
+
+Steve wanted to marry Ernestine Horn, but felt that he should show what
+he could do as a business man before he attempted to thrust himself into
+so wealthy and prominent a family. When he returned to his own town
+and heard the talk regarding Hugh McVey and his inventive genius, he
+remembered the soap maker's words regarding control, and repeated them
+to himself. One evening he walked along Turner's Pike and stood in the
+darkness by the old pickle factory. He saw Hugh at work under a lamp in
+the telegraph office and was impressed. "I'll lay low and see what
+he's up to," he told himself. "If he's got an invention, I'll get up a
+company. I'll get money in and I'll start a factory. The people here'll
+tumble over each other to get into a thing like that. I don't believe
+any one sent him here. I'll bet he's just an inventor. That kind always
+are queer. I'll keep my mouth shut and watch my chance. If there is
+anything starts, I'll start it and I'll get into control, that's what
+I'll do, I'll get into control."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the country stretching away north beyond the fringe of small berry
+farms lying directly about town, were other and larger farms. The land
+that made up these larger farms was also rich and raised big crops.
+Great stretches of it were planted to cabbage for which a market had
+been built up in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. Bidwell was
+often in derision called Cabbageville by the citizens of nearby towns.
+One of the largest of the cabbage farms belonged to a man named Ezra
+French, and was situated on Turner's Pike, two miles from town and a
+mile beyond the Wheeling station.
+
+On spring evenings when it was dark and silent about the station
+and when the air was heavy with the smell of new growth and of land
+fresh-turned by the plow, Hugh got out of his chair in the telegraph
+office and walked in the soft darkness. He went along Turner's Pike to
+town, saw groups of men standing on the sidewalks before the stores and
+young girls walking arm in arm along the street, and then came back to
+the silent station. Into his long and habitually cold body the warmth
+of desire began to creep. The spring rains came and soft winds blew down
+from the hill country to the south. One evening when the moon shone he
+went around the old pickle factory to where the creek went chattering
+under leaning willow trees, and as he stood in the heavy shadows by the
+factory wall, tried to imagine himself as one who had become suddenly
+clean-limbed, graceful, and agile. A bush grew beside the stream near
+the factory and he took hold of it with his powerful hands and tore it
+out by the roots. For a moment the strength in his shoulders and arms
+gave him an intense masculine satisfaction. He thought of how powerfully
+he could hold the body of a woman against his body and the spark of the
+fires of spring that had touched him became a flame. He felt new-made
+and tried to leap lightly and gracefully across the stream, but stumbled
+and fell in the water. Later he went soberly back to the station and
+tried again to lose himself in the study of the problems he had found in
+his books.
+
+The Ezra French farm lay beside Turner's Pike a mile north of the
+Wheeling station and contained two hundred acres of land of which a
+large part was planted to cabbages. It was a profitable crop to raise
+and required no more care than corn, but the planting was a terrible
+task. Thousands of plants that had been raised from seeds planted in a
+seed-bed back of the barn had to be laboriously transplanted. The plants
+were tender and it was necessary to handle them carefully. The planter
+crawled slowly and painfully along, and from the road looked like a
+wounded beast striving to make his way to a hole in a distant wood. He
+crawled forward a little and then stopped and hunched himself up into
+a ball-like mass. Taking the plant, dropped on the ground by one of
+the plant droppers, he made a hole in the soft ground with a small
+three-cornered hoe, and with his hands packed the earth about the plant
+roots. Then he crawled on again.
+
+Ezra the cabbage farmer had come west from one of the New England states
+and had grown comfortably wealthy, but he would not employ extra labor
+for the plant setting and the work was done by his sons and daughters.
+He was a short, bearded man whose leg had been broken in his youth by a
+fall from the loft of a barn. As it had not mended properly he could
+do little work and limped painfully about. To the men of Bidwell he was
+known as something of a wit, and in the winter he went to town every
+afternoon to stand in the stores and tell the Rabelaisian stories for
+which he was famous; but when spring came he became restlessly active,
+and in his own house and on the farm, became a tyrant. During the time
+of the cabbage setting he drove his sons and daughters like slaves.
+When in the evening the moon came up, he made them go back to the fields
+immediately after supper and work until midnight. They went in sullen
+silence, the girls to limp slowly along dropping the plants out of
+baskets carried on their arms, and the boys to crawl after them and set
+the plants. In the half darkness the little group of humans went slowly
+up and down the long fields. Ezra hitched a horse to a wagon and brought
+the plants from the seed-bed behind the barn. He went here and there
+swearing and protesting against every delay in the work. When his wife,
+a tired little old woman, had finished the evening's work in the house,
+he made her come also to the fields. "Come, come," he said, sharply, "we
+need every pair of hands we can get." Although he had several thousand
+dollars in the Bidwell bank and owned mortgages on two or three
+neighboring farms, Ezra was afraid of poverty, and to keep his family at
+work pretended to be upon the point of losing all his possessions. "Now
+is our chance to save ourselves," he declared. "We must get in a big
+crop. If we do not work hard now we'll starve." When in the field his
+sons found themselves unable to crawl longer without resting, and stood
+up to stretch their tired bodies, he stood by the fence at the field's
+edge and swore. "Well, look at the mouths I have to feed, you lazies!"
+he shouted. "Keep at the work. Don't be idling around. In two weeks
+it'll be too late for planting and then you can rest. Now every plant
+we set will help to save us from ruin. Keep at the job. Don't be idling
+around."
+
+In the spring of his second year in Bidwell, Hugh went often in the
+evening to watch the plant setters at work in the moonlight on the
+French farm. He did not make his presence known but hid himself in
+a fence corner behind bushes and watched the workers. As he saw the
+stooped misshapen figures crawling slowly along and heard the words of
+the old man driving them like cattle, his heart was deeply touched and
+he wanted to protest. In the dim light the slowly moving figures of
+women appeared, and after them came the crouched crawling men. They
+came down the long row toward him, wriggling into his line of sight like
+grotesquely misshapen animals driven by some god of the night to the
+performance of a terrible task. An arm went up. It came down again
+swiftly. The three-cornered hoe sank into the ground. The slow rhythm
+of the crawler was broken. He reached with his disengaged hand for the
+plant that lay on the ground before him and lowered it into the hole the
+hoe had made. With his fingers he packed the earth about the roots of
+the plant and then again began the slow crawl forward. There were four
+of the French boys and the two older ones worked in silence. The younger
+boys complained. The three girls and their mother, who were attending
+to the plant dropping, came to the end of the row and turning, went away
+into the darkness. "I'm going to quit this slavery," one of the younger
+boys said. "I'll get a job over in town. I hope it's true what they say,
+that factories are coming."
+
+The four young men came to the end of the row and, as Ezra was not in
+sight, stood a moment by the fence near where Hugh was concealed. "I'd
+rather be a horse or a cow than what I am," the complaining voice went
+on. "What's the good being alive if you have to work like this?"
+
+For a moment as he listened to the voices of the complaining workers,
+Hugh wanted to go to them and ask them to let him share in their labor.
+Then another thought came. The crawling figures came sharply into his
+line of vision. He no longer heard the voice of the youngest of the
+French boys that seemed to come out of the ground. The machine-like
+swing of the bodies of the plant setters suggested vaguely to his mind
+the possibility of building a machine that would do the work they were
+doing. His mind took eager hold of that thought and he was relieved.
+There had been something in the crawling figures and in the moonlight
+out of which the voices came that had begun to awaken in his mind the
+fluttering, dreamy state in which he had spent so much of his boyhood.
+To think of the possibility of building a plant-setting machine was
+safer. It fitted into what Sarah Shepard had so often told him was the
+safe way of life. As he went back through the darkness to the railroad
+station, he thought about the matter and decided that to become an
+inventor would be the sure way of placing his feet at last upon the path
+of progress he was trying to find.
+
+Hugh became absorbed in the notion of inventing a machine that would
+do the work he had seen the men doing in the field. All day he thought
+about it. The notion once fixed in his mind gave him something tangible
+to work upon. In the study of mechanics, taken up in a purely
+amateur spirit, he had not gone far enough to feel himself capable of
+undertaking the actual construction of such a machine, but thought
+the difficulty might be overcome by patience and by experimenting with
+combinations of wheels, gears and levers whittled out of pieces of wood.
+From Hunter's Jewelry Store he got a cheap clock and spent days
+taking it apart and putting it together again. He dropped the doing
+of mathematical problems and sent away for books describing the
+construction of machines. Already the flood of new inventions, that was
+so completely to change the methods of cultivating the soil in America,
+had begun to spread over the country, and many new and strange kinds
+of agricultural implements arrived at the Bidwell freight house of
+the Wheeling railroad. There Hugh saw a harvesting machine for cutting
+grain, a mowing machine for cutting hay and a long-nosed strange-looking
+implement that was intended to root potatoes out of the ground very much
+after the method pursued by energetic pigs. He studied these carefully.
+For a time his mind turned away from the hunger for human contact and
+he was content to remain an isolated figure, absorbed in the workings of
+his own awakening mind.
+
+An absurd and amusing thing happened. After the impulse to try to invent
+a plant-setting machine came to him, he went every evening to conceal
+himself in the fence corner and watch the French family at their labors.
+Absorbed in watching the mechanical movements of the men who crawled
+across the fields in the moonlight, he forgot they were human. After
+he had watched them crawl into sight, turn at the end of the rows, and
+crawl away again into the hazy light that had reminded him of the dim
+distances of his own Mississippi River country, he was seized with
+a desire to crawl after them and to try to imitate their movements.
+Certain intricate mechanical problems, that had already come into his
+mind in connection with the proposed machine, he thought could be better
+understood if he could get the movements necessary to plant setting
+into his own body. His lips began to mutter words and getting out of the
+fence corner where he had been concealed he began to crawl across the
+field behind the French boys. "The down stroke will go so," he muttered,
+and bringing up his arm swung it above his head. His fist descended into
+the soft ground. He had forgotten the rows of new set plants and crawled
+directly over them, crushing them into the soft ground. He stopped
+crawling and waved his arm about. He tried to relate his arms to the
+mechanical arms of the machine that was being created in his mind.
+Holding one arm stiffly in front of him he moved it up and down. "The
+stroke will be shorter than that. The machine must be built close to the
+ground. The wheels and the horses will travel in paths between the
+rows. The wheels must be broad to provide traction. I will gear from the
+wheels to get power for the operation of the mechanism," he said aloud.
+
+Hugh arose and stood in the moonlight in the cabbage field, his arms
+still going stiffly up and down. The great length of his figure and
+his arms was accentuated by the wavering uncertain light. The laborers,
+aware of some strange presence, sprang to their feet and stood listening
+and looking. Hugh advanced toward them, still muttering words and
+waving his arms. Terror took hold of the workers. One of the woman plant
+droppers screamed and ran away across the field, and the others ran
+crying at her heels. "Don't do it. Go away," the older of the French
+boys shouted, and then he with his brothers also ran.
+
+Hearing the voices Hugh stopped and stared about. The field was empty.
+Again he lost himself in his mechanical calculations. He went back along
+the road to the Wheeling station and to the telegraph office where he
+worked half the night on a rude drawing he was trying to make of the
+parts of his plant setting machine, oblivious to the fact that he had
+created a myth that would run through the whole countryside. The French
+boys and their sisters stoutly declared that a ghost had come into the
+cabbage fields and had threatened them with death if they did not go
+away and quit working at night. In a trembling voice their mother backed
+up their assertion. Ezra French, who had not seen the apparition and did
+not believe the tale, scented a revolution. He swore. He threatened the
+entire family with starvation. He declared that a lie had been invented
+to deceive and betray him.
+
+However, the work at night in the cabbage fields on the French farm was
+at an end. The story was told in the town of Bidwell, and as the entire
+French family except Ezra swore to its truth, was generally believed.
+Tom Foresby, an old citizen who was a spiritualist, claimed to have
+heard his father say that there had been in early days an Indian
+burying-ground on the Turner Pike.
+
+The cabbage field on the French farm became locally famous. Within
+a year two other men declared they had seen the figure of a gigantic
+Indian dancing and singing a funeral dirge in the moonlight. Farmer
+boys, who had been for an evening in town and were returning late at
+night to lonely farmhouses, whipped their horses into a run when they
+came to the farm. When it was far behind them they breathed more freely.
+Although he continued to swear and threaten, Ezra never again succeeded
+in getting his family into the fields at night. In Bidwell he declared
+that the story of the ghost invented by his lazy sons and daughters had
+ruined his chance for making a decent living out of his farm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Steve Hunter decided that it was time something was done to wake up his
+native town. The call of the spring wind awoke something in him as in
+Hugh. It came up from the south bringing rain followed by warm fair
+days. Robins hopped about on the lawns before the houses on the
+residence streets of Bidwell, and the air was again sweet with the
+pregnant sweetness of new-plowed ground. Like Hugh, Steve walked about
+alone through the dark, dimly lighted residence streets during the
+spring evenings, but he did not try awkwardly to leap over creeks in
+the darkness or pull bushes out of the ground, nor did he waste his time
+dreaming of being physically young, clean-limbed and beautiful.
+
+Before the coming of his great achievements in the industrial field,
+Steve had not been highly regarded in his home town. He had been a noisy
+boastful youth and had been spoiled by his father. When he was twelve
+years old what were called safety bicycles first came into use and for
+a long time he owned the only one in town. In the evening he rode it up
+and down Main Street, frightening the horses and arousing the envy
+of the town boys. He learned to ride without putting his hands on the
+handle-bars and the other boys began to call him Smarty Hunter and
+later, because he wore a stiff, white collar that folded down over his
+shoulders, they gave him a girl's name. "Hello, Susan," they shouted,
+"don't fall and muss your clothes."
+
+In the spring that marked the beginning of his great industrial
+adventure, Steve was stirred by the soft spring winds into dreaming his
+own kind of dreams. As he walked about through the streets, avoiding the
+other young men and women, he remembered Ernestine, the daughter of the
+Buffalo soap maker, and thought a great deal about the magnificence of
+the big stone house in which she lived with her father. His body ached
+for her, but that was a matter he felt could be managed. How he could
+achieve a financial position that would make it possible for him to ask
+for her hand was a more difficult problem. Since he had come back from
+the business college to live in his home town, he had secretly, and at
+the cost of two new five dollar dresses, arranged a physical alliance
+with a girl named Louise Trucker whose father was a farm laborer,
+and that left his mind free for other things. He intended to become a
+manufacturer, the first one in Bidwell, to make himself a leader in the
+new movement that was sweeping over the country. He had thought out
+what he wanted to do and it only remained to find something for him to
+manufacture to put his plans through. First of all he had selected with
+great care certain men he intended to ask to go in with him. There was
+John Clark the banker, his own father, E. H. Hunter the town jeweler,
+Thomas Butterworth the rich farmer, and young Gordon Hart, who had a job
+as assistant cashier in the bank. For a month he had been dropping hints
+to these men of something mysterious and important about to happen. With
+the exception of his father who had infinite faith in the shrewdness and
+ability of his son, the men he wanted to impress were only amused. One
+day Thomas Butterworth went into the bank and stood talking the matter
+over with John Clark. "The young squirt was always a Smart-Aleck and
+a blow-hard," he said. "What's he up to now? What's he nudging and
+whispering about?"
+
+As he walked in the main street of Bidwell, Steve began to acquire
+that air of superiority that later made him so respected and feared. He
+hurried along with a peculiarly intense absorbed look in his eyes. He
+saw his fellow townsmen as through a haze, and sometimes did not see
+them at all. As he went along he took papers from his pocket, read
+them hurriedly, and then quickly put them away again. When he did
+speak--perhaps to a man who had known him from boyhood--there was in his
+manner something gracious to the edge of condescension. One morning in
+March he met Zebe Wilson the town shoemaker on the sidewalk before the
+post-office. Steve stopped and smiled. "Well, good morning, Mr. Wilson,"
+he said, "and how is the quality of leather you are getting from the
+tanneries now?"
+
+Word regarding this strange salutation ran about among the merchants
+and artisans. "What's he up to now?" they asked each other. "Mr. Wilson,
+indeed! Now what's wrong between that young squirt and Zebe Wilson?"
+
+In the afternoon, four clerks from the Main Street stores and Ed Hall
+the carpenter's apprentice, who had a half day off because of rain,
+decided to investigate. One by one they went along Hamilton Street
+to Zebe Wilson's shop and stepped inside to repeat Steve Hunter's
+salutation. "Well, good afternoon, Mr. Wilson," they said, "and how is
+the quality of leather you are getting from the tanneries now?" Ed Hall,
+the last of the five who went into the shop to repeat the formal and
+polite inquiry, barely escaped with his life. Zebe Wilson threw a
+shoemaker's hammer at him and it went through the glass in the upper
+part of the shop door.
+
+Once when Tom Butterworth and John Clark the banker were talking of the
+new air of importance he was assuming, and half indignantly speculated
+on what he meant by his whispered suggestion of something significant
+about to happen, Steve came along Main Street past the front door of the
+bank. John Clark called him in. The three men confronted each other and
+the jeweler's son sensed the fact that the banker and the rich farmer
+were amused by his pretensions. At once he proved himself to be what
+all Bidwell later acknowledged him to be, a man who could handle men
+and affairs. Having at that time nothing to support his pretensions he
+decided to put up a bluff. With a wave of his hand and an air of knowing
+just what he was about, he led the two men into the back room of the
+bank and shut the door leading into the large room to which the general
+public was admitted. "You would have thought he owned the place," John
+Clark afterward said with a note of admiration in his voice to young
+Gordon Hart when he described what took place in the back room.
+
+Steve plunged at once into what he had to say to the two solid moneyed
+citizens of his town. "Well, now, look here, you two," he began
+earnestly. "I'm going to tell you something, but you got to keep still."
+He went to the window that looked out upon an alleyway and glanced about
+as though fearful of being overheard, then sat down in the chair usually
+occupied by John Clark on the rare occasions when the directors of the
+Bidwell bank held a meeting. Steve looked over the heads of the two men
+who in spite of themselves were beginning to be impressed. "Well,"
+he began, "there is a fellow out at Pickleville. You have maybe heard
+things said about him. He's telegraph operator out there. Perhaps you
+have heard how he is always making drawings of parts of machines. I
+guess everybody in town has been wondering what he's up to."
+
+Steve looked at the two men and then got nervously out of the chair
+and walked about the room. "That fellow is my man. I put him there," he
+declared. "I didn't want to tell any one yet."
+
+The two men nodded and Steve became lost in the notion created in his
+fancy. It did not occur to him that what he had just said was untrue.
+He began to scold the two men. "Well, I suppose I'm on the wrong track
+there," he said. "My man has made an invention that will bring millions
+in profits to those who get into it. In Cleveland and Buffalo I'm
+already in touch with big bankers. There's to be a big factory built,
+but you see yourself how it is, here I'm at home. I was raised as a boy
+here."
+
+The excited young man plunged into an exposition of the spirit of the
+new times. He grew bold and scolded the older men. "You know yourself
+that factories are springing up everywhere, in towns all over the
+State," he said. "Will Bidwell wake up? Will we have factories here? You
+know well enough we won't, and I know why. It's because a man like me
+who was raised here has to go to a city to get money to back his plans.
+If I talked to you fellows you would laugh at me. In a few years I might
+make you more money than you have made in your whole lives, but what's
+the use talking? I'm Steve Hunter; you knew me when I was a kid. You'd
+laugh. What's the use my trying to tell you fellows my plans?"
+
+Steve turned as though to go out of the room, but Tom Butterworth took
+hold of his arm and led him back to a chair. "Now, you tell us what
+you're up to," he demanded. In turn he grew indignant. "If you've got
+something to manufacture you can get backing here as well as any place,"
+he said. He became convinced that the jeweler's son was telling the
+truth. It did not occur to him that a Bidwell young man would dare lie
+to such solid men as John Clark and himself. "You let them city bankers
+alone," he said emphatically. "You tell us your story. What you got to
+tell?"
+
+In the silent little room the three men stared at each other. Tom
+Butterworth and John Clark in their turn began to have dreams. They
+remembered the tales they had heard of vast fortunes made quickly by men
+who owned new and valuable inventions. The land was at that time full of
+such tales. They were blown about on every wind. Quickly they realized
+that they had made a mistake in their attitude toward Steve, and were
+anxious to win his regard. They had called him into the bank to bully
+him and to laugh at him. Now they were sorry. As for Steve, he only
+wanted to get away--to get by himself and think. An injured look crept
+over his face. "Well," he said, "I thought I'd give Bidwell a chance.
+There are three or four men here. I have spoken to all of you and
+dropped a hint of something in the wind, but I'm not ready to be very
+definite yet."
+
+Seeing the new look of respect in the eyes of the two men Steve
+became bold. "I was going to call a meeting when I was ready," he said
+pompously. "You two do what I've been doing. You keep your mouths shut.
+Don't go near that telegraph operator and don't talk to a soul. If you
+mean business I'll give you a chance to make barrels of money, more'n
+you ever dreamed of, but don't be in a hurry." He took a bundle of
+letters out of his inside coat pocket, and beat with them on the edge
+of the table that occupied the center of the room. Another bold thought
+came into his mind.
+
+"I've got letters here offering me big money to take my factory either
+to Cleveland or Buffalo," he declared emphatically. "It isn't money
+that's hard to get. I can tell you men that. What a man wants in his
+home town is respect. He don't want to be looked on as a fool because he
+tries to do something to rise in the world."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Steve walked boldly out of the bank and into Main Street. When he had
+got out of the presence of the two men he was frightened. "Well, I've
+done it. I've made a fool of myself," he muttered aloud. In the bank he
+had said that Hugh McVey the telegraph operator was his man, that he had
+brought the fellow to Bidwell. What a fool he had been. In his anxiety
+to impress the two older men he had told a story, the falsehood of which
+could be discovered in a few minutes. Why had he not kept his dignity
+and waited? There had been no occasion for being so definite. He had
+gone too far, had been carried away. To be sure he had told the two men
+not to go near the telegraph operator, but that would no doubt but serve
+to arouse their suspicions of the thinness of his story. They would talk
+the matter over and start an investigation of their own. Then they would
+find out he had lied. He imagined the two men as already engaged in a
+whispered conversation regarding the probability of his tale. Like most
+shrewd men he had an exalted notion regarding the shrewdness of others.
+He walked a little away from the bank and then turned to look back. A
+shiver ran over his body. Into his mind came the sickening fear that the
+telegraph operator at Pickleville was not an inventor at all. The town
+was full of tales, and in the bank he had taken advantage of that fact
+to make an impression; but what proof had he? No one had seen one of the
+inventions supposed to have been worked out by the mysterious
+stranger from Missouri. There had after all been nothing but whispered
+suspicions, old wives' tales, fables invented by men who had nothing to
+do but loaf in the drug-store and make up stories.
+
+The thought that Hugh McVey might not be an inventor overpowered him and
+he put it quickly aside. He had something more immediate to think about.
+The story of the bluff he had just made in the bank would be found out
+and the whole town would rock with laughter at his expense. The young
+men of the town did not like him. They would roll the story over on
+their tongues. Ribald old fellows who had nothing else to do would take
+up the story with joy and would elaborate it. Fellows like the cabbage
+farmer, Ezra French, who had a talent for saying cutting things would
+exercise it. They would make up imaginary inventions, grotesque, absurd
+inventions. Then they would get young fellows to come to him and propose
+that he take them up, promote them, and make every one rich. Men would
+shout jokes at him as he went along Main Street. His dignity would be
+gone forever. He would be made a fool of by the very school boys as
+he had been in his youth when he bought the bicycle and rode it about
+before the eyes of other boys in the evenings.
+
+Steve hurried out of Main Street and went over the bridge that crossed
+the river into Turner's Pike. He did not know what he intended to do,
+but felt there was much at stake and that he would have to do something
+at once. It was a warm, cloudy day and the road that led to Pickleville
+was muddy. During the night before it had rained and more rain was
+promised. The path beside the road was slippery, and so absorbed was he
+that as he plunged along, his feet slipped out from under him and he
+sat down in a small pool of water. A farmer driving past along the road
+turned to laugh at him. "You go to hell," Steve shouted. "You just mind
+your own business and go to hell."
+
+The distracted young man tried to walk sedately along the path. The long
+grass that grew beside the path wet his shoes, and his hands were wet
+and muddy. Farmers turned on their wagon seats to stare at him. For some
+obscure reason he could not himself understand, he was terribly afraid
+to face Hugh McVey. In the bank he had been in the presence of men who
+were trying to get the best of him, to make a fool of him, to have fun
+at his expense. He had felt that and had resented it. The knowledge had
+given him a certain kind of boldness; it had enabled his mind to make up
+the story of the inventor secretly employed at his own expense and the
+city bankers anxious to furnish him capital. Although he was terribly
+afraid of discovery, he felt a little glow of pride at the thought of
+the boldness with which he had taken the letters out of his pocket and
+had challenged the two men to call his bluff.
+
+Steve, however, felt there was something different about the man in
+the telegraph office in Pickleville. He had been in town for nearly
+two years and no one knew anything about him. His silence might be
+indicative of anything. He was afraid the tall silent Missourian might
+decide to have nothing to do with him, and pictured himself as being
+brushed rudely aside, being told to mind his own business.
+
+Steve knew instinctively how to handle business men. One simply created
+the notion of money to be made without effort. He had done that to the
+two men in the bank and it had worked. After all he had succeeded in
+making them respect him. He had handled the situation. He wasn't such
+a fool at that kind of a thing. The other thing he had to face might be
+very different. Perhaps after all Hugh McVey was a big inventor, a
+man with a powerful creative mind. It was possible he had been sent
+to Bidwell by a big business man of some city. Big business men did
+strange, mysterious things; they put wires out in all directions,
+controlled a thousand little avenues for the creation of wealth.
+
+Just starting out on his own career as a man of affairs, Steve had an
+overpowering respect for what he thought of as the subtlety of men of
+affairs. With all the other American youths of his generation he had
+been swept off his feet by the propaganda that then went on and is
+still going on, and that is meant to create the illusion of greatness
+in connection with the ownership of money. He did not then know and, in
+spite of his own later success and his own later use of the machinery
+by which illusion is created, he never found out that in an industrial
+world reputations for greatness of mind are made as a Detroit
+manufacturer would make automobiles. He did not know that men are
+employed to bring up the name of a politician so that he may be called
+a statesman, as a new brand of breakfast food that it may be sold; that
+most modern great men are mere illusions sprung out of a national hunger
+for greatness. Some day a wise man, one who has not read too many books
+but who has gone about among men, will discover and set forth a very
+interesting thing about America. The land is vast and there is a
+national hunger for vastness in individuals. One wants an Illinois-sized
+man for Illinois, an Ohio-sized man for Ohio, and a Texas-sized man for
+Texas.
+
+To be sure, Steve Hunter had no notion of all this. He never did get a
+notion of it. The men he had already begun to think of as great and to
+try to imitate were like the strange and gigantic protuberances that
+sometimes grow on the side of unhealthy trees, but he did not know it.
+He did not know that throughout the country, even in that early day, a
+system was being built up to create the myth of greatness. At the seat
+of the American Government at Washington, hordes of somewhat clever
+and altogether unhealthy young men were already being employed for the
+purpose. In a sweeter age many of these young men might have become
+artists, but they had not been strong enough to stand against the
+growing strength of dollars. They had become instead newspaper
+correspondents and secretaries to politicians. All day and every day
+they used their minds and their talents as writers in the making of
+puffs and the creating of myths concerning the men by whom they were
+employed. They were like the trained sheep that are used at great
+slaughter-houses to lead other sheep into the killing pens. Having
+befouled their own minds for hire, they made their living by befouling
+the minds of others. Already they had found out that no great cleverness
+was required for the work they had to do. What was required was constant
+repetition. It was only necessary to say over and over that the man
+by whom they were employed was a great man. No proof had to be brought
+forward to substantiate the claims they made; no great deeds had to
+be done by the men who were thus made great, as brands of crackers or
+breakfast food are made salable. Stupid and prolonged and insistent
+repetition was what was necessary.
+
+As the politicians of the industrial age have created a myth about
+themselves, so also have the owners of dollars, the big bankers, the
+railroad manipulators, the promoters of industrial enterprise. The
+impulse to do so is partly sprung from shrewdness but for the most part
+it is due to a hunger within to be of some real moment in the world.
+Knowing that the talent that had made them rich is but a secondary
+talent, and being a little worried about the matter, they employ men to
+glorify it. Having employed a man for the purpose, they are themselves
+children enough to believe the myth they have paid money to have
+created. Every rich man in the country unconsciously hates his press
+agent.
+
+Although he had never read a book, Steve was a constant reader of the
+newspapers and had been deeply impressed by the stories he had read
+regarding the shrewdness and ability of the American captains of
+industry. To him they were supermen and he would have crawled on his
+knees before a Gould or a Cal Price--the commanding figures among
+moneyed men of that day. As he went down along Turner's Pike that day
+when industry was born in Bidwell, he thought of these men and of lesser
+rich men of Cleveland and Buffalo, and was afraid that in approaching
+Hugh he might be coming into competition with one of these men. As he
+hurried along under the gray sky, he however realized that the time
+for action had come and that he must at once put the plans that he had
+formed in his mind to the test of practicability; that he must at once
+see Hugh McVey, find out if he really did have an invention that could
+be manufactured, and if he did try to secure some kind of rights of
+ownership over it. "If I do not act at once, either Tom Butterworth or
+John Clark will get in ahead of me," he thought. He knew they were both
+shrewd capable men. Had they not become well-to-do? Even during the talk
+in the bank, when they had seemed to be impressed by his words, they
+might well have been making plans to get the better of him. They would
+act, but he must act first.
+
+Steve hadn't the courage of the lie he had told. He did not have
+imagination enough to understand how powerful a thing is a lie.
+He walked quickly along until he came to the Wheeling Station at
+Pickleville, and then, not having the courage to confront Hugh at once,
+went past the station and crept in behind the deserted pickle factory
+that stood across the tracks. Through a broken window at the back he
+climbed, and crept like a thief across the earth floor until he came
+to a window that looked out upon the station. A freight train rumbled
+slowly past and a farmer came to the station to get a load of goods
+that had arrived by freight. George Pike came running from his house to
+attend to the wants of the farmer. He went back to his house and Steve
+was left alone in the presence of the man on whom he felt all of his
+future depended. He was as excited as a village girl in the presence of
+a lover. Through the windows of the telegraph office he could see
+Hugh seated at a desk with a book before him. The presence of the book
+frightened him. He decided that the mysterious Missourian must be some
+strange sort of intellectual giant. He was sure that one who could sit
+quietly reading hour after hour in such a lonely isolated place could
+be of no ordinary clay. As he stood in the deep shadows inside the
+old building and stared at the man he was trying to find courage to
+approach, a citizen of Bidwell named Dick Spearsman came to the station
+and going inside, talked to the telegraph operator. Steve trembled with
+anxiety. The man who had come to the station was an insurance agent who
+also owned a small berry farm at the edge of town. He had a son who had
+gone west to take up land in the state of Kansas, and the father thought
+of visiting him. He came to the station to make inquiry regarding the
+railroad fare, but when Steve saw him talking to Hugh, the thought came
+into his mind that John Clark or Thomas Butterworth might have sent him
+to the station to make an investigation of the truth of the statements
+he had made in the bank. "It would be like them to do it that way," he
+muttered to himself. "They wouldn't come themselves. They would send
+some one they thought I wouldn't suspect. They would play safe, damn
+'em."
+
+Trembling with fear, Steve walked up and down in the empty factory.
+Cobwebs hanging down brushed against his face and he jumped aside as
+though a hand had reached out of the darkness to touch him. In the
+corners of the old building shadows lurked and distorted thoughts
+began to come into his head. He rolled and lighted a cigarette and then
+remembered that the flare of the match could probably be seen from the
+station. He cursed himself for his carelessness. Throwing the cigarette
+on the earth floor he ground it under his heel. When at last Dick
+Spearsman had disappeared up the road that led to Bidwell and he came
+out of the old factory and got again into Turner's Pike, he felt that he
+was in no shape to talk of business but nevertheless must act at once.
+In front of the factory he stopped in the road and tried to wipe the mud
+off the seat of his trousers with a handkerchief. Then he went to the
+creek and washed his soiled hands. With wet hands he arranged his tie
+and straightened the collar of his coat. He had an air of one about
+to ask a woman to become his wife. Striving to look as important and
+dignified as possible, he went along the station platform and into the
+telegraph office to confront Hugh and to find out at once and finally
+what fate the gods had in store for him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It no doubt contributed to Steve's happiness in after life, in the
+days when he was growing rich, and later when he reached out for public
+honors, contributed to campaign funds, and even in secret dreamed of
+getting into the United States Senate or being Governor of his state,
+that he never knew how badly he overreached himself that day in his
+youth when he made his first business deal with Hugh at the Wheeling
+Station at Pickleville. Later Hugh's interest in the Steven Hunter
+industrial enterprises was taken care of by a man who was as shrewd as
+Steve himself. Tom Butterworth, who had made money and knew how to make
+and handle money, managed such things for the inventor, and Steve's
+chance was gone forever.
+
+That is, however, a part of the story of the development of the town
+of Bidwell and a story that Steve never understood. When he overreached
+himself that day he did not know what he had done. He made a deal with
+Hugh and was happy to escape the predicament he thought he had got
+himself into when he talked too much to the two men in the bank.
+
+Although Steve's father had always a great faith in his son's shrewdness
+and when he talked to other men represented him as a peculiarly capable
+and unappreciated man, the two did not in private get on well. In the
+Hunter household they quarreled and snarled at each other. Steve's
+mother had died when he was a small boy and his one sister, two years
+older than himself, kept herself always in the house and seldom appeared
+on the streets. She was a semi-invalid. Some obscure nervous disease had
+twisted her body out of shape, and her face twitched incessantly.
+One morning in the barn back of the Hunter house Steve, then a lad of
+fourteen, was oiling his bicycle when his sister appeared and stood
+watching him. A small wrench lay on the ground and she picked it up.
+Suddenly and without warning she began to beat him on the head. He was
+compelled to knock her down in order to tear the wrench out of her hand.
+After the incident she was ill in bed for a month.
+
+Elsie Hunter was always a source of unhappiness to her brother. As he
+began to get up in life Steve had a growing passion for being respected
+by his fellows. It got to be something of an obsession with him and
+among other things he wanted very much to be thought of as one who had
+good blood in his veins. A man whom he hired searched out his
+ancestry, and with the exception of his immediate family it seemed
+very satisfactory. The sister, with her twisted body and her face that
+twitched so persistently, seemed to be everlastingly sneering at him. He
+grew half afraid to come into her presence. After he began to grow rich
+he married Ernestine, the daughter of the soap maker at Buffalo, and
+when her father died she also had a great deal of money. His own father
+died and he set up a household of his own. That was in the time when big
+houses began to appear at the edge of the berry lands and on the hills
+south of Bidwell. On his father's death Steve became guardian for his
+sister. The jeweler had left a small estate and it was entirely in the
+son's hands. Elsie lived with one servant in a small house in town and
+was put in the position of being entirely dependent on her brother's
+bounty. In a sense it might be said that she lived by her hatred of him.
+When on rare occasions he came to her house she would not see him. A
+servant came to the door and reported her asleep. Almost every month she
+wrote a letter demanding that her share of her father's money be
+handed over to her, but it did no good. Steve occasionally spoke to an
+acquaintance of his difficulty with her. "I am more sorry for the woman
+than I can say," he declared. "It's the dream of my life to make the
+poor afflicted soul happy. You see yourself that I provide her with
+every comfort of life. Ours is an old family. I have it from an expert
+in such matters that we are descendants of one Hunter, a courtier in the
+court of Edward the Second of England. Our blood has perhaps become
+a little thin. All the vitality of the family was centered in me.
+My sister does not understand me and that has been the cause of much
+unhappiness and heart burning, but I shall always do my duty by her."
+
+In the late afternoon of the spring day that was also the most eventful
+day of his life, Steve went quickly along the Wheeling Station platform
+to the door of the telegraph office. It was a public place, but before
+going in he stopped, again straightened his tie and brushed his clothes,
+and then knocked at the door. As there was no response he opened the
+door softly and looked in. Hugh was at his desk but did not look up.
+Steve went in and closed the door. By chance the moment of his entrance
+was also a big moment in the life of the man he had come to see.
+The mind of the young inventor, that had for so long been dreamy and
+uncertain, had suddenly become extraordinarily clear and free. One of
+the inspired moments that come to intense natures, working intensely,
+had come to him. The mechanical problem he was trying so hard to work
+out became clear. It was one of the moments that Hugh afterwards thought
+of as justifying his existence, and in later life he came to live for
+such moments. With a nod of his head to Steve he arose and hurried out
+to the building that was used by the Wheeling as a freight warehouse.
+The jeweler's son ran at his heels. On an elevated platform before the
+freight warehouse sat an odd looking agricultural implement, a machine
+for rooting potatoes out of the ground that had been received on the day
+before and was now awaiting delivery to some farmer. Hugh dropped to his
+knees beside the machine and examined it closely. Muttered exclamations
+broke from his lips. For the first time in his life he was not
+embarrassed in the presence of another person. The two men, the one
+almost grotesquely tall, the other short of stature and already inclined
+toward corpulency, stared at each other. "What is it you're inventing? I
+came to see you about that," Steve said timidly.
+
+Hugh did not answer the question directly. He stepped across the narrow
+platform to the freight warehouse and began to make a rude drawing on
+the side of the building. Then he tried to explain his plant-setting
+machine. He spoke of it as a thing already achieved. At the moment he
+thought of it in that way. "I had not thought of the use of a
+large wheel with the arms attached at regular intervals," he said
+absent-mindedly. "I will have to find money now. That'll be the next
+step. It will be necessary to make a working model of the machine now. I
+must find out what changes I'll have to make in my calculations."
+
+The two men returned to the telegraph office and while Hugh listened
+Steve made his proposal. Even then he did not understand what the
+machine that was to be made was to do. It was enough for him that a
+machine was to be made and he wanted to share in its ownership at once.
+As the two men walked back from the freight warehouse, his mind took
+hold of Hugh's remark about getting money. Again he was afraid. "There's
+some one in the background," he thought. "Now I must make a proposal he
+can't refuse. I mustn't leave until I've made a deal with him."
+
+Fairly carried away by his anxiety, Steve proposed to provide money out
+of his own pocket to make the model of the machine. "We'll rent the old
+pickle factory across the track," he said, opening the door and pointing
+with a trembling finger. "I can get it cheap. I'll have windows and
+a floor put in. Then I'll get you a man to whittle out a model of the
+machine. Allie Mulberry can do it. I'll get him for you. He can whittle
+anything if you only show him what you want. He's half crazy and won't
+get on to our secret. When the model is made, leave it to me, you just
+leave it to me."
+
+Rubbing his hands together Steve walked boldly to The telegrapher's
+desk and picking up a sheet of paper began to write out a contract. It
+provided that Hugh Was to get a royalty of ten per cent. of the selling
+price on the machine he had invented and that was to be manufactured
+by a company to be organized by Steven Hunter. The contract also stated
+that a promoting company was to be organized at once and money provided
+for the experimental work Hugh had yet to do. The Missourian was
+to begin getting a salary at once. He was to risk nothing, as Steve
+elaborately explained. When he was ready for them mechanics were to be
+employed and their salaries paid. When the contract had been written and
+read aloud, a copy was made and Hugh, who was again embarrassed beyond
+words, signed his name.
+
+With a flourish of his hand Steve laid a little pile of money on the
+desk. "That's for a starter," he said and turned to frown at George Pike
+who at that moment came to the door. The freight agent went quickly away
+and the two men were left alone together. Steve shook hands with his new
+partner. He went out and then came in again. "You understand," he said
+mysteriously. "The fifty dollars is your first month's salary. I was
+ready for you. I brought it along. You just leave everything to me, just
+you leave it to me." Again he went out and Hugh was left alone. He saw
+the young man go across the tracks to the old factory and walk up and
+down before it. When a farmer came along and shouted at him, he did not
+reply, but stepping back into the road swept the deserted old building
+with his eyes as a general might have looked over a battlefield. Then
+he went briskly down the road toward town and the farmer turned on his
+wagon seat to stare after him.
+
+Hugh McVey also stared. When Steve had gone away, he walked to the end
+of the station platform and looked along the road toward town. It seemed
+to him wonderful that he had at last held conversation with a citizen
+of Bidwell. A little of the import of the contract he had signed came to
+him, and he went into the station and got his copy of it and put it in
+his pocket. Then he came out again. When he read it over and realized
+anew that he was to be paid a living wage and have time and help to work
+out the problem that had now become vastly important to his happiness,
+it seemed to him that he had been in the presence of a kind of god.
+He remembered the words of Sarah Shepard concerning the bright alert
+citizens of eastern towns and realized that he had been in the presence
+of such a being, that he had in some way become connected in his
+new work with such a one. The realization overcame him completely.
+Forgetting entirely his duties as a telegrapher, he closed the office
+and went for a walk across the meadows and in the little patches of
+woodlands that still remained standing in the open plain north of
+Pickleville. He did not return until late at night, and when he did, had
+not solved the puzzle as to what had happened. All he got out of it was
+the fact that the machine he had been trying to make was of great and
+mysterious importance to the civilization into which he had come to
+live and of which he wanted so keenly to be a part. There seemed to him
+something almost sacred in that fact. A new determination to complete
+and perfect his plant-setting machine had taken possession of him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meeting to organize a promotion company that would in turn launch
+the first industrial enterprise in the town of Bidwell was held in the
+back room of the Bidwell bank one afternoon in June. The berry season
+had just come to an end and the streets were full of people. A circus
+had come to town and at one o'clock there was a parade. Before the
+stores horses belonging to visiting country people stood hitched in two
+long rows. The meeting in the bank was not held until four o'clock,
+when the banking business was at an end for the day. It had been a hot,
+stuffy afternoon and a storm threatened. For some reason the whole town
+had an inkling of the fact that a meeting was to be held on that day,
+and in spite of the excitement caused by the coming of the circus, it
+was in everybody's mind. From the very beginning of his upward journey
+in life, Steve Hunter had the faculty of throwing an air of mystery and
+importance about everything he did. Every one saw the workings of the
+machinery by which the myth concerning himself was created, but was
+nevertheless impressed. Even the men of Bidwell who retained the ability
+to laugh at Steve could not laugh at the things he did.
+
+For two months before the day on which the meeting was held, the town
+had been on edge. Every one knew that Hugh McVey had suddenly given
+up his place in the telegraph office and that he was engaged in some
+enterprise with Steve Hunter. "Well, I see he has thrown off the mask,
+that fellow," said Alban Foster, superintendent of the Bidwell schools,
+in speaking of the matter to the Reverend Harvey Oxford, the minister of
+the Baptist Church.
+
+Steve saw to it that although every one was curious the curiosity was
+unsatisfied. Even his father was left in the dark. The two men had a
+sharp quarrel about the matter, but as Steve had three thousand dollars
+of his own, left him by his mother, and was well past his twenty-first
+year, there was nothing his father could do.
+
+At Pickleville the windows and doors at the back of the deserted factory
+were bricked up, and over the windows and the door at the front, where a
+floor had been laid, iron bars specially made by Lew Twining the Bidwell
+blacksmith had been put. The bars over the door locked the place at
+night and gave the factory the air of a prison. Every evening before he
+went to bed Steve walked to Pickleville. The sinister appearance of the
+building at night gave him a peculiar satisfaction. "They'll find out
+what I'm up to when I want 'em to," he said to himself. Allie Mulberry
+worked at the factory during the day. Under Hugh's direction he whittled
+pieces of wood into various shapes, but had no idea of what he was
+doing. No one but the half-wit and Steve Hunter were admitted to the
+society of the telegraph operator. When Allie Mulberry came into the
+Main Street at night, every one stopped him and a thousand questions
+were asked, but he only shook his head and smiled foolishly. On
+Sunday afternoons crowds of men and women walked down Turner's Pike to
+Pickleville and stood looking at the deserted building, but no one tried
+to enter. The bars were in place and window shades were drawn over the
+windows. Above the door that faced the road there was a large sign.
+"Keep Out. This Means You," the sign said.
+
+The four men who met Steve in the bank knew vaguely that some sort of
+invention was being perfected, but did not know what it was. They spoke
+in an offhand way of the matter to their friends and that increased the
+general curiosity. Every one tried to guess what was up. When Steve was
+not about, John Clark and young Gordon Hart pretended to know everything
+but gave the impression of men sworn to secrecy. The fact that Steve
+told them nothing seemed to them a kind of insult. "The young upstart,
+I believe yet he's a bluff," the banker declared to his friend, Tom
+Butterworth.
+
+On Main Street the old and young men who stood about before the stores
+in the evening tried also to make light of the jeweler's son and the air
+of importance he constantly assumed. They also spoke of him as a young
+upstart and a windbag, but after the beginning of his connection with
+Hugh McVey, something of conviction went out of their voices. "I read
+in the paper that a man in Toledo made thirty thousand dollars out of an
+invention. He got it up in less than a day. He just thought of it. It's
+a new kind of way for sealing fruit cans," a man in the crowd before
+Birdie Spink's drug store absent-mindedly observed.
+
+Inside the drug store by the empty stove, Judge Hanby talked
+persistently of the time when factories would come. He seemed to those
+who listened a sort of John the Baptist crying out of the coming of
+the new day. One evening in May of that year, when a goodly crowd was
+assembled, Steve Hunter came in and bought a cigar. Every one became
+silent. Birdie Spinks was for some mysterious reason a little upset.
+In the store something happened that, had there been some one there to
+record it, might later have been remembered as the moment that marked
+the coming of the new age to Bidwell. The druggist, after he had handed
+out the cigar, looked at the young man whose name had so suddenly come
+upon every one's lips and whom he had known from babyhood, and then
+addressed him as no young man of his age had ever before been addressed
+by an older citizen of the town. "Well, good evening, Mr. Hunter," he
+said respectfully. "And how do you find yourself this evening?"
+
+To the men who met him in the bank, Steve described the plant-setting
+machine and the work it was intended to do. "It's the most perfect thing
+of its kind I've ever seen," he said with the air of one who has spent
+his life as an expert examiner of machinery. Then, to the amazement of
+every one, he produced sheets covered with figures estimating the cost
+of manufacturing the machine. To the men present it seemed as though
+the question as to the practicability of the machine had already been
+settled. The sheets covered with figures made the actual beginning of
+manufacturing seem near at hand. Without raising his voice and quite as
+a matter of course, Steve proposed that the men present subscribe each
+three thousand dollars to the stock of a promotion company, the money
+to be used to perfect the machine and put it actually to work in the
+fields, while a larger company for the building of a factory was being
+organized. For the three thousand dollars each of the men would receive
+later six thousand dollars in stock in the larger company. They would
+make one hundred per cent. on their first investment. As for himself he
+owned the invention and it was very valuable. He had already received
+many offers from other men in other places. He wanted to stick to his
+own town and to the men who had known him since he was a boy. He would
+retain a controlling interest in the larger company and that would
+enable him to take care of his friends. John Clark he proposed to make
+treasurer of the promotion company. Every one could see he would be the
+right man. Gordon Hart should be manager. Tom Butterworth could, if he
+could find time to give it, help him in the actual organization of the
+larger company. He did not propose to do anything in a small way. Much
+stock would have to be sold to farmers, as well as to townspeople, and
+he could see no reason why a certain commission for the selling of stock
+should not be paid.
+
+The four men came out of the back room of the bank just as the storm
+that had all day been threatening broke on Main Street. They stood
+together by the front window and watched the people skurry along past
+the stores homeward-bound from the circus. Farmers jumping into their
+wagons started their horses away on the trot. The whole street was
+populous with people shouting and running. To an observing person
+standing at the bank window, Bidwell, Ohio, might have seemed no longer
+a quiet town filled with people who lived quiet lives and thought quiet
+thoughts, but a tiny section of some giant modern city. The sky was
+extraordinarily black as from the smoke of a mill. The hurrying people
+might have been workmen escaping from the mill at the end of the day.
+Clouds of dust swept through the street. Steve Hunter's imagination was
+aroused. For some reason the black clouds of dust and the running people
+gave him a tremendous sense of power. It almost seemed to him that he
+had filled the sky with clouds and that something latent in him had
+startled the people. He was anxious to get away from the men who had
+just agreed to join him in his first great industrial adventure. He felt
+that they were after all mere puppets, creatures he could use, men who
+were being swept along by him as the people running along the streets
+were being swept along by the storm. He and the storm were in a way akin
+to each other. He had an impulse to be alone with the storm, to walk
+dignified and upright in the face of it as he felt that in the future he
+would walk dignified and upright in the face of men.
+
+Steve went out of the bank and into the street. The men inside shouted
+at him, telling him he would get wet, but he paid no attention to their
+warning. When he had gone and when his father had run quickly across
+the street to his jewelry store, the three men who were left in the
+bank looked at each other and laughed. Like the loiterers before Birdie
+Spinks' drug-store, they wanted to belittle him and had an inclination
+to begin calling him names; but for some reason they could not do
+it. Something had happened to them. They looked at each other with a
+question in their eyes. Each man waited for the others to speak. "Well,
+whatever happens we can't lose much of anything," John Clark finally
+observed.
+
+And over the bridge and out into Turner's Pike walked Steve Hunter, the
+embryo industrial magnate. Across the great stretches of fields that
+lay beside the road the wind ran furiously, tearing leaves off trees,
+carrying great volumes of dust before it. The hurrying black clouds
+in the sky were, he fancied, like clouds of smoke pouring out of the
+chimneys of factories owned by himself. In fancy also he saw his town
+become a city, bathed in the smoke of his enterprises. As he looked
+abroad over the fields swept by the storm of wind, he realized that the
+road along which he walked would in time become a city street. "Pretty
+soon I'll get an option on this land," he said meditatively. An exalted
+mood took possession of him and when he got to Pickleville he did not go
+into the shop where Hugh and Allie Mulberry were at work, but turning,
+walked back toward town in the mud and the driving rain.
+
+It was a time when Steve wanted to be by himself, to feel himself the
+one great man of the community. He had intended to go into the old
+pickle factory and escape the rain, but when he got to the railroad
+tracks, had turned back because he realized suddenly that in the
+presence of the silent, intent inventor he had never been able to feel
+big. He wanted to feel big on that evening and so, unmindful of the rain
+and of his hat, that was caught up by the wind and blown away into a
+field, he went along the deserted road thinking great thoughts. At a
+place where there were no houses he stopped for a moment and lifted
+his tiny hands to the skies. "I'm a man. I tell you what, I'm a man.
+Whatever any one says, I tell you what, I'm a man," he shouted into the
+void.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Modern men and women who live in industrial cities are like mice that
+have come out of the fields to live in houses that do not belong to
+them. They live within the dark walls of the houses where only a dim
+light penetrates, and so many have come that they grow thin and haggard
+with the constant toil of getting food and warmth. Behind the walls
+the mice scamper about in droves, and there is much squealing and
+chattering. Now and then a bold mouse stands upon his hind legs and
+addresses the others. He declares he will force his way through the
+walls and conquer the gods who have built the house. "I will kill them,"
+he declares. "The mice shall rule. You shall live in the light and the
+warmth. There shall be food for all and no one shall go hungry."
+
+The little mice, gathered in the darkness out of sight in the great
+houses, squeal with delight. After a time when nothing happens they
+become sad and depressed. Their minds go back to the time when they
+lived in the fields, but they do not go out of the walls of the houses,
+because long living in droves has made them afraid of the silence of
+long nights and the emptiness of skies. In the houses giant children are
+being reared. When the children fight and scream in the houses and in
+the streets, the dark spaces between the walls rumble with strange and
+appalling noises.
+
+The mice are terribly afraid. Now and then a single mouse for a moment
+escapes the general fear. A mood comes over such a one and a light
+comes into his eyes. When the noises run through the houses he makes up
+stories about them. "The horses of the sun are hauling wagon loads of
+days over the tops of trees," he says and looks quickly about to see if
+he has been heard. When he discovers a female mouse looking at him he
+runs away with a flip of his tail and the female follows. While other
+mice are repeating his saying and getting some little comfort from it,
+he and the female mouse find a warm dark corner and lie close together.
+It is because of them that mice continue to be born to dwell within the
+walls of the houses.
+
+When the first small model of Hugh McVey's plant-setting machine had
+been whittled out by the half-wit Allie Mulberry, it replaced the famous
+ship, floating in the bottle, that for two or three years had been lying
+in the window of Hunter's jewelry store. Allie was inordinately proud of
+the new specimen of his handiwork. As he worked under Hugh's directions
+at a bench in a corner of the deserted pickle factory, he was like a
+strange dog that has at last found a master. He paid no attention
+to Steve Hunter who, with the air of one bearing in his breast some
+gigantic secret, came in and went out at the door twenty times a day,
+but kept his eyes on the silent Hugh who sat at a desk and made drawings
+on sheets of paper. Allie tried valiantly to follow the instructions
+given him and to understand what his master was trying to do, and Hugh,
+finding himself unembarrassed by the presence of the half-wit, sometimes
+spent hours trying to explain the workings of some intricate part of
+the proposed machine. Hugh made each part crudely out of great pieces of
+board and Allie reproduced the part in miniature. Intelligence began to
+come into the eyes of the man who all his life had whittled meaningless
+wooden chains, baskets formed out of peach stones, and ships intended
+to float in bottles. Love and understanding began a little to do for him
+what words could not have done. One day when a part Hugh had fashioned
+would not work the half-wit himself made the model of a part that worked
+perfectly. When Hugh incorporated it in the machine, he was so happy
+that he could not sit still, and walked up and down cooing with delight.
+
+When the model of the machine appeared in the jeweler's window, a fever
+of excitement took hold of the minds of the people. Every one declared
+himself either for or against it. Something like a revolution took
+place. Parties were formed. Men who had no interest in the success of
+the invention, and in the nature of things could not have, were ready
+to fight any one who dared to doubt its success. Among the farmers who
+drove into town to see the new wonder were many who said the machine
+would not, could not, work. "It isn't practical," they said. Going off
+by themselves and forming groups, they whispered warnings. A hundred
+objections sprang to their lips. "See all the little wheels and cogs the
+thing has," they said. "You see it won't work. You take now in a field
+where there are stones and old tree roots, maybe, sticking in the
+ground. There you'll see. Fools'll buy the machine, yes. They'll spend
+their money. They'll put in plants. The plants'll die. The money'll be
+wasted. There'll be no crop." Old men, who had been cabbage farmers in
+the country north of Bidwell all their lives, and whose bodies were all
+twisted out of shape by the terrible labor of the cabbage fields,
+came hobbling into town to look at the model of the new machine. Their
+opinions were anxiously sought by the merchant, the carpenter, the
+artisan, the doctor--by all the townspeople. Almost without exception,
+they shook their heads in doubt. Standing on the sidewalk before the
+jeweler's window, they stared at the machine and then, turning to the
+crowd that had gathered about, they shook their heads in doubt. "Huh,"
+they exclaimed, "a thing of wheels and cogs, eh? Well, so young Hunter
+expects that thing to take the place of a man. He's a fool. I always
+said that boy was a fool." The merchants and townspeople, their ardor
+a little dampened by the adverse decision of the men who knew
+plant-setting, went off by themselves. They went into Birdie Spinks'
+drugstore, but did not listen to the talk of Judge Hanby. "If the
+machine works, the town'll wake up," some one declared. "It means
+factories, new people coming in, houses to be built, goods to be
+bought." Visions of suddenly acquired wealth began to float in their
+minds. Young Ed Hall, apprentice to Ben Peeler the carpenter, grew
+angry. "Hell," he exclaimed, "why listen to a lot of damned old calamity
+howlers? It's the town's duty to get out and plug for that machine. We
+got to wake up here. We got to forget what we used to think about Steve
+Hunter. Anyway, he saw a chance, didn't he? and he took it. I wish I was
+him. I only wish I was him. And what about that fellow we thought was
+maybe just a telegraph operator? He fooled us all slick, now didn't he?
+I tell you we ought to be proud to have such men as him and Steve Hunter
+living in Bidwell. That's what I say. I tell you it's the town's duty
+to get out and plug for them and for that machine. If we don't, I know
+what'll happen. Steve Hunter's a live one. I been thinking maybe he was.
+He'll take that invention and that inventor of his to some other town or
+to a city. That's what he'll do. Damn it, I tell you we got to get out
+and back them fellows up. That's what I say."
+
+On the whole the town of Bidwell agreed with young Hall. The excitement
+did not die, but grew every day more intense. Steve Hunter had a
+carpenter come to his father's store and build in the show window facing
+Main Street, a long shallow box formed in the shape of a field. This he
+filled with pulverized earth and then by an arrangement of strings and
+pulleys connected with a clockwork device the machine was pulled across
+the field. In a receptacle at the top of the machine had been placed
+some dozens of tiny plants no larger than pins. When the clockwork
+was started and the strings pulled to imitate applied horse power, the
+machine crept slowly forward, an arm came down and made a hole in the
+ground, the plant dropped into the hole and spoon-like hands appeared
+and packed the earth about the plant roots. At the top of the machine
+there was a tank filled with water, and when the plant was set, a
+portion of water, nicely calculated as to quantity, ran down a pipe and
+was deposited at the plant roots.
+
+Evening after evening the machine crawled forward across the tiny field,
+setting the plants in perfect order. Steve Hunter busied himself with
+it; he did nothing else; and rumors of a great company to be formed in
+Bidwell to manufacture the device were whispered about. Every evening
+a new tale was told. Steve went to Cleveland for a day and it was said
+that Bidwell was to lose its chance, that big moneyed men had induced
+Steve to take his factory project to the city. Hearing Ed Hall berate
+a farmer who doubted the practicability of the machine, Steve took him
+aside and talked to him. "We're going to need live young men who know
+how to handle other men for jobs as superintendent and things like
+that," he said. "I make no promises. I only want to tell you that I like
+live young fellows who can see the hole in a bushel basket. I like that
+kind. I like to see them get up in the world."
+
+Steve heard the farmers continually expressing their skepticism about
+making the plants that had been set by the machine grow into maturity,
+and had the carpenter build another tiny field in a side window of the
+store. He had the machine moved and plants set in the new field. He
+let these grow. When some of the plants showed signs of dying he came
+secretly at night and replaced them with sturdier shoots so that the
+miniature field showed always a brave, vigorous front to the world.
+
+Bidwell became convinced that the most rigorous of all forms of human
+labor practiced by its people was at an end. Steve made and had hung in
+the store window a large sheet showing the relative cost of planting an
+acre of cabbage with the machine, and by what was already called "the
+old way," by hand. Then he formally announced that a stock company would
+be formed in Bidwell and that every one would have a chance to get into
+it. He printed an article in the weekly paper in which he said that many
+offers had come to him to take his project to the city or to other and
+larger towns. "Mr. McVey, the celebrated inventor, and I both want to
+stick to our own people," he said, regardless of the fact that Hugh knew
+nothing of the article and had never been taken into the lives of the
+people addressed. A day was set for the beginning of the taking of stock
+subscriptions, and in private conversations Steve whispered of huge
+profits to be made. The matter was talked over in every household and
+plans were made for raising money to buy stock. John Clark agreed to
+lend a certain percentage on the value of the town property and Steve
+secured a long-time option on all the land facing Turner's Pike clear
+down to Pickleville. When the town heard of this it was filled with
+wonder. "Gee," the loiterers before the store exclaimed, "old Bidwell
+is going to grow up. Now look at that, will you? There are going to be
+houses clear down to Pickleville." Hugh went to Cleveland to see about
+having one of his new machines made in steel and wood and in a size that
+would permit its actual use in the field. He returned, a hero in the
+town's eyes. His silence made it possible for the people, who could not
+entirely forget their former lack of faith in Steve, to let their minds
+take hold of something they thought was truly heroic.
+
+In the evening, after going again to see the machine in the window
+of the jewelry store, crowds of young and old men wandered down along
+Turner's Pike to the Wheeling Station where a new man had come to
+replace Hugh. They hardly saw the evening train when it came in. Like
+devotees before a shrine they gazed with something like worship in their
+eyes at the old pickle factory, and when by chance Hugh came among them,
+unconscious of the sensation he was creating, they became embarrassed
+as he was always embarrassed by their presence. Every one dreamed of
+becoming suddenly rich by the power of the man's mind. They thought of
+him as thinking always great thoughts. To be sure, Steve Hunter might be
+more than half bluff and blow and pretense, but there was no bluff and
+blow about Hugh. He didn't waste his time in words. He thought, and out
+of his thought sprang almost unbelievable wonders.
+
+In every part of the town of Bidwell, the new impulse toward progress
+was felt. Old men, who had become settled in their ways and who had
+begun to pass their days in a sort of sleepy submission to the idea of
+the gradual passing away of their lives, awoke and went into Main Street
+in the evening to argue with skeptical farmers. Beside Ed Hall, who had
+become a Demosthenes on the subject of progress and the duty of the town
+to awake and stick to Steve Hunter and the machine, a dozen other men
+held forth on the street corners. Oratorical ability awoke in the most
+unexpected places. Rumors flew from lip to lip. It was said that within
+a year Bidwell was to have a brick factory covering acres of ground,
+that there would be paved streets and electric lights.
+
+Oddly enough the most persistent decrier of the new spirit in Bidwell
+was the man who, if the machine turned out to be a success, would profit
+most from its use. Ezra French, the profane, refused to be convinced.
+When pressed by Ed Hall, Dr. Robinson, and other enthusiasts, he fell
+back upon the word of that God whose name had been so much upon his
+lips. The decrier of God became the defender of God. "The thing, you
+see, can't be done. It ain't all right. Something awful'll happen. The
+rains won't come and the plants'll dry up and die. It'll be like it
+was in Egypt in the Bible times," he declared. The old farmer with the
+twisted leg stood before the crowd in the drug-store and proclaimed the
+truth of God's word. "Don't it say in the Bible men shall work and labor
+by the sweat of their brows?" he asked sharply. "Can a machine like that
+sweat? You know it can't. And it can't do the work either. No, siree.
+Men've got to do it. That's the way things have been since Cain killed
+Abel in the Garden of Eden. God intended it so and there can't no
+telegraph operator or no smart young squirt like Steve Hunter--fellows
+in a town like this--set themselves up before me to change the workings
+of God's laws. It can't be done, and if it could be done it would be
+wicked and ungodly to try. I'll have nothing to do with it. It ain't
+right. That's what I say and all your smart talk ain't a-going to change
+me."
+
+It was in the year 1892 that Steve Hunter organized the first industrial
+enterprise that came to Bidwell. It was called the Bidwell Plant-Setting
+Machine Company, and in the end it turned out to be a failure. A large
+factory was built on the river bank facing the New York Central tracks.
+It is now occupied by an enterprise called the Hunter Bicycle Company
+and is what in industrial parlance is called a live, going concern.
+
+For two years Hugh worked faithfully trying to perfect the first of his
+inventions. After the working models of the plant-setter were brought
+from Cleveland, two trained mechanics were employed to come to Bidwell
+and work with him. In the old pickle factory an engine was installed
+and lathes and other tool-making machines were set up. For a long time
+Steve, John Clark, Tom Butterworth, and the other enthusiastic promoters
+of the enterprise had no doubt as to the final outcome. Hugh wanted to
+perfect the machine, had his heart set on doing the job he had set out
+to do, but he had then and, for that matter, he continued during his
+whole life to have but little conception of the import in the lives of
+the people about him of the things he did. Day after day, with two
+city mechanics and Allie Mulberry to drive the team of horses Steve had
+provided, he went into a rented field north of the factory. Weak places
+developed in the complicated mechanism, and new and stronger parts
+were made. For a time the machine worked perfectly. Then other defects
+appeared and other parts had to be strengthened and changed. The machine
+became too heavy to be handled by one team. It would not work when the
+soil was either too wet or too dry. It worked perfectly in both wet and
+dry sand but would do nothing in clay. During the second year and
+when the factory was nearing completion and much machinery had been
+installed, Hugh went to Steve and told him of what he thought were the
+limitations of the machine. He was depressed by his failure, but in
+working with the machine, he felt he had succeeded in educating himself
+as he never could have done by studying books. Steve decided that the
+factory should be started and some of the machines made and sold. "You
+keep the two men you have and don't talk," he said. "The machine may yet
+turn out to be better than you think. One can never tell. I have made it
+worth their while to keep still." On the afternoon of the day on which
+he had his talk with Hugh, Steve called the four men who were associated
+with him in the promotion of the enterprise into the back room of the
+bank and told them of the situation. "We're up against something
+here," he said. "If we let word of the failure of this machine get out,
+where'll we be? It is a case of the survival of the fittest."
+
+Steve explained his plan to the men in the room. After all, he said,
+there was no occasion for any of them to get excited. He had taken them
+into the thing and he proposed to get them out. "I'm that kind of a
+man," he said pompously. In a way, he declared, he was glad things had
+turned out as they had. The four men had little actual money invested.
+They had all tried honestly to do something for the town and he would
+see to it that everything came out all right. "We'll be honest with
+every one," he said. "The stock in the company has all been sold. We'll
+make some of the machines and sell them. If they're failures, as this
+inventor thinks, it will not be our fault. The plant, you see, will
+have to be sold cheap. When that times comes we five will have to save
+ourselves and the future of the town. The machinery we have bought, is,
+you see, iron and wood working machinery, the very latest kind. It can
+be used to make some other thing. If the plant-setting machine is a
+failure we'll simply buy up the plant at a low price and make something
+else. Perhaps it'll be better for the town to have the entire stock
+control in our hands. You see we few men have got to run things here.
+It's going to be on our shoulders to see that labor is employed. A lot
+of small stock-holders are a nuisance. As man to man I'm going to ask
+each of you not to sell his stock, but if any one comes to you and asks
+about its value, I expect you to be loyal to our enterprise. I'll begin
+looking about for something to replace the plant-setting machine, and
+when the shop closes we'll start right up again. It isn't every day men
+get a chance to sell themselves a fine plant full of new machinery as we
+can do in a year or so now."
+
+Steve went out of the bank and left the four men staring at each other.
+Then his father got up and went out. The other men, all connected with
+the bank, arose and wandered out. "Well," said John Clark, somewhat
+heavily, "he's a smart man. I suppose after all it is up to us to stick
+with him and with the town. As he says, labor has got to be employed. I
+can't see that it does a carpenter or a farmer any good to own a little
+stock in a factory. It only takes their minds off their work. They have
+foolish dreams of getting rich and don't attend to their own affairs. It
+would be an actual benefit to the town if a few men owned the factory."
+The banker lighted a cigar and going to a window stared out into the
+main street of Bidwell. Already the town had changed. Three new brick
+buildings were being erected on Main Street within sight of the bank
+window. Workmen employed in the building of the factory had come to town
+to live, and many new houses were being built. Everywhere things were
+astir. The stock of the company had been oversubscribed, and almost
+every day men came into the bank and spoke of wanting to buy more.
+Only the day before a farmer had come in with two thousand dollars. The
+banker's mind began to secrete the poison of his age. "After all, it's
+men like Steve Hunter, Tom Butterworth, Gordon Hart, and myself that
+have to take care of things, and to be in shape to do it we have to look
+out for ourselves," he soliloquized. Again he stared into Main Street.
+Tom Butterworth went out at the front door. He wanted to be by himself
+and think his own thoughts. Gordon Hart returned to the empty back room
+and standing by a window looked out into an alleyway. His thoughts ran
+in the same channel as those that played through the mind of the bank
+president. He also thought of men who wanted to buy stock in the company
+that was doomed to failure. He began to doubt the judgment of Hugh McVey
+in the matter of failure. "Such fellows are always pessimists," he told
+himself. From the window at the back of the bank, he could see over the
+roofs of a row of small sheds and down a residence street to where two
+new workingmen's houses were being built. His thoughts only differed
+from the thoughts of John Clark because he was a younger man. "A few men
+of the younger generation, like Steve and myself will have to take hold
+of things," he muttered aloud. "We'll have to have money to work with.
+We'll have to take the responsibility of the ownership of money."
+
+At the front of the bank John Clark puffed at his cigar. He felt like a
+soldier weighing the chances of battle. Vaguely he thought of himself as
+a general, a kind of U. S. Grant of industry. The lives and happiness
+of many people, he told himself, depended on the clear working of his
+brain. "Well," he thought, "when factories start coming to a town and
+it begins to grow as this town is growing no man can stop it. The
+fellow who thinks of individual men, little fellows with their savings
+invested, who may be hurt by an industrial failure, is just a weakling.
+Men have to face the duties life brings. The few men who see clearly
+have to think first of themselves. They have to save themselves in order
+that they may save others."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Things kept on the stir in Bidwell and the gods of chance played into
+the hands of Steve Hunter. Hugh invented an apparatus for lifting a
+loaded coal-car off the railroad tracks, carrying it high up into the
+air and dumping its contents into a chute. By its use an entire car of
+coal could be emptied with a roaring rush into the hold of a ship or the
+engine room of a factory. A model of the new invention was made and
+a patent secured. Then Steve Hunter carried it off to New York. He
+received two hundred thousand dollars in cash for it, half of which went
+to Hugh. Steve's faith in the inventive genius of the Missourian was
+renewed and strengthened. He looked forward with a feeling almost
+approaching pleasure to the time when the town would be forced to face
+the fact that the plant-setting machine was a failure, and the factory
+with its new machinery would have to be thrown on the market. He knew
+that his associates in the promotion of the enterprise were secretly
+selling their stock. One day he went to Cleveland and had a long talk
+with a banker there. Hugh was at work on a corn-cutting machine and
+already he had secured an option on it. "Perhaps when the time comes to
+sell the factory there'll be more than one bidder," he told Ernestine,
+the soap maker's daughter, who had married him within a month after the
+sale of the car-unloading device. He grew indignant when he told her
+of the disloyalty of the two men in the bank, and the rich farmer,
+Tom Butterworth. "They're selling their shares and letting the small
+stock-holders lose their money," he declared. "I told 'em not to do
+it. Now if anything happens to spoil their plans they'll not have me to
+blame."
+
+Nearly a year had been spent in stirring up the people of Bidwell to the
+point of becoming investors. Then things began to stir. The ground was
+broken for the erection of the factory. No one knew of the difficulties
+that had been encountered in attempting to perfect the machine and word
+was passed about that in actual tests in the fields it had proven
+itself entirely practical. The skeptical farmers who came into town on
+Saturdays were laughed at by the town enthusiasts. A field, that had
+been planted during one of the brief periods when the machine finding
+ideal soil conditions had worked perfectly, was left to grow. As when he
+operated the tiny model in the store window, Steve took no chances. He
+engaged Ed Hall to go at night and replace the plants that did not live.
+"It's fair enough," he explained to Ed. "A hundred things can cause the
+plants to die, but if they die it'll be blamed on the machine. What
+will become of the town if we don't believe in the thing we're going to
+manufacture here?"
+
+The crowds of people, who in the evenings walked out along Turner's Pike
+to look at the field with its long rows of sturdy young cabbages, moved
+restlessly about and talked of the new days. From the field they went
+along the railroad tracks to the site of the factory. The brick walls
+began to mount up into the sky. Machinery began to arrive and was housed
+under temporary sheds against the time when it could be installed. An
+advance horde of workmen came to town and new faces appeared on Main
+Street in the evening. The thing that was happening in Bidwell happened
+in towns all over the Middle West. Out through the coal and iron regions
+of Pennsylvania, into Ohio and Indiana, and on westward into the States
+bordering on the Mississippi River, industry crept. Gas and oil were
+discovered in Ohio and Indiana. Over night, towns grew into cities. A
+madness took hold of the minds of the people. Villages like Lima and
+Findlay, Ohio, and like Muncie and Anderson in Indiana, became small
+cities within a few weeks. To some of these places, so anxious were the
+people to get to them and to invest their money, excursion trains were
+run. Town lots that a few weeks before the discovery of oil or gas could
+have been bought for a few dollars sold for thousands. Wealth seemed to
+be spurting out of the very earth. On farms in Indiana and Ohio giant
+gas wells blew the drilling machinery out of the ground, and the fuel so
+essential to modern industrial development rushed into the open. A wit,
+standing in the presence of one of the roaring gas wells exclaimed,
+"Papa, Earth has indigestion; he has gas on his stomach. His face will
+be covered with pimples."
+
+Having, before the factories came, no market for the gas, the wells were
+lighted and at night great torches of flame lit the skies. Pipes were
+laid on the surface of the ground and by a day's work a laborer earned
+enough to heat his house at tropical heat through an entire winter.
+Farmers owning oil-producing land went to bed in the evening poor and
+owing money at the bank, and awoke in the morning rich. They moved
+into the towns and invested their money in the factories that sprang
+up everywhere. In one county in southern Michigan, over five hundred
+patents for woven wire farm fencing were taken out in one year,
+and almost every patent was a magnet about which a company for the
+manufacture of fence formed itself. A vast energy seemed to come out
+of the breast of earth and infect the people. Thousands of the most
+energetic men of the middle States wore themselves out in forming
+companies, and when the companies failed, immediately formed others.
+In the fast-growing towns, men who were engaged in organizing companies
+representing a capital of millions lived in houses thrown hurriedly
+together by carpenters who, before the time of the great awakening, were
+engaged in building barns. It was a time of hideous architecture, a time
+when thought and learning paused. Without music, without poetry, without
+beauty in their lives or impulses, a whole people, full of the native
+energy and strength of lives lived in a new land, rushed pell-mell
+into a new age. A man in Ohio, who had been a dealer in horses, made a
+million dollars out of a patent churn he had bought for the price of a
+farm horse, took his wife to visit Europe and in Paris bought a painting
+for fifty thousand dollars. In another State of the Middle West, a man
+who sold patent medicine from door to door through the country began
+dealing in oil leases, became fabulously rich, bought himself three
+daily newspapers, and before he had reached the age of thirty-five
+succeeded in having himself elected Governor of his State. In the
+glorification of his energy his unfitness as a statesman was forgotten.
+
+In the days before the coming of industry, before the time of the mad
+awakening, the towns of the Middle West were sleepy places devoted to
+the practice of the old trades, to agriculture and to merchandising. In
+the morning the men of the towns went forth to work in the fields or
+to the practice of the trade of carpentry, horse-shoeing, wagon making,
+harness repairing, and the making of shoes and clothing. They read
+books and believed in a God born in the brains of men who came out of a
+civilization much like their own. On the farms and in the houses in the
+towns the men and women worked together toward the same ends in life.
+They lived in small frame houses set on the plains like boxes, but
+very substantially built. The carpenter who built a farmer's house
+differentiated it from the barn by putting what he called scroll work up
+under the eaves and by building at the front a porch with carved posts.
+After one of the poor little houses had been lived in for a long time,
+after children had been born and men had died, after men and women had
+suffered and had moments of joy together in the tiny rooms under the low
+roofs, a subtle change took place. The houses became almost beautiful
+in their old humanness. Each of the houses began vaguely to shadow forth
+the personality of the people who lived within its walls.
+
+In the farmhouses and in the houses on the side streets in the villages,
+life awoke at dawn. Back of each of the houses there was a barn for the
+horses and cows, and sheds for pigs and chickens. At daylight a chorus
+of neighs, squeals, and cries broke the silence. Boys and men came
+out of the houses. They stood in the open spaces before the barns and
+stretched their bodies like sleepy animals. The arms extended upward
+seemed to be supplicating the gods for fair days, and the fair days
+came. The men and boys went to a pump beside the house and washed their
+faces and hands in the cold water. In the kitchens there was the smell
+and sound of the cooking of food. The women also were astir. The men
+went into the barns to feed the animals and then hurried to the houses
+to be themselves fed. A continual grunting sound came from the sheds
+where pigs were eating corn, and over the houses a contented silence
+brooded.
+
+After the morning meal men and animals went together to the fields and
+to the doing of their tasks, and in the houses the women mended clothes,
+put fruit in cans against the coming of winter and talked of woman's
+affairs. On the streets of the towns on fair days lawyers, doctors, the
+officials of the county courts, and the merchants walked about in their
+shirt sleeves. The house painter went along with his ladder on his
+shoulder. In the stillness there could be heard the hammers of the
+carpenters building a new house for the son of a merchant who had
+married the daughter of a blacksmith. A sense of quiet growth awoke in
+sleeping minds. It was the time for art and beauty to awake in the land.
+
+Instead, the giant, Industry, awoke. Boys, who in the schools had read
+of Lincoln, walking for miles through the forest to borrow his first
+book, and of Garfield, the towpath lad who became president, began to
+read in the newspapers and magazines of men who by developing
+their faculty for getting and keeping money had become suddenly and
+overwhelmingly rich. Hired writers called these men great, and there was
+no maturity of mind in the people with which to combat the force of the
+statement, often repeated. Like children the people believed what they
+were told.
+
+While the new factory was being built with the carefully saved dollars
+of the people, young men from Bidwell went out to work in other places.
+After oil and gas were discovered in neighboring states, they went to
+the fast-growing towns and came home telling wonder tales. In the boom
+towns men earned four, five and even six dollars a day. In secret and
+when none of the older people were about, they told of adventures on
+which they had gone in the new places; of how, attracted by the flood
+of money, women came from the cities; and the times they had been with
+these women. Young Harley Parsons, whose father was a shoemaker and who
+had learned the blacksmith trade, went to work in one of the new oil
+fields. He came home wearing a fancy silk vest and astonished his
+fellows by buying and smoking ten-cent cigars. His pockets were bulging
+with money. "I'm not going to stay long in this town, you can bet on
+that," he declared one evening as he stood, surrounded by a group of
+admirers before Fanny Twist's Millinery Shop on lower Main Street. "I
+have been with a Chinese woman, and an Italian, and with one from South
+America." He took a puff of his cigar and spat on the sidewalk. "I'm
+out to get what I can out of life," he declared. "I'm going back and
+I'm going to make a record. Before I get through I'm going to be with a
+woman of every nationality on earth, that's what I'm going to do."
+
+Joseph Wainsworth the harness maker, who had been the first man in
+Bidwell to feel the touch of the heavy finger of industrialism, could
+not get over the effect of the conversation had with Butterworth, the
+farmer who had asked him to repair harnesses made by machines in a
+factory. He became a silent disgruntled man and muttered as he went
+about his work in the shop. When Will Sellinger his apprentice threw
+up his place and went to Cleveland he did not get another boy but for
+a time worked alone in the shop. He got the name of being disagreeable,
+and on winter afternoons the farmers no longer came into his place to
+loaf. Being a sensitive man, Joe felt like a pigmy, a tiny thing walking
+always in the presence of a giant that might at any moment and by a
+whim destroy him. All his life he had been somewhat off-hand with his
+customers. "If they don't like my work, let 'em go to the devil," he
+said to his apprentices. "I know my trade and I don't have to bow down
+to any one here."
+
+When Steve Hunter organized the Bidwell Plant-Setting Machine Company,
+the harness maker put his savings, twelve hundred dollars, into the
+stock of the company. One day, during the time when the factory was
+building, he heard that Steve had paid twelve hundred dollars for a new
+lathe that had just arrived by freight and had been set on the floor of
+the uncompleted building. The promoter had told a farmer that the lathe
+would do the work of a hundred men, and the farmer had come into Joe's
+shop and repeated the statement. It stuck in Joe's mind and he came to
+believe that the twelve hundred dollars he had invested in stock had
+been used for the purchase of the lathe. It was money he had earned in
+a long lifetime of effort and it had now bought a machine that would do
+the work of a hundred men. Already his money had increased by a hundred
+fold and he wondered why he could not be happy about the matter. On some
+days he was happy, and then his happiness was followed by an odd fit of
+depression. Suppose, after all, the plant-setting machine wouldn't work?
+What then could be done with the lathe, with the machine bought with his
+money?
+
+One evening after dark and without saying anything to his wife, he went
+down along Turner's Pike to the old factory at Pickleville where Hugh
+with the half-wit Allie Mulberry, and the two mechanics from the city,
+were striving to correct the faults in the plant-setting machine. Joe
+wanted to look at the tall gaunt man from the West, and had some notion
+of trying to get into conversation with him and of asking his opinion of
+the possibilities of the success of the new machine. The man of the
+age of flesh and blood wanted to walk in the presence of the man who
+belonged to the new age of iron and steel. When he got to the factory
+it was dark and on an express truck in front of the Wheeling Station the
+two city workmen sat smoking their evening pipes. Joe walked past them
+to the station door and then returned along the platform and got again
+into Turner's Pike. He stumbled along the path beside the road and
+presently saw Hugh McVey coming toward him. It was one of the evenings
+when Hugh, overcome with loneliness, and puzzled that his new position
+in the town's life did not bring him any closer to people, had gone
+to town to walk through Main Street, half hoping some one would break
+through his embarrassment and enter into conversation with him.
+
+When the harness maker saw Hugh walking in the path, he crept into a
+fence corner, and crouching down, watched the man as Hugh had watched
+the French boys at work in the cabbage fields. Strange thoughts came
+into his head. He thought the extraordinarily tall figure before him in
+some way terrible. He became childishly angry and for a moment thought
+that if he had a stone in his hand he would throw it at the man, the
+workings of whose brain had so upset his own life. Then as the figure of
+Hugh went away along the path another mood came. "I have worked all my
+life for twelve hundred dollars, for money that will buy one machine
+that this man thinks nothing about," he muttered aloud. "Perhaps I'll
+get more money than I invested: Steve Hunter says maybe I will. If
+machines kill the harness-making trade what's the difference? I'll be
+all right. The thing to do is to get in with the new times, to wake
+up, that's the ticket. With me it's like with every one else: nothing
+venture nothing gain."
+
+Joe crawled out of the fence corner and went stealthily along the road
+behind Hugh. A fervor seized him and he thought he would like to creep
+close and touch with his finger the hem of Hugh's coat. Afraid to try
+anything so bold his mind took a new turn. He ran in the darkness along
+the road toward town and, when he had crossed the bridge and come to the
+New York Central tracks, turned west and went along the tracks until he
+came to the new factory. In the darkness the half completed walls stuck
+up into the sky, and all about were piles of building materials. The
+night had been dark and cloudy, but now the moon began to push its way
+through the clouds. Joe crawled over a pile of bricks and through a
+window into the building. He felt his way along the walls until he came
+to a mass of iron covered by a rubber blanket. He was sure it must be
+the lathe his money had bought, the machine that was to do the work of a
+hundred men and that was to make him comfortably rich in his old age.
+No one had spoken of any other machine having been brought in on the
+factory floor. Joe knelt on the floor and put his hands about the heavy
+iron legs of the machine. "What a strong thing it is! It will not break
+easily," he thought. He had an impulse to do something he knew would be
+foolish, to kiss the iron legs of the machine or to say a prayer as
+he knelt before it. Instead he got to his feet and crawling out again
+through the window, went home. He felt renewed and full of new courage
+because of the experiences of the night, but when he got to his own
+house and stood at the door outside, he heard his neighbor, David
+Chapman, a wheelwright who worked in Charlie Collins' wagon shop,
+praying in his bedroom before an open window. Joe listened for a moment
+and, for some reason he couldn't understand, his new-found faith was
+destroyed by what he heard. David Chapman, a devout Methodist, was
+praying for Hugh McVey and for the success of his invention. Joe knew
+his neighbor had also invested his savings in the stock of the new
+company. He had thought that he alone was doubtful of success, but it
+was apparent that doubt had come also into the mind of the wheelwright.
+The pleading voice of the praying man, as it broke the stillness of the
+night, cut across and for the moment utterly destroyed his confidence.
+"O God, help the man Hugh McVey to remove every obstacle that stands
+in his way," David Chapman prayed. "Make the plant-setting machine a
+success. Bring light into the dark places. O Lord, help Hugh McVey, thy
+servant, to build successfully the plant-setting machine."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When Clara Butterworth, the daughter of Tom Butterworth, was eighteen
+years old she graduated from the town high school. Until the summer of
+her seventeenth year, she was a tall, strong, hard-muscled girl, shy in
+the presence of strangers and bold with people she knew well. Her eyes
+were extraordinarily gentle.
+
+The Butterworth house on Medina Road stood back of an apple orchard and
+there was a second orchard beside the house. The Medina Road ran south
+from Bidwell and climbed gradually upward toward a country of low
+hills, and from the side porch of the Butterworth house the view was
+magnificent. The house itself was a large brick affair with a cupola on
+top and was considered at that time the most pretentious place in the
+county.
+
+Behind the house were several great barns for the horses and cattle.
+Most of Tom Butterworth's farm land lay north of Bidwell, and some of
+his fields were five miles from his home; but as he did not himself work
+the land it did not matter. The farms were rented to men who worked them
+on shares. Beside the business of farming Tom carried on other affairs.
+He owned two hundred acres of hillside land near his house and, with the
+exception of a few fields and a strip of forest land, it was devoted
+to the grazing of sheep and cattle. Milk and cream were delivered each
+morning to the householders of Bidwell by two wagons driven by his
+employees. A half mile to the west of his residence there was a
+slaughter house on a side road and at the edge of a field where cattle
+were killed for the Bidwell market. Tom owned it and employed the men
+who did the killing. A creek that came down out of the hills through
+one of the fields past his house had been dammed, and south of the
+pond there was an ice house. He also supplied the town with ice. In his
+orchards beneath the trees stood more than a hundred beehives and every
+year he shipped honey to Cleveland. The farmer himself was a man who
+appeared to do nothing, but his shrewd mind was always at work. In the
+summer throughout the long sleepy afternoons, he drove about over the
+county buying sheep and cattle, stopping to trade horses with some
+farmer, dickering for new pieces of land, everlastingly busy. He had one
+passion. He loved fast trotting horses, but would not humor himself by
+owning one. "It's a game that only gets you into trouble and debt," he
+said to his friend John Clark, the banker. "Let other men own the horses
+and go broke racing them. I'll go to the races. Every fall I can go to
+Cleveland to the grand circuit. If I go crazy about a horse I can bet
+ten dollars he'll win. If he doesn't I'm out ten dollars. If I owned him
+I would maybe be out hundreds for the expense of training and all that."
+The farmer was a tall man with a white beard, broad shoulders, and
+rather small slender white hands. He chewed tobacco, but in spite of the
+habit kept both himself and his white beard scrupulously clean. His wife
+had died while he was yet in the full vigor of life, but he had no
+eye for women. His mind, he once told one of his friends, was too much
+occupied with his own affairs and with thoughts of the fine horses he
+had seen to concern itself with any such nonsense.
+
+For many years the farmer did not appear to pay much attention to his
+daughter Clara, who was his only child. Throughout her childhood she was
+under the care of one of his five sisters, all of whom except the one
+who lived with him and managed his household being comfortably married.
+His own wife had been a somewhat frail woman, but his daughter had
+inherited his own physical strength.
+
+When Clara was seventeen, she and her father had a quarrel that
+eventually destroyed their relationship. The quarrel began late in
+July. It was a busy summer on the farms and more than a dozen men were
+employed about the barns, in the delivery of ice and milk to the town,
+and at the slaughtering pens a half mile away. During that summer
+something happened to the girl. For hours she sat in her own room in the
+house reading books, or lay in a hammock in the orchard and looked up
+through the fluttering leaves of the apple trees at the summer sky. A
+light, strangely soft and enticing, sometimes came into her eyes. Her
+figure that had been boyish and strong began to change. As she went
+about the house she sometimes smiled at nothing. Her aunt hardly noticed
+what was happening to her, but her father, who all her life had seemed
+hardly to take account of her existence, was interested. In her presence
+he began to feel like a young man. As in the days of his courtship
+of her mother and before the possessive passion in him destroyed his
+ability to love, he began to feel vaguely that life about him was full
+of significance. Sometimes in the afternoon when he went for one of his
+long drives through the country he asked his daughter to accompany him,
+and although he had little to say a kind of gallantry crept into his
+attitude toward the awakening girl. While she was in the buggy with him,
+he did not chew tobacco, and after one or two attempts to indulge in the
+habit without having the smoke blow in her face, he gave up smoking his
+pipe during the drives.
+
+Always before that summer Clara had spent the months when there was no
+school in the company of the farm hands. She rode on wagons, visited the
+barns, and when she grew weary of the company of older people, went into
+town to spend an afternoon with one of her friends among the town girls.
+
+In the summer of her seventeenth year she did none of these things. At
+the table she ate in silence. The Butterworth household was at that time
+run on the old-fashioned American plan, and the farm hands, the men who
+drove the ice and milk wagons and even the men who killed and dressed
+cattle and sheep, ate at the same table with Tom Butterworth, his
+sister, who was the housekeeper, and his daughter. Three hired girls
+were employed in the house and after all had been served they also
+came and took their places at table. The older men among the farmer's
+employees, many of whom had known her from childhood, had got into
+the habit of teasing the daughter of the house. They made comments
+concerning town boys, young fellows who clerked in stores or who were
+apprenticed to some tradesman and one of whom had perhaps brought the
+girl home at night from a school party or from one of the affairs called
+"socials" that were held at the town churches. After they had eaten in
+the peculiar silent intent way common to hungry laborers, the farm hands
+leaned back in their chairs and winked at each other. Two of them began
+an elaborate conversation touching on some incident in the girl's life.
+One of the older men, who had been on the farm for many years and who
+had a reputation among the others of being something of a wit, chuckled
+softly. He began to talk, addressing no one in particular. The man's
+name was Jim Priest, and although the Civil War had come upon the
+country when he was past forty, he had been a soldier. In Bidwell he was
+looked upon as something of a rascal, but his employer was very fond of
+him. The two men often talked together for hours concerning the merits
+of well known trotting horses. In the war Jim had been what was called
+a bounty man, and it was whispered about town that he had also been a
+deserter and a bounty jumper. He did not go to town with the other men
+on Saturday afternoons, and had never attempted to get into the Bidwell
+chapter of the G. A. R. On Saturdays when the other farm hands washed,
+shaved and dressed themselves in their Sunday clothes preparatory to the
+weekly flight to town, he called one of them into the barn, slipped a
+quarter into his hand, and said, "Bring me a half pint and don't you
+forget it." On Sunday afternoons he crawled into the hayloft of one of
+the barns, drank his weekly portion of whisky, got drunk, and sometimes
+did not appear again until time to go to work on Monday morning. In the
+fall Jim took his savings and went to spend a week at the grand circuit
+trotting meeting at Cleveland, where he bought a costly present for his
+employer's daughter and then bet the rest of his money on the races.
+When he was lucky he stayed on in Cleveland, drinking and carousing
+until his winnings were gone.
+
+It was Jim Priest who always led the attacks of teasing at the table,
+and in the summer of her seventeenth year, when she was no longer in the
+mood for such horse-play, it was Jim who brought the practice to an
+end. At the table Jim leaned back in his chair, stroked his red bristly
+beard, now rapidly graying, looked out of a window over Clara's head,
+and told a tale concerning an attempt at suicide on the part of a young
+man in love with Clara. He said the young man, a clerk in a Bidwell
+store, had taken a pair of trousers from a shelf, tied one leg about
+his neck and the other to a bracket in the wall. Then he jumped off a
+counter and had only been saved from death because a town girl, passing
+the store, had seen him and had rushed in and cut him down. "Now what
+do you think of that?" he cried. "He was in love with our Clara, I tell
+you."
+
+After the telling of the tale, Clara got up from the table and ran out
+of the room. The farm hands joined by her father laughed heartily. Her
+aunt shook her finger at Jim Priest, the hero of the occasion. "Why
+don't you let her alone?" she asked.
+
+"She'll never get married if she stays here where you make fun of every
+young man who pays her any attention." At the door Clara stopped and,
+turning, put out her tongue at Jim Priest. Another roar of laughter
+arose. Chairs were scraped along the floor and the men filed out of the
+house to go back to the work in the barns and about the farm.
+
+In the summer when the change came over her Clara sat at the table and
+did not hear the tales told by Jim Priest. She thought the farm hands
+who ate so greedily were vulgar, a notion she had never had before, and
+wished she did not have to eat with them. One afternoon as she lay in
+the hammock in the orchard, she heard several of the men in a nearby
+barn discussing the change that had come over her. Jim Priest was
+explaining what had happened. "Our fun's over with Clara," he said. "Now
+we'll have to treat her in a new way. She's no longer a kid. We'll have
+to let her alone or pretty soon she won't speak to any of us. It's a
+thing that happens when a girl begins to think about being a woman. The
+sap has begun to run up the tree."
+
+The puzzled girl lay in the hammock and looked up at the sky. She
+thought about Jim Priest's words and tried to understand what he meant.
+Sadness crept over her and tears came into her eyes. Although she did
+not know what the old man meant by the words about the sap and the tree,
+she did, in a detached subconscious way, understand something of the
+import of the words, and she was grateful for the thoughtfulness that
+had led to his telling the others to stop trying to tease her at the
+table. The half worn-out old farm hand, with the bristly beard and the
+strong old body, became a figure full of significance to her mind. She
+remembered with gratitude that, in spite of all of his teasing, Jim
+Priest had never said anything that had in any way hurt her. In the
+new mood that had come upon her that meant much. A greater hunger for
+understanding, love, and friendliness took possession of her. She did
+not think of turning to her father or to her aunt, with whom she had
+never talked of anything intimate or close to herself, but turned
+instead to the crude old man. A hundred minor points in the character of
+Jim Priest she had never thought of before came sharply into her mind.
+In the barns he had never mistreated the animals as the other farm
+hands sometimes did. When on Sunday afternoons he was drunk and went
+staggering through the barns, he did not strike the horses or swear
+at them. She wondered if it would be possible for her to talk to Jim
+Priest, to ask him questions about life and people and what he meant
+by his words regarding the sap and the tree. The farm hand was old and
+unmarried. She wondered if in his youth he had ever loved a woman. She
+decided he had. His words about the sap were, she was sure, in some way
+connected with the idea of love. How strong his hands were. They were
+gnarled and rough, but there was something beautifully powerful about
+them. She half wished the old man had been her father. In his youth,
+in the darkness at night or when he was alone with a girl, perhaps in a
+quiet wood in the late afternoon when the sun was going down, he had put
+his hands on her shoulders. He had drawn the girl to him. He had kissed
+her.
+
+Clara jumped quickly out of the hammock and walked about under the trees
+in the orchard. Her thoughts of Jim Priest's youth startled her. It was
+as though she had walked suddenly into a room where a man and woman were
+making love. Her cheeks burned and her hands trembled. As she walked
+slowly through the clumps of grass and weeds that grew between the trees
+where the sunlight struggled through, bees coming home to the hives
+heavily laden with honey flew in droves about her head. There was
+something heady and purposeful about the song of labor that arose out of
+the beehives. It got into her blood and her step quickened. The words of
+Jim Priest that kept running through her mind seemed a part of the same
+song the bees were singing. "The sap has begun to run up the tree," she
+repeated aloud. How significant and strange the words seemed! They were
+the kind of words a lover might use in speaking to his beloved. She had
+read many novels, but they contained no such words. It was better so.
+It was better to hear them from human lips. Again she thought of Jim
+Priest's youth and boldly wished he were still young. She told herself
+that she would like to see him young and married to a beautiful young
+woman. She stopped by a fence that looked out upon a hillside meadow.
+The sun seemed extraordinarily bright, the grass in the meadow greener
+than she had ever seen it before. Two birds in a tree nearby made love
+to each other. The female flew madly about and was pursued by the male
+bird. In his eagerness he was so intent that he flew directly before the
+girl's face, his wing nearly touching her cheek. She went back through
+the orchard to the barns and through one of them to the open door of
+a long shed that was used for housing wagons and buggies, her mind
+occupied with the idea of finding Jim Priest, of standing perhaps near
+him. He was not about, but in the open space before the shed, John May,
+a young man of twenty-two who had just come to work on the farm, was
+oiling the wheels of a wagon. His back was turned and as he handled the
+heavy wagon wheels the muscles could be seen playing beneath his thin
+cotton shirt. "It is so Jim Priest must have looked in his youth," the
+girl thought.
+
+The farm girl wanted to approach the young man, to speak to him, to
+ask him questions concerning many strange things in life she did not
+understand. She knew that under no circumstances would she be able to do
+such a thing, that it was but a meaningless dream that had come into
+her head, but the dream was sweet. She did not, however, want to talk to
+John May. At the moment she was in a girlish period of being disgusted
+at what she thought of as the vulgarity of the men who worked on the
+place. At the table they ate noisily and greedily like hungry animals.
+She wanted youth that was like her own youth, crude and uncertain
+perhaps, but reaching eagerly out into the unknown. She wanted to draw
+very near to something young, strong, gentle, insistent, beautiful. When
+the farm hand looked up and saw her standing and looking intently at
+him, she was embarrassed. For a moment the two young animals, so
+unlike each other, stood staring at each other and then, to relieve her
+embarrassment, Clara began to play a game. Among the men employed on the
+farm she had always passed for something of a tomboy. In the hayfields
+and in the barns she had wrestled and fought playfully with both the old
+and the young men. To them she had always been a privileged person. They
+liked her and she was the boss's daughter. One did not get rough with
+her or say or do rough things. A basket of corn stood just within the
+door of the shed, and running to it Clara took an ear of the yellow corn
+and threw it at the farm hand. It struck a post of the barn just above
+his head. Laughing shrilly Clara ran into the shed among the wagons, and
+the farm hand pursued her.
+
+John May was a very determined man. He was the son of a laborer in
+Bidwell and for two or three years had been employed about the stable of
+a doctor, something had happened between him and the doctor's wife
+and he had left the place because he had a notion that the doctor was
+becoming suspicious. The experience had taught him the value of boldness
+in dealing with women. Ever since he had come to work on the Butterworth
+farm, he had been having thoughts regarding the girl who had now, he
+imagined, given him direct challenge. He was a little amazed by her
+boldness but did not stop to ask himself questions, she had openly
+invited him to pursue her. That was enough. His accustomed awkwardness
+and clumsiness went away and he leaped lightly over the extended tongues
+of wagons and buggies. He caught Clara in dark corner of the shed.
+Without a word he took her tightly into his arms and kissed her, first
+upon the neck and then on the mouth. She lay trembling and weak in his
+arms and he took hold of the collar of her dress and tore it open. Her
+brown neck and one of her hard, round breasts were exposed. Clara's eyes
+grew big with fright. Strength came back into her body. With her sharp
+hard little fist she struck John May in the face; and when he stepped
+back she ran quickly out of the shed. John May did not understand. He
+thought she had sought him out once and would return. "She's a little
+green. I was too fast. I scared her. Next time I'll go a little easy,"
+he thought.
+
+Clara ran through the barn and then walked slowly to the house and went
+upstairs to her own room. A farm dog followed her up the stairs and
+stood at her door wagging his tail. She shut the door in his face. For
+the moment everything that lived and breathed seemed to her gross and
+ugly. Her cheeks were pale and she pulled shut the blinds to the window
+and sat down on the bed, overcome with the strange new fear of life. She
+did not want even the sunlight to come into her presence. John May had
+followed her through the barn and now stood in the barnyard staring at
+the house. She could see him through the cracks of the blinds and wished
+it were possible to kill him with a gesture of her hand.
+
+The farm hand, full of male confidence, waited for her to come to the
+window and look down at him. He wondered if there were any one else in
+the house. Perhaps she would beckon to him. Something of the kind had
+happened between him and the doctor's wife and it had turned out that
+way. When after five or ten minutes he did not see her, he went back to
+the work of oiling the wagon wheels. "It's going to be a slower thing.
+She's shy, a green girl," he told himself.
+
+One evening a week later Clara sat on the side porch of the house with
+her father when John May came into the barnyard. It was a Wednesday
+evening and the farm hands were not in the habit of going into town
+until Saturday, but he was dressed in his Sunday clothes and had shaved
+and oiled his hair. On the occasion of a wedding or a funeral the
+laborers put oil in their hair. It was indicative of something very
+important about to happen. Clara looked at him, and in spite of the
+feeling of repugnance that swept over her, her eyes glistened. Ever
+since the affair in the barn she had managed to avoid meeting him but
+she was not afraid. He had in fact taught her something. There was a
+power within her with which she could conquer men. The touch of her
+father's shrewdness, that was a part of her nature, had come to her
+rescue. She wanted to laugh at the silly pretensions of the man, to
+make a fool of him. Her cheeks flushed with pride in her mastery of the
+situation.
+
+John May walked almost to the house and then turned along the path
+that led to the road. He made a gesture with his hand and by chance Tom
+Butterworth, who had been looking off across the open country toward
+Bidwell, turned and saw both the movement and the leering confident
+smile on the farm hand's face. He arose and followed John May into the
+road, astonishment and anger fighting for possession of him. The two men
+stood talking for three minutes in the road before the house and then
+returned. The farm hand went to the barn and then came back along the
+path to the road carrying under his arm a grain bag containing his work
+clothes. He did not look up as he went past. The farmer returned to the
+porch.
+
+The misunderstanding that was to wreck the tender relationship that had
+begun to grow up between father and daughter began on that evening. Tom
+Butterworth was furious. He muttered and clinched his fists. Clara's
+heart beat heavily. For some reason she felt guilty, as though she had
+been caught in an intrigue with the man. For a long time her father
+remained silent and then he, like the farm hand, made a furious and
+brutal attack on her. "Where have you been with that fellow? What you
+been up to?" he asked harshly.
+
+For a time Clara did not answer her father's question. She wanted to
+scream, to strike him in the face with her fist as she had struck
+the man in the shed. Then her mind struggled to take hold of the new
+situation. The fact that her father had accused her of seeking the thing
+that had happened made her hate John May less heartily. She had some one
+else to hate.
+
+Clara did not think the matter out clearly on that first evening but,
+after denying that she had ever been anywhere with John May, burst into
+tears and ran into the house. In the darkness of her own room she
+began to think of her father's words. For some reason she could not
+understand, the attack made on her spirit seemed more terrible and
+unforgivable than the attack upon her body made by the farm hand in
+the shed. She began to understand vaguely that the young man had been
+confused by her presence on that warm sunshiny afternoon as she had been
+confused by the words uttered by Jim Priest, by the song of the bees in
+the orchard, by the love-making of the birds, and by her own uncertain
+thoughts. He had been confused and he was stupid and young. There had
+been an excuse for his confusion. It was understandable and could be
+dealt with. She had now no doubt of her own ability to deal with John
+May. As for her father--it was all right for him to be suspicious
+regarding the farm hand, but why had he been suspicious of her?
+
+The perplexed girl sat down in the darkness on the edge of the bed,
+and a hard look came into her eyes. After a time her father came up
+the stairs and knocked at her door. He did not come in but stood in the
+hallway outside and talked. She remained calm while the conversation
+lasted, and that confused the man who had expected to find her in tears.
+That she was not seemed to him an evidence of guilt.
+
+Tom Butterworth, in many ways a shrewd, observing man, never understood
+the quality of his own daughter. He was an intensely possessive man and
+once, when he was newly married, there had been a suspicion in his mind
+that there was something between his wife and a young man who had worked
+on the farm where he then lived. The suspicion was unfounded, but he
+discharged the man and one evening, when his wife had gone into town to
+do some shopping and did not return at the accustomed time, he followed,
+and when he saw her on the street stepped into a store to avoid a
+meeting. She was in trouble. Her horse had become suddenly lame and she
+had to walk home. Without letting her see him the husband followed along
+the road. It was dark and she heard the footsteps in the road behind
+her and becoming frightened ran the last half mile to her own house. He
+waited until she had entered and then followed her in, pretending he had
+just come from the barns. When he heard her story of the accident to the
+horse and of her fright in the road he was ashamed; but as the horse,
+that had been left in a livery stable, seemed all right when he went for
+it the next day he became suspicious again.
+
+As he stood outside the door of his daughter's room, the farmer felt as
+he had felt that evening long before when he followed his wife along
+the road. When on the porch downstairs he had looked up suddenly and had
+seen the gesture made by the farm hand, he had also looked quickly at
+his daughter. She looked confused and, he thought, guilty. "Well, it
+is the same thing over again," he thought bitterly, "like mother, like
+daughter--they are both of the same stripe." Getting quickly out of his
+chair he had followed the young man into the road and had discharged
+him. "Go, to-night. I don't want to see you on the place again," he
+said. In the darkness before the girl's room he thought of many bitter
+things he wanted to say. He forgot she was a girl and talked to her
+as he might have talked to a mature, sophisticated, and guilty woman.
+"Come," he said, "I want to know the truth. If you have been with that
+farm hand you are starting young. Has anything happened between you?"
+
+Clara walked to the door and confronted her father. The hatred of him,
+born in that hour and that never left her, gave her strength. She did
+not know what he was talking about, but had a keen sense of the fact
+that he, like the stupid, young man in the shed, was trying to violate
+something very precious in her nature. "I don't know what you are
+talking about," she said calmly, "but I know this. I am no longer a
+child. Within the last week I've become a woman. If you don't want me in
+your house, if you don't like me any more, say so and I'll go away."
+
+The two people stood in the darkness and tried to look at each other.
+Clara was amazed by her own strength and by the words that had come
+to her. The words had clarified something. She felt that if her father
+would but take her into his arms or say some kindly understanding word,
+all could be forgotten. Life could be started over again. In the future
+she would understand much that she had not understood. She and her
+father could draw close to each other. Tears came into her eyes and a
+sob trembled in her throat. As her father, however, did not answer her
+words and turned to go silently away, she shut the door with a loud
+bang and afterward lay awake all night, white and furious with anger and
+disappointment.
+
+Clara left home to become a college student that fall, but before she
+left had another passage at arms with her father. In August a young man
+who was to teach in the town schools came to Bidwell, and she met him
+at a supper given in the basement of the church. He walked home with her
+and came on the following Sunday afternoon to call. She introduced the
+young man, a slender fellow with black hair, brown eyes, and a serious
+face, to her father who answered by nodding his head and walking away.
+She and the young man walked along a country road and went into a wood.
+He was five years older than herself and had been to college, but she
+felt much the older and wiser. The thing that happens to so many women
+had happened to her. She felt older and wiser than all the men she had
+ever seen. She had decided, as most women finally decide, that there
+are two kinds of men in the world, those who are kindly, gentle,
+well-intentioned children, and those who, while they remain children,
+are obsessed with stupid, male vanity and imagine themselves born to be
+masters of life. Clara's thoughts on the matter were not very clear.
+She was young and her thoughts were indefinite. She had, however, been
+shocked into an acceptance of life and she was made of the kind of stuff
+that survives the blows life gives.
+
+In the wood with the young school teacher, Clara began an experiment.
+Evening came on and it grew dark. She knew her father would be furious
+that she did not come home but she did not care. She led the school
+teacher to talk of love and the relationships of men and women. She
+pretended an innocence that was not hers. School girls know many things
+that they do not apply to themselves until something happens to them
+such as had happened to Clara. The farmer's daughter became conscious.
+She knew a thousand things she had not known a month before and began to
+take her revenge upon men for their betrayal of her. In the darkness as
+they walked home together, she tempted the young man into kissing her,
+and later lay in his arms for two hours, entirely sure of herself,
+striving to find out, without risk to herself, the things she wanted to
+know about life.
+
+That night she again quarreled with her father. He tried to scold her
+for remaining out late with a man, and she shut the door in his face.
+On another evening she walked boldly out of the house with the school
+teacher. The two walked along a road to where a bridge went over a small
+stream. John May, who was still determined that the farmer's daughter
+was in love with him, had on that evening followed the school teacher to
+the Butterworth house and had been waiting outside intending to frighten
+his rival with his fists. On the bridge something happened that drove
+the school teacher away. John May came up to the two people and began
+to make threats. The bridge had just been repaired and a pile of small,
+sharp-edged stones lay close at hand. Clara picked one of them up and
+handed it to the school teacher. "Hit him," she said. "Don't be afraid.
+He's only a coward. Hit him on the head with the stone."
+
+The three people stood in silence waiting for something to happen. John
+May was disconcerted by Clara's words. He had thought she wanted him to
+pursue her. He stepped toward the school teacher, who dropped the stone
+that had been put into his hand and ran away. Clara went back along the
+road toward her own house followed by the muttering farm hand who, after
+her speech at the bridge, did not dare approach. "Maybe she was making
+a bluff. Maybe she didn't want that young fellow to get on to what is
+between us," he muttered, as he stumbled along in the darkness.
+
+In the house Clara sat for a half hour at a table in the lighted living
+room beside her father, pretending to read a book. She half hoped he
+would say something that would permit her to attack him. When nothing
+happened she went upstairs and to bed, only again to spend the night
+awake and white with anger at the thought of the cruel and unexplainable
+things life seemed trying to do to her.
+
+In September Clara left the farm to attend the State University at
+Columbus. She was sent there because Tom Butterworth had a sister who
+was married to a manufacturer of plows and lived at the State Capital.
+After the incident with the farm hand and the misunderstanding that had
+sprung up between himself and his daughter, he was uncomfortable with
+her in the house and was glad to have her away. He did not want to
+frighten his sister by telling of what had happened, and when he wrote,
+tried to be diplomatic. "Clara has been too much among the rough men who
+work on my farms and had become a little rough," he wrote. "Take her in
+hand. I want her to become more of a lady. Get her acquainted with the
+right kind of people." In secret he hoped she would meet and marry some
+young man while she was away. Two of his sisters had gone away to school
+and it had turned out that way.
+
+During the month before his daughter left home the farmer tried to be
+somewhat more human and gentle in his attitude toward her, but did not
+succeed in dispelling the dislike of himself that had taken deep root
+in her nature. At table he made jokes at which the farm hands laughed
+boisterously. Then he looked at his daughter who did not appear to have
+been listening. Clara ate quickly and hurried out of the room. She did
+not go to visit her girl friends in town and the young school teacher
+came no more to see her. During the long summer afternoons she walked
+in the orchard among the beehives or climbed over fences and went into
+a wood, where she sat for hours on a fallen log staring at the trees and
+the sky. Tom Butterworth also hurried out of his house. He pretended to
+be busy and every day drove far and wide over the country. Sometimes he
+thought he had been brutal and crude in his treatment of his daughter,
+and decided he would speak to her regarding the matter and ask her to
+forgive him. Then his suspicion returned. He struck the horse with
+the whip and drove furiously along the lonely roads. "Well, there's
+something wrong," he muttered aloud. "Men don't just look at women and
+approach them boldly, as that young fellow did with Clara. He did
+it before my very eyes. He's been given some encouragement." An old
+suspicion awoke in him. "There was something wrong with her mother, and
+there's something wrong with her. I'll be glad when the time comes for
+her to marry and settle down, so I can get her off my hands," he thought
+bitterly.
+
+On the evening when Clara left the farm to go to the train that was to
+take her away, her father said he had a headache, a thing he had never
+been known to complain of before, and told Jim Priest to drive her to
+the station. Jim took the girl to the station, saw to the checking of
+her baggage, and waited about until her train came in. Then he boldly
+kissed her on the cheek. "Good-by, little girl," he said gruffly. Clara
+was so grateful she could not reply. On the train she spent an hour
+weeping softly. The rough gentleness of the old farm hand had done much
+to take the growing bitterness out of her heart. She felt that she was
+ready to begin life anew, and wished she had not left the farm without
+coming to a better understanding with her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The Woodburns of Columbus were wealthy by the standards of their day.
+They lived in a large house and kept two carriages and four servants,
+but had no children. Henderson Woodburn was small of stature, wore a
+gray beard, and was neat and precise about his person. He was treasurer
+of the plow manufacturing company and was also treasurer of the church
+he and his wife attended. In his youth he had been called "Hen" Woodburn
+and had been bullied by larger boys, and when he grew to be a man and
+after his persistent shrewdness and patience had carried him into a
+position of some power in the business life of his native city he in
+turn became something of a bully to the men beneath him. He thought
+his wife Priscilla had come from a better family than his own and was
+a little afraid of her. When they did not agree on any subject, she
+expressed her opinion gently but firmly, while he blustered for a time
+and then gave in. After a misunderstanding his wife put her arms about
+his neck and kissed the bald spot on the top of his head. Then the
+subject was forgotten.
+
+Life in the Woodburn house was lived without words. After the stir and
+bustle of the farm, the silence of the house for a long time frightened
+Clara. Even when she was alone in her own room she walked about on
+tiptoe. Henderson Woodburn was absorbed in his work, and when he came
+home in the evening, ate his dinner in silence and then worked again.
+He brought home account books and papers from the office and spread them
+out on a table in the living room. His wife Priscilla sat in a large
+chair under a lamp and knitted children's stockings. They were, she told
+Clara, for the children of the poor. As a matter of fact the stockings
+never left her house. In a large trunk in her room upstairs lay hundreds
+of pairs knitted during the twenty-five years of her family life.
+
+Clara was not very happy in the Woodburn household, but on the
+other hand, was not very unhappy. She attended to her studies at the
+University passably well and in the late afternoons took a walk with a
+girl classmate, attended a matinee at the theater, or read a book. In
+the evening she sat with her aunt and uncle until she could no longer
+bear the silence, and then went to her own room, where she studied
+until it was time to go to bed. Now and then she went with the two older
+people to a social affair at the church, of which Henderson Woodburn
+was treasurer, or accompanied them to dinners at the homes of other
+well-to-do and respectable business men. On several occasions young men,
+sons of the people with whom the Woodburns dined, or students at the
+university, came in the evening to call. On such an occasion Clara and
+the young man sat in the parlor of the house and talked. After a time
+they grew silent and embarrassed in each other's presence. From the next
+room Clara could hear the rustling of the papers containing the columns
+of figures over which her uncle was at work. Her aunt's knitting needles
+clicked loudly. The young man told a tale of some football game, or if
+he had already gone out into the world, talked of his experiences as a
+traveler selling the wares manufactured or merchandized by his father.
+Such visits all began at the same hour, eight o'clock, and the young man
+left the house promptly at ten. Clara grew to feel that she was being
+merchandized and that they had come to look at the goods. One evening
+one of the men, a fellow with laughing blue eyes and kinky yellow hair,
+unconsciously disturbed her profoundly. All the evening he talked just
+as the others had talked and got out of his chair to go away at the
+prescribed hour. Clara walked with him to the door. She put out her
+hand, which he shook cordially. Then he looked at her and his eyes
+twinkled. "I've had a good time," he said. Clara had a sudden and almost
+overpowering desire to embrace him. She wanted to disturb his assurance,
+to startle him by kissing him on the lips or holding him tightly in
+her arms. Shutting the door quickly, she stood with her hand on the
+door-knob, her whole body trembling. The trivial by-products of her
+age's industrial madness went on in the next room. The sheets of paper
+rustled and the knitting needles clicked. Clara thought she would like
+to call the young man back into the house, lead him to the room where
+the meaningless industry went endlessly on and there do something that
+would shock them and him as they had never been shocked before. She ran
+quickly upstairs. "What is getting to be the matter with me?" she asked
+herself anxiously.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One evening in the month of May, during her third year at the
+University, Clara sat on the bank of a tiny stream by a grove of trees,
+far out on the edge of a suburban village north of Columbus. Beside her
+sat a young man named Frank Metcalf whom she had known for a year and
+who had once been a student in the same classes with herself. He was
+the son of the president of the plow manufacturing company of which her
+uncle was treasurer. As they sat together by the stream the afternoon
+light began to fade and darkness came on. Before them across an open
+field stood a factory, and Clara remembered that the whistle had
+long since blown and the men from the factory had gone home. She grew
+restless and sprang to her feet. Young Metcalf who had been talking very
+earnestly arose and stood beside her. "I can't marry for two years,
+but we can be engaged and that will be all the same thing as far as the
+right and wrong of what I want and need is concerned. It isn't my fault
+I can't ask you to marry me now," he declared. "In two years now, I'll
+inherit eleven thousand dollars. My aunt left it to me and the old fool
+went and fixed it so I don't get it if I marry before I'm twenty-four. I
+want that money. I've got to have it, but I got to have you too."
+
+Clara looked away into the evening darkness and waited for him to
+finish his speech. All afternoon he had been making practically the
+same speech, over and over. "Well, I can't help it, I'm a man," he said
+doggedly. "I can't help it, I want you. I can't help it, my aunt was an
+old fool." He began to explain the necessity of remaining unmarried in
+order that he could receive the eleven thousand dollars. "If I don't get
+that money I'll be just the same as I am now," he declared. "I won't
+be any good." He grew angry and, thrusting his hands into his pockets,
+stared also across the field into the darkness. "Nothing keeps me
+satisfied," he said. "I hate being in my father's business and I hate
+going to school. In only two years I'll get the money. Father can't keep
+it from me. I'll take it and light out. I don't know just what I'll do.
+I'm going maybe to Europe, that's what I'm going to do. Father wants
+me to stay here and work in his office. To hell with that. I want to
+travel. I'll be a soldier or something. Anyway I'll get out of here and
+go somewhere and do something exciting, something alive. You can go with
+me. We'll cut out together. Haven't you got the nerve? Why don't you be
+my woman?"
+
+Young Metcalf took hold of Clara's shoulder and tried to take her into
+his arms. For a moment they struggled and then, in disgust, he stepped
+away from her and again began to scold.
+
+Clara walked away across two or three vacant lots and got into a street
+of workingmen's houses, the man following at her heels. Night had come
+and the people in the street facing the factory had already disposed
+of the evening meal. Children and dogs played in the road and a
+strong smell of food hung in the air. To the west across the fields, a
+passenger train ran past going toward the city. Its light made wavering
+yellow patches against the bluish black sky. Clara wondered why she had
+come to the out of the way place with Frank Metcalf. She did not like
+him, but there was a restlessness in him that was like the restless
+thing in herself. He did not want stupidly to accept life, and that fact
+made him brother to herself. Although he was but twenty-two years old,
+he had already achieved an evil reputation. A servant in his father's
+house had given birth to a child by him, and it had cost a good deal of
+money to get her to take the child and go away without making an open
+scandal. During the year before he had been expelled from the University
+for throwing another young man down a flight of stairs, and it was
+whispered about among the girl students that he often got violently
+drunk. For a year he had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clara,
+had written her letters, sent flowers to her house, and when he met her
+on the street had stopped to urge that she accept his friendship. On the
+day in May she had met him on the street and he had begged that she give
+him one chance to talk things out with her. They had met at a street
+crossing where cars went past into the suburban villages that lay about
+the city. "Come on," he had urged, "let's take a street car ride, let's
+get out of the crowds, I want to talk to you." He had taken hold of her
+arm and fairly dragged her to a car. "Come and hear what I have to say,"
+he had urged, "then if you don't want to have anything to do with
+me, all right. You can say so and I'll let you alone." After she had
+accompanied him to the suburb of workingmen's houses, in the vicinity of
+which they had spent the afternoon in the fields, Clara had found he had
+nothing to urge upon her except the needs of his body. Still she felt
+there was something he wanted to say that had not been said. He was
+restless and dissatisfied with his life, and at bottom she felt that way
+about her own life. During the last three years she had often wondered
+why she had come to the school and what she was to gain by learning
+things out of books. The days and months went past and she knew certain
+rather uninteresting facts she had not known before. How the facts were
+to help her to live, she couldn't make out. They had nothing to do with
+such problems as her attitude toward men like John May the farm hand,
+the school teacher who had taught her something by holding her in his
+arms and kissing her, and the dark sullen young man who now walked
+beside her and talked of the needs of his body. It seemed to Clara that
+every additional year spent at the University but served to emphasize
+its inadequacy. It was so also with the books she read and the thoughts
+and actions of the older people about her. Her aunt and uncle did not
+talk much, but seemed to take it for granted she wanted to live such
+another life as they were living. She thought with horror of the
+probability of marrying a maker of plows or of some other dull necessity
+of life and then spending her days in the making of stockings for babies
+that did not come, or in some other equally futile manifestation of her
+dissatisfaction. She realized with a shudder that men like her uncle,
+who spent their lives in adding up rows of figures or doing over and
+over some tremendously trivial thing, had no conception of any outlook
+for their women beyond living in a house, serving them physically,
+wearing perhaps good enough clothes to help them make a show of
+prosperity and success, and drifting finally into a stupid acceptance
+of dullness--an acceptance that both she and the passionate, twisted man
+beside her were fighting against.
+
+In a class in the University Clara had met, during that her third year
+there, a woman named Kate Chanceller, who had come to Columbus with her
+brother from a town in Missouri, and it was this woman who had given her
+thoughts form, who had indeed started her thinking of the inadequacy of
+her life. The brother, a studious, quiet man, worked as a chemist in a
+manufacturing plant somewhere at the edge of town. He was a musician and
+wanted to become a composer. One evening during the winter his sister
+Kate had brought Clara to the apartment where the two lived, and the
+three had become friends. Clara had learned something there that she did
+not yet understand and never did get clearly into her consciousness.
+The truth was that the brother was like a woman and Kate Chanceller, who
+wore skirts and had the body of a woman, was in her nature a man. Kate
+and Clara spent many evenings together later and talked of many things
+not usually touched on by girl students. Kate was a bold, vigorous
+thinker and was striving to grope her way through her own problem in
+life and many times, as they walked along the street or sat together
+in the evening, she forgot her companion and talked of herself and the
+difficulties of her position in life. "It's absurd the way things are
+arranged," she said. "Because my body is made in a certain way I'm
+supposed to accept certain rules for living. The rules were not made
+for me. Men manufactured them as they manufacture can-openers, on the
+wholesale plan." She looked at Clara and laughed. "Try to imagine me in
+a little lace cap, such as your aunt wears about the house, and spending
+my days knitting baby stockings," she said.
+
+The two women had spent hours talking of their lives and in speculating
+on the differences in their natures. The experience had been
+tremendously educational for Clara. As Kate was a socialist and Columbus
+was rapidly becoming an industrial city, she talked of the meaning of
+capital and labor and the effect of changing conditions on the lives of
+men and women. To Kate, Clara could talk as to a man, but the antagonism
+that so often exists between men and women did not come into and spoil
+their companionship. In the evening when Clara went to Kate's house her
+aunt sent a carriage to bring her home at nine. Kate rode home with her.
+They got to the Woodburn house and went in. Kate was bold and free with
+the Woodburns, as with her brother and Clara. "Come," she said laughing,
+"put away your figures and your knitting. Let's talk." She sat in a
+large chair with her legs crossed and talked with Henderson Woodburn of
+the affairs of the plow company. The two got into a discussion of the
+relative merits of the free trade and protection ideas. Then the two
+older people went to bed and Kate talked to Clara. "Your uncle is an
+old duffer," she said. "He knows nothing about the meaning of what he's
+doing in life." When she started home afoot across the city, Clara was
+alarmed for her safety. "You must get a cab or let me wake up uncle's
+man; something may happen," she said. Kate laughed and went off,
+striding along the street like a man. Sometimes she thrust her hands
+into her skirt pockets, that were like the trouser pockets of a man, and
+it was difficult for Clara to remember that she was a woman. In Kate's
+presence she became bolder than she had ever been with any one. One
+evening she told the story of the thing that had happened to her that
+afternoon long before on the farm, the afternoon when, her mind having
+been inflamed by the words of Jim Priest regarding the sap that goes up
+the tree and by the warm sensuous beauty of the day, she had wanted so
+keenly to draw close to some one. She explained to Kate how she had been
+so brutally jarred out of the feeling in herself that she felt was at
+bottom all right. "It was like a blow in the face at the hand of God,"
+she said.
+
+Kate Chanceller was excited as Clara told the tale and listened with
+a fiery light burning in her eyes. Something in her manner encouraged
+Clara to tell also of her experiments with the school teacher and for
+the first time she got a sense of justice toward men by talking to the
+woman who was half a man. "I know that wasn't square," she said. "I know
+now, when I talk to you, but I didn't know then. With the school teacher
+I was as unfair as John May and my father were with me. Why do men and
+women have to fight each other? Why does the battle between them have to
+go on?"
+
+Kate walked up and down before Clara and swore like a man. "Oh, hell,"
+she exclaimed, "men are such fools and I suppose women are as bad. They
+are both too much one thing. I fall in between. I've got my problem too,
+but I'm not going to talk about it. I know what I'm going to do. I'm
+going to find some kind of work and do it." She began to talk of the
+stupidity of men in their approach to women. "Men hate such women as
+myself," she said. "They can't use us, they think. What fools! They
+should watch and study us. Many of us spend our lives loving other
+women, but we have skill. Being part women, we know how to approach
+women. We are not blundering and crude. Men want a certain thing from
+you. It is delicate and easy to kill. Love is the most sensitive thing
+in the world. It's like an orchid. Men try to pluck orchids with ice
+tongs, the fools."
+
+Walking to where Clara stood by a table, and taking her by the shoulder,
+the excited woman stood for a long time looking at her. Then she picked
+up her hat, put it on her head, and with a flourish of her hand started
+for the door. "You can depend on my friendship," she said. "I'll do
+nothing to confuse you. You'll be in luck if you can get that kind of
+love or friendship from a man."
+
+Clara kept thinking of the words of Kate Chanceller on the evening
+when she walked through the streets of the suburban village with Frank
+Metcalf, and later as the two sat on the car that took them back to the
+city. With the exception of another student named Phillip Grimes,
+who had come to see her a dozen times during her second year in the
+University, young Metcalf was the only one of perhaps a dozen men she
+had met since leaving the farm who had been attracted to her. Phillip
+Grimes was a slender young fellow with blue eyes, yellow hair and a not
+very vigorous mustache. He was from a small town in the northern end of
+the State, where his father published a weekly newspaper. When he came
+to see Clara he sat on the edge of his chair and talked rapidly. Some
+person he had seen in the street had interested him. "I saw an old woman
+on the car," he began. "She had a basket on her arm. It was filled
+with groceries. She sat beside me and talked aloud to herself." Clara's
+visitor repeated the words of the old woman on the car. He speculated
+about her, wondered what her life was like. When he had talked of the
+old woman for ten or fifteen minutes, he dropped the subject and began
+telling of another experience, this time with a man who sold fruit at a
+street crossing. It was impossible to be personal with Phillip Grimes.
+Nothing but his eyes were personal. Sometimes he looked at Clara in a
+way that I made her feel that her clothes were being stripped from her
+body, and that she was being made to stand naked in the room before her
+visitor. The experience, when it came, was not entirely a physical one.
+It was only in part that. When the thing happened Clara saw her whole
+life being stripped bare. "Don't look at me like that," she once said
+somewhat sharply, when his eyes had made her so uncomfortable she could
+no longer remain silent. Her remark had frightened Phillip Grimes away.
+He got up at once, blushed, stammered something about having another
+engagement, and hurried away.
+
+In the street car, homeward bound beside Frank Metcalf, Clara thought of
+Phillip Grimes and wondered whether or not he would have stood the
+test of Kate Chanceller's speech regarding love and friendship. He had
+confused her, but that was perhaps her own fault. He had not insisted
+on himself at all. Frank Metcalf had done nothing else. "One should be
+able," she thought, "to find somewhere a man who respects himself and
+his own desires but can understand also the desires and fears of a
+woman." The street car went bouncing along over railroad crossings
+and along residence streets. Clara looked at her companion, who stared
+straight ahead, and then turned to look out of the car window. The
+window was open and she could see the interiors of the laborers' houses
+along the streets. In the evening with the lamps lighted they seemed
+cosy and comfortable. Her mind ran back to the life in her father's
+house and its loneliness. For two summers she had escaped going home.
+At the end of her first year in school she had made an illness of her
+uncle's an excuse for spending the summer in Columbus, and at the end
+of the second year she had found another excuse for not going. This year
+she felt she would have to go home. She would have to sit day after day
+at the farm table with the farm hands. Nothing would happen. Her father
+would remain silent in her presence. She would become bored and weary of
+the endless small talk of the town girls. If one of the town boys began
+to pay her special attention, her father would become suspicious and
+that would lead to resentment in herself. She would do something she did
+not want to do. In the houses along the streets through which the car
+passed, she saw women moving about. Babies cried and men came out of
+the doors and stood talking to one another on the sidewalks. She decided
+suddenly that she was taking the problem of her own life too seriously.
+"The thing to do is to get married and then work things out afterward,"
+she told herself. She made up her mind that the puzzling, insistent
+antagonism that existed between men and women was altogether due to the
+fact that they were not married and had not the married people's way
+of solving such problems as Frank Metcalf had been talking about all
+afternoon. She wished she were with Kate Chancellor so that she could
+discuss with her this new viewpoint. When she and Frank Metcalf got off
+the car she was no longer in a hurry to go home to her uncle's house.
+Knowing she did not want to marry him, she thought that in her turn she
+would talk, that she would try to make him see her point of view as all
+the afternoon he had been trying to make her see his.
+
+For an hour the two people walked about and Clara talked. She forgot
+about the passage of time and the fact that she had not dined. Not
+wishing to talk of marriage, she talked instead of the possibility of
+friendship between men and women. As she talked her own mind seemed to
+her to have become clearer. "It's all foolishness your going on as you
+have," she declared. "I know how dissatisfied and unhappy you sometimes
+are. I often feel that way myself. Sometimes I think it's marriage I
+want. I really think I want to draw close to some one. I believe every
+one is hungry for that experience. We all want something we are not
+willing to pay for. We want to steal it or have it given us. That's
+what's the matter with me, and that's what's the matter with you."
+
+They came to the Woodburn house, and turning in stood on a porch in the
+darkness by the front door. At the back of the house Clara could see
+a light burning. Her aunt and uncle were at the eternal figuring and
+knitting. They were finding a substitute for living. It was the thing
+Frank Metcalf was protesting against and was the real reason for her
+own constant secret protest. She took hold of the lapel of his coat,
+intending to make a plea, to urge upon him the idea of a friendship that
+would mean something to them both. In the darkness she could not see his
+rather heavy, sullen face. The maternal instinct became strong in her
+and she thought of him as a wayward, dissatisfied boy, wanting love and
+understanding as she had wanted to be loved and understood by her father
+when life in the moment of the awakening of her womanhood seemed ugly
+and brutal. With her free hand she stroked the sleeve of his coat. Her
+gesture was misunderstood by the man who was not thinking of her words
+but of her body and of his hunger to possess it. He took her into his
+arms and held her tightly against his breast. She tried to struggle, to
+tear herself away but, although she was strong and muscular, she found
+herself unable to move. As he held her uncle, who had heard the two
+people come up the steps to the door, threw it open. Both he and his
+wife had on several occasions warned Clara to have nothing to do with
+young Metcalf. One day when he had sent flowers to the house, her aunt
+had urged her to refuse to receive them. "He's a bad, dissipated, wicked
+man," she had said. "Have nothing to do with him." When he saw his niece
+in the arms of the man who had been the subject of so much discussion
+in his own house and in every respectable house in Columbus, Henderson
+Woodburn was furious. He forgot the fact that young Metcalf was the son
+of the president of the company of which he was treasurer. It seemed
+to him that some sort of a personal insult had been thrown at him by a
+common ruffian. "Get out of here," he screamed. "What do you mean, you
+nasty villain? Get out of here."
+
+Frank Metcalf went off along the street laughing defiantly, and Clara
+went into the house. The sliding doors that led into the living room had
+been thrown open and the light from a hanging lamp streamed in upon her.
+Her hair was disheveled and her hat twisted to one side. The man and
+woman stared at her. The knitting needles and a sheet of paper held in
+their hands suggested what they had been doing while Clara was getting
+another lesson from life. Her aunt's hands trembled and the knitting
+needles clicked together. Nothing was said and the confused and angry
+girl ran up a stairway to her own room. She locked herself in and knelt
+on the floor by the bed. She did not pray. Her association with Kate
+Chanceller had given her another outlet for her feelings. Pounding with
+her fists on the bed coverings, she swore. "Fools, damned fools, the
+world is filled with nothing but a lot of damned fools."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Clara Butterworth left Bidwell, Ohio, in September of the year in which
+Steve Hunter's plant-setting machine company went into the hands of a
+receiver, and in January of the next year that enterprising young man,
+together with Tom Butterworth, bought the plant. In March a new company
+was organized and at once began making Hugh's corn-cutting machine, a
+success from the beginning. The failure of the first company and the
+sale of the plant had created a furor in the town. Both Steve and Tom
+Butterworth could, however, point to the fact that they had held on to
+their stock and lost their money in common with every one else. Tom had
+indeed sold his stock because he needed ready money, as he explained,
+but had shown his good faith by buying again just before the failure.
+"Do you suppose I would have done that had I known what was up?" he
+asked the men assembled in the stores. "Go look at the books of the
+company. Let's have an investigation here. You will find that Steve
+and I stuck to the rest of the stockholders. We lost our money with the
+rest. If any one was crooked and when they saw a failure coming went and
+got out from under at the expense of some one else, it wasn't Steve and
+me. The books of the company will show we were game. It wasn't our fault
+the plant-setting machine wouldn't work."
+
+In the back room of the bank, John Clark and young Gordon Hart cursed
+Steve and Tom, who, they declared, had sold them out. They had lost no
+money by the failure, but on the other hand they had gained nothing. The
+four men had sent in a bid for the plant when it was put up for sale,
+but as they expected no competition, they had not bid very much. It had
+gone to a firm of Cleveland lawyers who bid a little more, and later
+had been resold at private sale to Steve and Tom. An investigation was
+started and it was found that Steve and Tom held large blocks of stock
+in the defunct company, while the bankers held practically none. Steve
+openly said that he had known of the possibility of failure for some
+time and had warned the larger stock-holders and asked them not to
+sell their stock. "While I was working my head off trying to save the
+company, what were they up to?" he asked sharply, and his question was
+repeated in the stores and in the homes of the people.
+
+The truth of the matter, and the thing the town never found out, was
+that from the beginning Steve had intended to get the plant for himself,
+but at the last had decided it would be better to take some one in with
+him. He was afraid of John Clark. For two or three days he thought about
+the matter and decided that the banker was not to be trusted. "He's too
+good a friend to Tom Butterworth," he told himself. "If I tell him my
+scheme, he'll tell Tom. I'll go to Tom myself. He's a money maker and
+a man who knows the difference between a bicycle and a wheelbarrow when
+you put one of them into bed with him."
+
+Steve drove out to Tom's house late one evening in September. He hated
+to go but was convinced it would be better to do so. "I don't want to
+burn all my bridges behind me," he told himself. "I've got to have
+at least one friend among the solid men here in town. I've got to do
+business with these rubes, maybe all my life. I can't shut myself off
+too much, at least not yet a while."
+
+When Steve got to the farm he asked Tom to get into his buggy, and the
+two men went for a long drive. The horse, a gray gelding with one blind
+eye hired for the occasion from liveryman Neighbors, went slowly along
+through the hill country south of Bidwell. He had hauled hundreds of
+young men with their sweethearts. Ambling slowly along, thinking perhaps
+of his own youth and of the tyranny of man that had made him a gelding,
+he knew that as long as the moon shone and the intense voiceless quiet
+continued to reign over the two people in the buggy, the whip would not
+come out of its socket and he would not be expected to hurry.
+
+On the September evening, however, the gray gelding had behind him such
+a load as he had never carried before. The two people in the buggy on
+that evening were not foolish, meandering sweethearts, thinking only
+of love, and allowing themselves to be influenced in their mood by the
+beauty of the night, the softness of the black shadows in the road, and
+the gentle night winds that crept down over the crests of hills. They
+were solid business men, mentors of the new age, the kind of men who,
+in the future of America and perhaps of the whole world, were to be the
+makers of governments, the molders of public opinion, the owners of the
+press, the publishers of books, buyers of pictures, and in the goodness
+of their hearts, the feeders of an occasional starving and improvident
+poet, lost on other roads. In any event the two men sat in the buggy and
+the gray gelding meandered along through the hills. Great splashes of
+moonlight lay in the road. By chance it was on the same evening that
+Clara Butterworth left home to become a student in the State University.
+Remembering the kindness and tenderness of the rough old farm hand, Jim
+Priest, who had brought her to the station, she lay in her berth in the
+sleeping car and looked out at the roads, washed with moonlight, that
+slid away into the distance like ghosts. She thought of her father on
+that night and of the misunderstanding that had grown up between them.
+For the moment she was tender with regrets. "After all, Jim Priest and
+my father must be a good deal alike," she thought. "They have lived on
+the same farm, eaten the same food; they both love horses. There can't
+be any great difference between them." All night she thought of the
+matter. An obsession, that the whole world was aboard the moving train
+and that, as it ran swiftly along, it was carrying the people of the
+world into some strange maze of misunderstanding, took possession of
+her. So strong was it that it affected her deeply buried unconscious
+self and made her terribly afraid. It seemed to her that the walls of
+the sleeping-car berth were like the walls of a prison that had shut her
+away from the beauty of life. The walls seemed to close in upon her.
+The walls, like life itself, were shutting in upon her youth and her
+youthful desire to reach a hand out of the beauty in herself to the
+buried beauty in others. She sat up in the berth and forced down a
+desire in herself to break the car window and leap out of the swiftly
+moving train into the quiet night bathed with moonlight. With girlish
+generosity she took upon her own shoulders the responsibility for the
+misunderstanding that had grown up between herself and her father. Later
+she lost the impulse that led her to come to that decision, but during
+that night it persisted. It was, in spite of the terror caused by the
+hallucination regarding the moving walls of the berth that seemed about
+to crush her and that came back time after time, the most beautiful
+night she had ever lived through, and it remained in her memory
+throughout her life. She in fact came to think later of that night as
+the time when, most of all, it would have been beautiful and right for
+her to have been able to give herself to a lover. Although she did not
+know it, the kiss on the cheek from the bewhiskered lips of Jim Priest
+had no doubt something to do with that thought when it came.
+
+And while the girl fought her battle with the strangeness of life and
+tried to break through the imaginary walls that shut her off from the
+opportunity to live, her father also rode through the night. With a
+shrewd eye he watched the face of Steve Hunter. It had already begun to
+get a little fat, but Tom realized suddenly that it was the face of a
+man of ability. There was something about the jowls that made Tom, who
+had dealt much in live stock, think of the face of a pig. "The man goes
+after what he wants. He's greedy," the farmer thought. "Now he's up to
+something. To get what he wants he'll give me a chance to get something
+I want. He's going to make some kind of proposal to me in connection
+with the factory. He's hatched up a scheme to shut Gordon Hart and John
+Clark out because he doesn't want too many partners. All right, I'll go
+in with him. Either one of them would have done the same thing had they
+had the chance."
+
+Steve smoked a black cigar and talked. As he grew more sure of himself
+and the affairs that absorbed him, he also became more smooth and
+persuasive in the matter of words. He talked for a time of the necessity
+of certain men's surviving and growing constantly stronger and stronger
+in the industrial world. "It's necessary for the good of the community,"
+he said. "A few fairly strong men are a good thing for a town, but if
+they are fewer and relatively stronger it's better." He turned to look
+sharply at his companion. "Well," he exclaimed, "we talked there in the
+bank of what we would do when things went to pieces down at the factory,
+but there were too many men in the scheme. I didn't realize it at the
+time, but I do now." He knocked the ashes off his cigar and laughed.
+"You know what they did, don't you?" he asked. "I asked you all not to
+sell any of your stock. I didn't want to get the whole town bitter. They
+wouldn't have lost anything. I promised to see them through, to get the
+plant for them at a low price, to put them in the way to make some real
+money. They played the game in a small-town way. Some men can think of
+thousands of dollars, others have to think of hundreds. It's all their
+minds are big enough to comprehend. They snatch at a little measly
+advantage and miss the big one. That's what these men have done."
+
+For a long time the two rode in silence. Tom, who had also sold his
+stock, wondered if Steve knew. He decided he did. "However, he's decided
+to deal with me. He needs some one and has chosen me," he thought. He
+made up his mind to be bold. After all, Steve was young. Only a year or
+two before he was nothing but a young upstart and the very boys in the
+street laughed at him. Tom grew a little indignant, but was careful to
+take thought before he spoke. "Perhaps, although he's young and don't
+look like much, he's a faster and shrewder thinker than any of us," he
+told himself.
+
+"You do talk like a fellow who has something up his sleeve," he said
+laughing. "If you want to know, I sold my stock the same as the others.
+I wasn't going to take a chance of being a loser if I could help it. It
+may be the small-town way, but you know things maybe I don't know. You
+can't blame me for living up to my lights. I always did believe in the
+survival of the fittest and I got a daughter to support and put through
+college. I want to make a lady of her. You ain't got any kids yet and
+you're younger. Maybe you want to take chances I don't want to take. How
+do I know what you're up to?"
+
+Again the two rode in silence. Steve had prepared himself for the talk.
+He knew there was a chance that, in its turn, the corn-cutting machine
+Hugh had invented might not prove practical and that in the end he might
+be left with a factory on his hands and with nothing to manufacture in
+it. He did not, however, hesitate. Again, as on the day in the bank when
+he was confronted by the two older men, he made a bluff. "Well, you can
+come in or stay out, just as you wish," he said a little sharply.
+"I'm going to get hold of that factory, if I can, and I'm going to
+manufacture corn-cutting machines. Already I have promises of orders
+enough to keep running for a year. I can't take you in with me and have
+it said around town you were one of the fellows who sold out the small
+investors. I've got a hundred thousand dollars of stock in the company.
+You can have half of it. I'll take your note for the fifty thousand. You
+won't ever have to pay it. The earnings of the new factory will clean
+you up. You got to come clean, though. Of course you can go get John
+Clark and come out and make an open fight to get the factory yourselves,
+if you want to. I own the rights to the corn-cutting machine and will
+take it somewhere else and manufacture it. I don't mind telling you
+that, if we split up, I will pretty well advertise what you three
+fellows did to the small investors after I asked you not to do it. You
+can all stay here and own your empty factory and get what satisfaction
+you can out of the love and respect you'll get from the people. You
+can do what you please. I don't care. My hands are clean. I ain't done
+anything I'm ashamed of, and if you want to come in with me, you and I
+together will pull off something in this town we don't neither one of us
+have to be ashamed of."
+
+The two men drove back to the Butterworth farm house and Tom got out
+of the buggy. He intended to tell Steve to go to the devil, but as they
+drove along the road, he changed his mind. The young school teacher
+from Bidwell, who had come on several occasions to call on his daughter
+Clara, was on that night abroad with another young woman. He sat in a
+buggy with his arm around her waist and drove slowly through the hill
+country. Tom and Steve drove past them and the farmer, seeing in the
+moonlight the woman in the arms of the man, imagined his daughter in her
+place. The thought made him furious. "I'm losing the chance to be a big
+man in the town here in order to play safe and be sure of money to leave
+to Clara, and all she cares about is to galavant around with some young
+squirt," he thought bitterly. He began to see himself as a wronged
+and unappreciated father. When he got out of the buggy, he stood for a
+moment by the wheel and looked hard at Steve. "I'm as good a sport as
+you are," he said finally. "Bring around your stock and I'll give you
+the note. That's all it will be, you understand: just my note. I don't
+promise to back it up with any collateral and I don't expect you to
+offer it for sale." Steve leaned out of the buggy and took him by the
+hand. "I won't sell your note, Tom," he said. "I'll put it away. I want
+a partner to help me. You and I are going to do things together."
+
+The young promoter drove off along the road, and Tom went into the house
+and to bed. Like his daughter he did not sleep. For a time he thought
+of her and in imagination saw her again in the buggy with the school
+teacher who had her in his arms. The thought made him stir restlessly
+about beneath the sheets. "Damn women anyway," he muttered. To relieve
+his mind he thought of other things. "I'll make out a deed and turn
+three of my farms over to Clara," he decided shrewdly. "If things
+go wrong we won't be entirely broke. I know Charlie Jacobs in the
+court-house over at the county seat. I ought to be able to get a deed
+recorded without any one knowing it if I oil Charlie's hand a little."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara's last two weeks in the Woodburn household were spent in the
+midst of a struggle, no less intense because no words were said.
+Both Henderson Wood, burn and his wife felt that Clara owed them an
+explanation of the scene at the front door with Frank Metcalf. When she
+did not offer it they were offended. When he threw open the door and
+confronted the two people, the plow manufacturer had got an impression
+that Clara was trying to escape Frank Metcalf's embraces. He told his
+wife that he did not think she was to blame for the scene on the front
+porch. Not being the girl's father he could look at the matter coldly.
+"She's a good girl," he declared. "That beast of a Frank Metcalf is all
+to blame. I daresay he followed her home. She's upset now, but in the
+morning she'll tell us the story of what happened."
+
+The days went past and Clara said nothing. During her last week in the
+house she and the two older people scarcely spoke. The young woman
+was in an odd way relieved. Every evening she went to dine with Kate
+Chanceller who, when she heard the story of the afternoon in the suburb
+and the incident on the porch, went off without Clara's knowing of it
+and had a talk with Henderson Woodburn in his office. After the talk the
+manufacturer was puzzled and just a little afraid of both Clara and her
+friend. He tried to tell his wife about it, but was not very clear.
+"I can't make it out," he said. "She is the kind of woman I can't
+understand, that Kate. She says Clara wasn't to blame for what happened
+between her and Frank Metcalf, but don't want to tell us the story,
+because she thinks young Metcalf wasn't to blame either." Although he
+had been respectful and courteous as he listened to Kate's talk, he grew
+angry when he tried to tell his wife what she had said. "I'm afraid it
+was just a lot of mixed up nonsense," he declared. "It makes me glad we
+haven't a daughter. If neither of them were to blame what were they up
+to? What's getting the matter with the women of the new generation? When
+you come down to it what's the matter with Kate Chanceller?"
+
+The plow manufacturer advised his wife to say nothing to Clara. "Let's
+wash our hands of it," he suggested. "She'll go home in a few days
+now and we will say nothing about her coming back next year. Let's be
+polite, but act as though she didn't exist."
+
+Clara accepted the new attitude of her uncle and aunt without comment.
+In the afternoon she did not come home from the University but went to
+Kate's apartment. The brother came home and after dinner played on the
+piano. At ten o'clock Clara started home afoot and Kate accompanied her.
+The two women went out of their way to sit on a bench in a park. They
+talked of a thousand hidden phases of life Clara had hardly dared think
+of before. During all the rest of her life she thought of those last
+weeks in Columbus as the most deeply satisfactory time she ever lived
+through. In the Woodburn house she was uncomfortable because of the
+silence and the hurt, offended look on her aunt's face, but she did
+not spend much time there. In the morning Henderson Woodburn ate his
+breakfast alone at seven, and clutching his ever present portfolio of
+papers, was driven off to the plow factory. Clara and her aunt had a
+silent breakfast at eight, and then Clara also hurried away. "I'll be
+out for lunch and will go to Kate's for dinner," she said as she went
+out of her aunt's presence, and she said it, not with the air of one
+asking permission as had been her custom before the Frank Metcalf
+incident, but as one having the right to dispose of her own time. Only
+once did her aunt break the frigid air of offended dignity she had
+assumed. One morning she followed Clara to the front door, and as she
+watched her go down the steps from the front porch to the walk that
+led to the street, called to her. Some faint recollection of a time of
+revolt in her own youth perhaps came to her. Tears came into her eyes.
+To her the world was a place of terror, where wolf-like men prowled
+about seeking women to devour, and she was afraid something dreadful
+would happen to her niece. "If you don't want to tell me anything, it's
+all right," she said bravely, "but I wish you felt you could." When
+Clara turned to look at her, she hastened to explain. "Mr. Woodburn
+said I wasn't to bother you about it and I won't," she added quickly.
+Nervously folding and unfolding her arms, she turned to stare up the
+street with the air of a frightened child that looks into a den of
+beasts. "O Clara, be a good girl," she said. "I know you're grown up
+now, but, O Clara, do be careful! Don't get into trouble."
+
+The Woodburn house in Columbus, like the Butterworth house in the
+country south of Bidwell, sat on a hill. The street fell away rather
+sharply as one went toward the business portion of the city and the
+street car line, and on the morning when her aunt spoke to her and tried
+with her feeble hands to tear some stones out of the wall that was being
+built between them, Clara hurried along the street under the trees,
+feeling as though she would like also to weep. She saw no possibility of
+explaining to her aunt the new thoughts she was beginning to have about
+life and did not want to hurt her by trying. "How can I explain my
+thoughts when they're not clear in my own mind, when I am myself just
+groping blindly about?" she asked herself. "She wants me to be good,"
+she thought. "What would she think if I told her that I had come to the
+conclusion that, judging by her standards, I have been altogether too
+good? What's the use trying to talk to her when I would only hurt her
+and make things harder than ever?" She got to a street crossing and
+looked back. Her aunt was still standing at the door of her house and
+looking at her. There was something soft, small, round, insistent, both
+terribly weak and terribly strong about the completely feminine thing
+she had made of herself or that life had made of her. Clara shuddered.
+She did not make a symbol of the figure of her aunt and her mind did not
+form a connection between her aunt's life and what she had become,
+as Kate Chanceller's mind would have done. She saw the little, round,
+weeping woman as a boy, walking in the tree-lined streets of a town,
+sees suddenly the pale face and staring eyes of a prisoner that looks
+out at him through the iron bars of a town jail. Clara was startled as
+the boy would be startled and, like the boy, she wanted to run quickly
+away. "I must think of something else and of other kinds of women or
+I'll get things terribly distorted," she told herself. "If I think of
+her and women like her I'll grow afraid of marriage, and I want to be
+married as soon as I can find the right man. It's the only thing I can
+do. What else is there a woman can do?"
+
+As Clara and Kate walked about in the evening, they talked continually
+of the new position Kate believed women were on the point of achieving
+in the world. The woman who was so essentially a man wanted to talk
+of marriage and to condemn it, but continually fought the impulse in
+herself. She knew that were she to let herself go she would say many
+things that, while they might be true enough as regards herself, would
+not necessarily be true of Clara. "Because I do not want to live with a
+man or be his wife is not very good proof that the institution is wrong.
+It may be that I want to keep Clara for myself. I think more of her
+than of any one else I've ever met. How can I think straight about her
+marrying some man and becoming dulled to the things that mean most to
+me?" she asked herself. One evening, when the women were walking from
+Kate's apartment to the Woodburn house, they were accosted by two men
+who wanted to walk with them. There was a small park nearby and Kate led
+the men to it. "Come," she said, "we won't walk with you, but you may
+sit with us here on a bench." The men sat down beside them and the
+older one, a man with a small black mustache, made some remark about the
+fineness of the night. The younger man who sat beside Clara looked at
+her and laughed. Kate at once got down to business. "Well, you wanted to
+walk with us: what for?" she asked sharply. She explained what they had
+been doing. "We were walking and talking of women and what they were to
+do with their lives," she explained. "We were expressing opinions, you
+see. I don't say either of us had said anything that was very wise,
+but we were having a good time and trying to learn something from each
+other. Now what have you to say to us? You interrupted our talk and
+wanted to walk with us: what for? You wanted to be in our company: now
+tell us what you've got to contribute. You can't just come and walk with
+us like dumb things. What have you got to offer that you think will make
+it worth while for us to break up our conversation with each other and
+spend the time talking with you?"
+
+The older man, he of the mustache, turned to look at Kate, then got up
+from the bench. He walked a little away and then turned and made a sign
+with his hand to his companion. "Come on," he said, "let's get out of
+here. We're wasting our time. It's a cold trail. They're a couple of
+highbrows. Come on, let's be on our way."
+
+The two women again walked along the street. Kate could not help feeling
+somewhat proud of the way in which she had disposed of the men. She
+talked of it until they got to the door of the Woodburn house, and, as
+she went away along the street Clara thought she swaggered a little.
+She stood by the door and watched her friend until she had disappeared
+around a corner. A flash of doubt of the infallibility of Kate's method
+with men crossed her mind. She remembered suddenly the soft brown eyes
+of the younger of the two men in the park and wondered what was back of
+the eyes. Perhaps after all, had she been alone with him, the man might
+have had something to say quite as much to the point as the things she
+and Kate had been saying to each other. "Kate made the men look like
+fools, but after all she wasn't very fair," she thought as she went into
+the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara was in Bidwell for a month before she realized what a change had
+taken place in the life of her home town. On the farm things went on
+very much as always, except that her father was very seldom there.
+He had gone deeply into the project of manufacturing and selling
+corn-cutting machines with Steve Hunter, and attended to much of the
+selling of the output of the factory. Almost every month he went on
+trips to cities of the West. Even when he was in Bidwell, he had got
+into the habit of staying at the town hotel for the night. "It's too
+much trouble to be always running back and forth," he explained to Jim
+Priest, whom he had put in charge of the farm work. He swaggered before
+the old man who for so many years had been almost like a partner in his
+smaller activities. "Well, I wouldn't like to have anything said, but I
+think it just as well to have an eye on what's going on," he declared.
+"Steve's all right, but business is business. We're dealing in big
+affairs, he and I. I don't say he would try to get the best of me; I'm
+just telling you that in the future I'll have to be in town most of
+the time and can't think of things out here. You look out for the farm.
+Don't bother me with details. You just tell me about it when there is
+any buying or selling to do."
+
+Clara arrived in Bidwell in the early afternoon of a warm day in June.
+The hill country through which her train came into town was in the full
+flush of its summer beauty. In the little patches of level land between
+the hills grain was ripening in the fields. Along the streets of the
+tiny towns and on dusty country roads farmers in overalls stood up in
+their wagons and scolded at the horses, rearing and prancing in half
+pretended fright of the passing train. In the forests on the hillsides
+the open places among the trees looked cool and enticing. Clara put
+her cheek against the car window and imagined herself wandering in cool
+forests with a lover. She forgot the words of Kate Chanceller in regard
+to the independent future of women. It was, she thought vaguely, a thing
+to be thought about only after some more immediate problem was solved.
+Just what the problem was she didn't definitely know, but she did know
+that it concerned some close warm contact with life that she had as yet
+been unable to make. When she closed her eyes, strong warm hands seemed
+to come out of nothingness and touch her flushed cheeks. The fingers of
+the hands were strong like the branches of trees. They touched with the
+firmness and gentleness of the branches of trees nodding in a summer
+breeze.
+
+Clara sat up stiffly in her seat and when the train stopped at Bidwell
+got off and went to her waiting father with a firm, business-like
+air. Coming out of the land of dreams, she took on something of the
+determined air of Kate Chanceller. She stared at her father and an
+onlooker might have thought them two strangers, meeting for the purpose
+of discussing some business arrangement. A flavor of something like
+suspicion hung over them. They got into Tom's buggy, and as Main Street
+was torn up for the purpose of laying a brick pavement and digging a new
+sewer, they drove by a roundabout way through residence streets until
+they got into Medina Road. Clara looked at her father and felt suddenly
+very alert and on her guard. It seemed to her that she was far removed
+from the green, unsophisticated girl who had so often walked in
+Bidwell's streets; that her mind and spirit had expanded tremendously in
+the three years she had been away; and she wondered if her father would
+realize the change in her. Either one of two reactions on his part
+might, she felt, make her happy. The man might turn suddenly and taking
+her hand receive her into fellowship, or he might receive her as a woman
+and his daughter by kissing her.
+
+He did neither. They drove in silence through the town and passed over
+a small bridge and into the road that led to the farm. Tom was curious
+about his daughter and a little uncomfortable. Ever since the evening
+on the porch of the farmhouse, when he had accused her of some unnamed
+relationship with John May, he had felt guilty in her presence but had
+succeeded in transferring the notion of guilt to her. While she was away
+at school he had been comfortable. Sometimes he did not think of her
+for a month at a time. Now she had written that she did not intend to go
+back. She had not asked his advice, but had said positively that she was
+coming home to stay. He wondered what was up. Had she got into another
+affair with a man? He wanted to ask, had intended to ask, but in her
+presence found that the words he had intended to say would not come to
+his lips. After a long silence Clara began to ask questions about the
+farm, the men who worked there, her aunt's health, the usual home-coming
+questions. Her father answered with generalities. "They're all right,"
+he said, "every one and everything's all right."
+
+The road began to lift out of the valley in which the town lay, and Tom
+stopped the horse and pointing with the whip talked of the town. He was
+relieved to have the silence broken, and decided not to say anything
+about the letter announcing the end of her school life. "You see there,"
+he said, pointing to where the wall of a new brick factory arose above
+the trees that grew beside the river. "That's a new factory we're
+building. We're going to make corn-cutting machines there. The old
+factory's already too small. We've sold it to a new company that's going
+to manufacture bicycles. Steve Hunter and I sold it. We got twice what
+we paid for it. When the bicycle factory's started, he and I'll own the
+control in that too. I tell you the town's on the boom."
+
+Tom boasted of his new position in the town and Clara turned and looked
+sharply at him and then looked quickly away. He was annoyed by the
+action and a flush of anger came to his cheeks. A side of his character
+his daughter had never seen before came to the surface. When he was a
+simple farmer he had been too shrewd to attempt to play the aristocrat
+with his farm hands, but often, as he went about the barns and as he
+drove along country roads and saw men at work in his fields, he had
+felt like a prince in the presence of his vassals. Now he talked like
+a prince. It was that that had startled Clara. There was about him an
+indefinable air of princely prosperity. When she turned to look at him
+she noticed for the first time how much his person had also changed.
+Like Steve Hunter he was beginning to grow fat. The lean hardness of
+his cheeks had gone, his jaws seemed heavier, even his hands had changed
+their color. He wore a diamond ring on the left hand and it glistened in
+the sunlight. "Things have changed," he declared, still pointing at the
+town. "Do you want to know who changed it? Well, I had more to do with
+it than any one else. Steve thinks he did it all, but he didn't. I'm
+the man who has done the most. He put through the plant-setting machine
+company, but that was a failure. When you come right down to it, things
+would have gone to pieces again if I hadn't gone to John Clark and
+talked and bluffed him into giving us money when we wanted it. I had
+most to do with finding the big market for our corn-cutters, too. Steve
+lied to me and said he had 'em all sold for a year. He didn't have any
+sold at all."
+
+Tom struck the horse with the whip and drove rapidly along the road.
+Even when the climb became difficult he would not let the horse walk,
+but kept cracking the whip over his back. "I'm a different man than I
+was when you went away," he declared. "You might as well know it, I'm
+the big man in this town. It comes pretty near being my town when you
+come right down to it. I'm going to take care of every one in Bidwell
+and give every one a chance to make money, but it's my town now pretty
+near and you might as well know it."
+
+Embarrassed by his own words, Tom talked to cover his embarrassment.
+Something he wanted very much to say got itself said. "I'm glad you
+went to school and fitted yourself to be a lady," he began. "I want you
+should marry pretty soon now. I don't know whether you met any one at
+school there or not. If you did and he's all right, it's all right with
+me. I don't want you should marry an ordinary man, but a smart one, an
+educated man, a gentleman. We Butterworths are going to be bigger and
+bigger people here. If you get married to a good man, a smart one, I'll
+build a house for you; not just a little house but a big place, the
+biggest place Bidwell ever seen." They came to the farm and Tom stopped
+the buggy in the road. He shouted to a man in the barnyard who came
+running for her bags. When she had got out of the buggy he immediately
+turned the horse about and drove rapidly away. Her aunt, a large, moist
+woman, met her on the steps leading to the front door, and embraced
+her warmly. The words her father had just spoken ran a riotous course
+through Clara's brain. She realized that for a year she had been
+thinking of marriage, had been wanting some man to approach and talk of
+marriage, but she had not thought of the matter in the way her father
+had put it. The man had spoken of her as though she were a possession
+of his that must be disposed of. He had a personal interest in her
+marriage. It was in someway not a private matter, but a family affair.
+It was her father's idea, she gathered, that she was to go into marriage
+to strengthen what he called his position in the community, to help him
+be some vague thing he called a big man. She wondered if he had some one
+in mind and could not avoid being a little curious as to who it could
+be. It had never occurred to her that her marriage could mean anything
+to her father beyond the natural desire of the parent that his child
+make a happy marriage. She began to grow angry at the thought of the way
+in which her father had approached the subject, but was still curious to
+know whether he had gone so far as to have some one in mind for the role
+of husband, and thought she would try to find out from her aunt. The
+strange farm hand came into the house with her bags and she followed him
+upstairs to what had always been her own room. Her aunt came puffing at
+her heels. The farm hand went away and she began to unpack, while the
+older woman, her face very red, sat on the edge of the bed. "You ain't
+been getting engaged to a man down there where you been to school, have
+you, Clara?" she asked.
+
+Clara looked at her aunt and blushed; then became suddenly and furiously
+angry. Dropping the bag she had opened to the floor, she ran out of the
+room. At the door she stopped and turned on the surprised and startled
+woman. "No, I haven't," she declared furiously. "It's nobody's business
+whether I have or not. I went to school for an education. I didn't go to
+get me a man. If that's what you sent me for, why didn't you say so?"
+
+Clara hurried out of the house and into the barnyard. She went into all
+of the barns, but there were no men about. Even the strange farm hand
+who had carried her bags into the house had disappeared, and the stalls
+in the horse and cattle barns were empty. Then she went into the orchard
+and climbing a fence went through a meadow and into the wood to which
+she had always fled, when as a girl on the farm she was troubled or
+angry. For a long time she sat on a log beneath a tree and tried to
+think her way through the new idea of marriage she had got from her
+father's words. She was still angry and told herself that she would
+leave home, would go to some city and get work. She thought of Kate
+Chanceller who intended to be a doctor, and tried to picture herself
+attempting something of the kind. It would take money for study. She
+tried to imagine herself talking to her father about the matter and the
+thought made her smile. Again she wondered if he had any definite person
+in mind as her husband, and who it could be. She tried to check off her
+father's acquaintances among the young men of Bidwell. "It must be some
+new man who has come here, some one having something to do with one of
+the factories," she thought.
+
+After sitting on the log for a long time, Clara got up and walked under
+the trees. The imaginary man, suggested to her mind by her father's
+words, became every moment more and more a reality. Before her eyes
+danced the laughing eyes of the young man who for a moment had lingered
+beside her while Kate Chanceller talked to his companion that evening
+when they had been challenged on the streets of Columbus. She remembered
+the young school teacher, who had held her in his arms through a long
+Sunday afternoon, and the day when, as an awakening maiden, she had
+heard Jim Priest talking to the laborers in the barn about the sap that
+ran up the tree. The afternoon slipped away and the shadows of the trees
+lengthened. On such a day and alone there in the quiet wood, it was
+impossible for her to remain in the angry mood in which she had left
+the house. Over her father's farm brooded the passionate fulfillment
+of summer. Before her, seen through the trees, lay yellow wheat fields,
+ripe for the cutting; insects sang and danced in the air about her head;
+a soft wind blew and made a gentle singing noise in the tops of the
+trees; at her back among the trees a squirrel chattered; and two calves
+came along a woodland path and stood for a long time staring at her with
+their large gentle eyes. She arose and went out of the wood, crossed a
+falling meadow and came to a rail fence surrounding a corn field. Jim
+Priest was cultivating corn and when he saw her left his horses and came
+to her. He took both her hands in his and pumped her arms up and down.
+"Well, Lord A'mighty, I'm glad to see you," he said heartily. "Lord
+A'mighty, I'm glad to see you." The old farm hand pulled a long blade
+of grass out of the ground beneath the fence and leaning against the
+top rail began to chew it. He asked Clara the same question her aunt had
+asked, but his asking did not annoy her. She laughed and shook her head.
+"No, Jim," she said, "I seem to have made a failure of going away to
+school. I didn't get me a man. No one asked me, you see."
+
+Both the woman and the old man became silent. Over the tops of the
+young corn they could see down the hillside into the distant town. Clara
+wondered if the man she was to marry was there. The idea of a marriage
+with her had perhaps been suggested to his mind also. Her father, she
+decided, was capable of that. He was evidently ready to go to any length
+to see her safely married. She wondered why. When Jim Priest began to
+talk, striving to explain his question, his words fitted oddly into the
+thoughts she was having in regard to herself. "Now about marriage," he
+began, "you see now, I never done it. I didn't get married at all. I
+don't know why. I wanted to and I didn't. I was afraid to ask, maybe.
+I guess if you do it you're sorry you did and if you don't you're sorry
+you didn't."
+
+Jim went back to his team, and Clara stood by the fence and watched him
+go down the long field and turn to come back along another of the paths
+between the corn rows. When the horses came to where she stood, he
+stopped again and looked at her. "I guess you'll get married pretty soon
+now," he said. The horses started on again and he held the cultivating
+machine with one hand and looked back over his shoulder at her. "You're
+one of the marrying kind," he called. "You ain't like me. You don't
+just think about things. You do 'em. You'll be getting yourself married
+before very long. You are one of the kind that does."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+If many things had happened to Clara Butterworth in the three years
+since that day when John May so rudely tripped her first hesitating
+girlish attempt to run out to life, things had also happened to the
+people she had left behind in Bidwell. In so short a space of time
+her father, his business associate Steve Hunter, Ben Peeler the town
+carpenter, Joe Wainsworth the harness maker, almost every man and woman
+in town had become something different in his nature from the man or
+woman bearing the same name she had known in her girlhood.
+
+Ben Peeler was forty years old when Clara went to Columbus to school. He
+was a tall, slender, stoop-shouldered man who worked hard and was much
+respected by his fellow townsmen. Almost any afternoon he might have
+been seen going through Main Street, wearing his carpenter's apron and
+with a carpenter's pencil stuck under his cap and balanced on his ear.
+He went into Oliver Hall's hardware store and came out with a large
+package of nails under his arm. A farmer who was thinking of building a
+new barn stopped him in front of the post-office and for a half hour the
+two men talked of the project. Ben put on his glasses, took the pencil
+out of his cap and made some notation on the back of the package of
+nails. "I'll do a little figuring; then I'll talk things over with you,"
+he said. During the spring, summer and fall Ben had always employed
+another carpenter and an apprentice, but when Clara came back to town
+he was employing four gangs of six men each and had two foremen to watch
+the work and keep it moving, while his son, who in other times would
+also have been a carpenter, had become a salesman, wore fancy vests and
+lived in Chicago. Ben was making money and for two years had not driven
+a nail or held a saw in his hand. He had an office in a frame building
+beside the New York Central tracks, south of Main Street, and employed a
+book-keeper and a stenographer. In addition to carpentry he had embarked
+in another business. Backed by Gordon Hart, he had become a lumber
+dealer and bought and sold lumber under the firm name of Peeler and
+Hart. Almost every day cars of lumber were unloaded and stacked under
+sheds in the yard back of his office. He was no longer satisfied
+with his income as a workman but, under the influence of Gordon Hart,
+demanded also a swinging profit on the building materials. Ben now drove
+about town in a vehicle called a buckboard and spent the entire day
+hurrying from job to job. He had no time now to stop for a half hour's
+gossip with a prospective builder of a barn, and did not come to loaf in
+Birdie Spinks' drug-store at the end of the day. In the evening he went
+to the lumber office and Gordon Hart came over from the bank. The two
+men figured on jobs to be built, rows of workingmen's houses, sheds
+alongside one of the new factories, large frame houses for the
+superintendents and other substantial men of the town's new enterprises.
+In the old days Ben had been glad to go occasionally into the country on
+a barn-building job. He had liked the country food, the gossip with
+the farmer and his men at the noon hour and the drive back and forth to
+town, mornings and evenings. While he was in the country he managed to
+make a deal for his winter potatoes, hay for his horse, and perhaps a
+barrel of cider to drink on winter evenings. Now he had no time to think
+of such things. When a farmer came to see him he shook his head. "Get
+some one else to figure on your job," he advised. "You'll save money
+by getting a barn-building carpenter. I can't bother. I have too many
+houses to build." Ben and Gordon sometimes worked in the lumber office
+until midnight. On warm still nights the sweet smell of new-cut boards
+filled the air of the yard and crept in through the open windows, but
+the two men, intent on their figures, did not notice. In the early
+evening one or two teams came back to the yard to finish hauling lumber
+to a job where the men were to work on the next day. The voices of the
+men, talking and singing as they loaded their wagons, broke the silence.
+Later the wagons loaded high with boards went creaking away. When the
+two men grew tired and sleepy, they locked the office and walked through
+the yard to the driveway that led to a residence street. Ben was nervous
+and irritable. One evening they found three men, sleeping on a pile of
+boards in the yard, and drove them out. It gave both men something to
+think about. Gordon Hart went home and before he slept made up his mind
+that he would not let another day go by without getting the lumber in
+the yard more heavily insured. Ben had not handled affairs long enough
+to come quickly to so sensible a decision. All night he rolled and
+tumbled about in his bed. "Some tramp with his pipe will set the place
+afire," he thought. "I'll lose all the money I've made." For a long time
+he did not think of the simple expedient of hiring a watchman to drive
+sleepy and penniless wanderers away, and charging enough more for his
+lumber to cover the additional expense. He got out of bed and dressed,
+thinking he would get his shotgun out of the barn and go back to the
+yard and spend the night. Then he undressed and got into bed again.
+"I can't work all day and spend my nights down there," he thought
+resentfully. When at last he slept, he dreamed of sitting in the lumber
+yard in the darkness with the gun in his hand. A man came toward him and
+he discharged the gun and killed the man. With the inconsistency common
+to the physical aspect of dreams, the darkness passed away and it was
+daylight. The man he had thought dead was not quite dead. Although
+the whole side of his head was torn away, he still breathed. His mouth
+opened and closed convulsively. A dreadful illness took possession of
+the carpenter. He had an elder brother who had died when he was a boy,
+but the face of the man on the ground was the face of his brother. Ben
+sat up in bed and shouted. "Help, for God's sake, help! It's my own
+brother. Don't you see, it is Harry Peeler?" he cried. His wife awoke
+and shook him. "What's the matter, Ben," she asked anxiously. "What's
+the matter?" "It was a dream," he said, and let his head drop wearily on
+the pillow. His wife went to sleep again, but he stayed awake the
+rest of the night. When on the next morning Gordon Hart suggested the
+insurance idea, he was delighted. "That settles it of course," he said
+to himself. "It's simple enough, you see. That settles everything."
+
+In his shop on Main Street Joe Wainsworth had plenty to do after
+the boom came to Bidwell. Many teams were employed in the hauling of
+building materials; loads of paving brick were being carted from cars to
+where they were to be laid on Main Street; and teams hauled earth from
+where the new Main Street sewer was being dug and from the freshly dug
+cellars of houses. Never had there been so many teams employed and so
+much repairing of harness to do. Joe's apprentice had left him, had been
+carried off by the rush of young men to the places where the boom had
+arrived earlier. For a year Joe had worked alone and had then employed
+a journeyman harness maker who had drifted into town drunk and who got
+drunk every Saturday evening. The new man was an odd character. He had a
+faculty for making money, but seemed to care little about making it
+for himself. Within a week after he came to town he knew every one in
+Bidwell. His name was Jim Gibson and he had no sooner come to work
+for Joe than a contest arose between them. The contest concerned the
+question of who was to run the shop. For a time Joe asserted himself. He
+growled at the men who brought harness in to be repaired, and refused to
+make promises as to when the work would be done. Several jobs were taken
+away and sent to nearby towns. Then Jim Gibson asserted himself. When
+one of the teamsters who had come to town with the boom came with a
+heavy work harness on his shoulder, he went to meet him. The harness was
+thrown with a rattling crash on the floor and Jim examined it. "Oh, the
+devil, that's an easy job," he declared. "We'll fix that up in a jiffy.
+You can have it to-morrow afternoon if you want it."
+
+For a time Jim made it a practice to come to where Joe stood at work at
+his bench and consult with him regarding prices to be charged for
+work. Then he returned to the customer and charged more than Joe had
+suggested. After a few weeks he slopped consulting Joe at all. "You're
+no good," he exclaimed, laughing. "What you're doing in business I don't
+know." The old harness maker stared at him for a minute and then went
+to his bench and to work. "Business," he muttered, "what do I know about
+business? I'm a harness maker, I am."
+
+After Jim came to work for him, Joe made in one year almost twice the
+amount he had lost in the failure of the plant-setting machine factory.
+The money was not invested in stock of any factory but lay in the bank.
+Still he was not happy. All day Jim Gibson, whom Joe had never dared
+tell the tales of his triumph as a workman and to whom he did not brag
+as he had formerly done to his apprentices, talked of his ability to get
+the best of customers. He had, he declared, managed, in the last place
+he had worked before he came to Bidwell, to sell a good many sets of
+harness as handmade that were in reality made in a factory. "It isn't
+like the old times," he said, "things are changing. We used to sell
+harness only to farmers or to teamsters right in our towns who owned
+their own horses. We always knew the men we did business with and always
+would know them. Now it's different. The men now, you see, who are here
+in this town to work--well, next month or next year they'll be somewhere
+else. All they care about you and me is how much work they can get for
+a dollar. Of course they talk big about honesty and all that stuff, but
+that's only their guff. They think maybe we'll fall for it and they'll
+get more for the money they pay out. That's what they're up to."
+
+Jim tried hard to make his version of how the shop should be run clear
+to his employer. Every day he talked for hours regarding the matter. He
+tried to get Joe to put in a stock of factory-made harness and when
+he was unsuccessful was angry. "O the devil," he cried. "Can't you
+understand what you're up against? The factories are bound to win.
+For why? Look here, there can't any one but some old moss-back who has
+worked around horses all his life tell the difference between hand- and
+machine-sewed harness. The machine-made can be sold cheaper. It looks
+all right and the factories are able to put on a lot of do-dads. That
+catches the young fellows. It's good business. Quick sales and profits,
+that's the story." Jim laughed and then said something that made the
+shivers run up and down Joe's back. "If I had the money and was steady
+I'd start a shop in this town and show you up," he said. "I'd pretty
+near run you out. The trouble with me is I wouldn't stick to business
+if I had the money. I tried it once and made money; then when I got a
+little ahead I shut up the shop and went on a big drunk. I was no good
+for a month. When I work for some one else I'm all right. I get drunk
+on Saturdays and that satisfies me. I like to work and scheme for money,
+but it ain't any good to me when I get it and never will be. What I want
+you to do here is to shut your eyes and give me a chance. That's all I
+ask. Just shut your eyes and give me a chance."
+
+All day Joe sat astride his harness maker's horse, and when he was not
+at work, stared out through a dirty window into an alleyway and tried
+to understand Jim's idea of what a harness maker's attitude should be
+toward his customers, now that new times had come. He felt very old.
+Although Jim was as old in years lived as himself, he seemed very young.
+He began to be a little afraid of the man. He could not understand why
+the money, nearly twenty-five hundred dollars he had put in the bank
+during the two years Jim had been with him, seemed so unimportant and
+the twelve hundred dollars he had earned slowly after twenty years of
+work seemed so important. As there was much repair work always waiting
+to be done in the shop, he did not go home to lunch, but every day
+carried a few sandwiches to the shop in his pocket. At the noon hour,
+when Jim had gone to his boarding-house, he was alone, and if no one
+came in, he was happy. It seemed to him the best time of the day.
+Every few minutes he went to the front door to look out. The quiet Main
+Street, on which his shop had faced since he was a young man just come
+home from his trade adventures, and which had always been such a sleepy
+place at the noon hour in the summer, was now like a battle-field from
+which an army had retreated. A great gash had been cut in the street
+where the new sewer was to be laid. Swarms of workingmen, most of them
+strangers, had come into Main Street from the factories by the railroad
+tracks. They stood in groups in lower Main Street by Wymer's tobacco
+store. Some of them had gone into Ben Head's saloon for a glass of beer
+and came out wiping their mustaches. The men who were digging the sewer,
+foreign men, Italians he had heard, sat on the banks of dry earth in the
+middle of the street. Their dinner pails were held between their legs
+and as they ate they talked in a strange language. He remembered the day
+he had come to Bidwell with his bride, the girl he had met on his trade
+journey and who had waited for him until he had mastered his trade and
+had a shop of his own. He had gone to New York State to get her and had
+arrived back in Bidwell at noon on just such another summer day. There
+had not been many people about, but every one had known him. On that
+day every one had been his friend. Birdie Spinks rushed out of his drug
+store and had insisted that he and his bride go home to dinner with him.
+Every one had wanted them to come to his house for dinner. It had been a
+happy, joyous time.
+
+The harness maker had always been sorry his wife had borne him no
+children. He had said nothing and had always pretended he did not want
+them and now, at last, he was glad they had not come. He went back to
+his bench and to work, hoping Jim would be late in getting back from
+lunch. The shop was very quiet after the activity of the street that
+had so bewildered him. It was, he thought, like a retreat, almost like
+a church when you went to the door and looked in on a week day. He had
+done that once and had liked the empty silent church better than he did
+a church with a preacher and a lot of people in it. He had told his wife
+about the matter. "It was like the shop in the evening when I've got a
+job of work done and the boy has gone home," he had said.
+
+The harness maker looked out through the open door of his shop and saw
+Tom Butterworth and Steve Hunter going along Main Street, engaged in
+earnest conversation. Steve had a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth
+and Tom had on a fancy vest. He thought again of the money he had lost
+in the plant-setting machine venture and was furious. The noon hour was
+spoiled and he was almost glad when Jim came back from his mid-day meal.
+
+The position in which he found himself in the shop amused Jim Gibson. He
+chuckled to himself as he waited on the customers who came in, and as
+he worked at the bench. One day when he came back along Main Street from
+the noon meal, he decided to try an experiment. "If I lose my job what
+difference does it make?" he asked himself. He stopped at a saloon and
+had a drink of whisky. When he got to the shop he began to scold his
+employer, to threaten him as though he were his apprentice. Swaggering
+suddenly in, he walked to where Joe was at work and slapped him roughly
+on the back. "Come, cheer up, old daddy," he said. "Get the gloom out of
+you. I'm tired of your muttering and growling at things."
+
+The employee stepped back and watched his employer. Had Joe ordered him
+out of the shop he would not have been surprised, and as he said later
+when he told Ben Head's bartender of the incident, would not have cared
+very much. The fact that he did not care, no doubt saved him. Joe was
+frightened. For just a moment he was so angry he could not speak, and
+then he remembered that if Jim left him he would have to wait on trade
+and would have to dicker with the strange teamsters regarding the
+repairing of the work harness. Bending over the bench he worked for an
+hour in silence. Then, instead of demanding an explanation of the rude
+familiarity with which Jim had treated him, he began to explain. "Now
+look here, Jim," he pleaded, "don't you pay any attention to me. You do
+as you please here. Don't you pay any attention to me."
+
+Jim said nothing, but a smile of triumph lit up his face. Late in the
+afternoon he left the shop. "If any one comes in, tell them to wait. I
+won't be gone very long," he said insolently. Jim went into Ben Head's
+saloon and told the bartender how his experiment had come out. The
+story was later told from store to store up and down the Main Street of
+Bidwell. "He was like a boy who has been caught with his hand in the jam
+pot," Jim explained. "I can't think what's the matter with him. Had I
+been in his, shoes I would have kicked Jim Gibson out of the shop.
+He told me not to pay any attention to him and to run the shop as I
+pleased. Now what do you think of that? Now what do you think of that
+for a man who owns his own shop and has money in the bank? I tell you,
+I don't know how it is, but I don't work for Joe any more. He works for
+me. Some day you come in the shop casual-like and I'll boss him around
+for you. I'm telling you I don't know how it is that it come about, but
+I'm the boss of the shop as sure as the devil."
+
+All of Bidwell was looking at itself and asking itself questions. Ed
+Hall, who had been a carpenter's apprentice earning but a few dollars
+a week with his master, Ben Peeler, was now foreman in the corn-cutter
+factory and received a salary of twenty-five dollars every Saturday
+night. It was more money than he had ever dreamed of earning in a week.
+On pay nights he dressed himself in his Sunday clothes and had himself
+shaved at Joe Trotter's barber shop. Then he went along Main Street,
+fingering the money in his pocket and half fearing he would suddenly
+awaken and find it all a dream. He went into Wymer's tobacco store to
+get a cigar, and old Claude Wymer came to wait on him. On the second
+Saturday evening after he got his new position, the tobacconist, a
+rather obsequious man, called him Mr. Hall. It was the first time such a
+thing had happened and it upset him a little. He laughed and made a joke
+of it. "Don't get high and mighty," he said, and turned to wink at the
+men loafing in the shop. Later he thought about the matter and was sorry
+he had not accepted the new title without protest. "Well, I'm foreman,
+and a lot of the young fellows I've always known and fooled around with
+will be working under me," he told himself. "I can't be getting thick
+with them."
+
+Ed walked along the street feeling very keenly the importance of his new
+place in the community. Other young fellows in the factory were getting
+a dollar and a half a day. At the end of the week he got twenty-five
+dollars, almost three times as much. The money was an indication of
+superiority. There could be no doubt about that. Ever since he had been
+a boy he had heard older men speak respectfully of men who possessed
+money. "Get on in the world," they said to young men, when they talked
+seriously. Among themselves they did not pretend that they did not want
+money. "It's money makes the mare go," they said.
+
+Down Main Street to the New York Central tracks Ed went, and then turned
+out of the street and disappeared into the station. The evening train
+had passed and the place was deserted. He went into the dimly lighted
+waiting-room. An oil lamp, turned low, and fastened by a bracket to
+the wall made a little circle of light in a corner. The room was like
+a church in the early morning of a wintry day, cold and still. He went
+hurriedly to the light, and taking the roll of money from his pocket,
+counted it. Then he went out of the room and along the station platform
+almost to Main Street, but was not satisfied. On an impulse he returned
+to the waiting room again and, late in the evening on his way home, he
+stopped there for a final counting of the money before he went to bed.
+
+Peter Fry was a blacksmith and had a son who was clerk in the Bidwell
+Hotel. He was a tall young fellow with curly yellow hair and watery blue
+eyes and smoked cigarettes, a habit that was an offense to the nostrils
+of the men of his times. His name was Jacob, but he was called in
+derision Fizzy Fry. The young man's mother was dead and he got his meals
+at the hotel and at night slept on a cot in the hotel office. He had a
+passion for gayly colored neckties and waistcoats and was forever trying
+unsuccessfully to attract the attention of the town girls. When he
+and his father met on the street, they did not speak to each other.
+Sometimes the father stopped and stared at his son. "How did I happen to
+be the father of a thing like that?" he muttered aloud.
+
+The blacksmith was a square-shouldered, heavily built man with a bushy
+black beard and a tremendous voice. When he was a young man he sang in
+the Methodist choir, but after his wife died he stopped going to church
+and began putting his voice to other uses. He smoked a short clay pipe
+that had become black with age and that at night could not be seen
+against his black curly beard. Smoke rolled out of his mouth in clouds
+and appeared to come up out of his belly. He was like a volcanic
+mountain and was called, by the men who loafed in Birdie Spinks' drug
+store, Smoky Pete.
+
+Smoky Pete was in more ways than one like a mountain given to eruptions.
+He did not get drunk, but after his wife died he got into the habit of
+having two or three drinks of whisky every evening. The whisky inflamed
+his mind and he strode up and down Main Street, ready to quarrel with
+any one his eye lighted upon. He got into the habit of roaring at his
+fellow citizens and making ribald jokes at their expense. Every one was
+a little afraid of him and he became in an odd way the guardian of the
+town morals. Sandy Ferris, a house painter, became a drunkard and did
+not support his family. Smoky Pete abused him in the public streets
+and in the sight of all men. "You cheap thing, warming your belly with
+whisky while jour children freeze, why don't you try being a man?" he
+shouted at the house painter, who staggered into a side street and went
+to sleep off his intoxication in a stall in Clyde Neighbors' livery
+barn. The blacksmith kept at the painter until the whole town took up
+his cry and the saloons became ashamed to accept his custom. He was
+forced to reform.
+
+The blacksmith did not, however, discriminate in the choice of victims.
+His was not the spirit of the reformer. A merchant of Bidwell, who had
+always been highly respected and who was an elder in his church, went
+one evening to the county seat and there got into the company of a
+notorious woman known throughout the county as Nell Hunter. The two went
+into a little room at the back of a saloon and were seen by two Bidwell
+young men who had gone to the county seat for an evening of adventure.
+When the merchant, named Pen Beck, realized he had been seen, he was
+afraid the tale of his indiscretion would be carried to his home town,
+and left the woman to join the young men. He was not a drinking man, but
+began at once to buy drinks for his companions. The three got very drunk
+and drove home together late at night in a rig the young men had hired
+for the occasion from Clyde Neighbors. On the way the merchant kept
+trying to explain his presence in the company of the woman. "Don't
+say anything about it," he urged. "It would be misunderstood. I have a
+friend whose son has been taken in by the woman. I was trying to get her
+to let him alone."
+
+The two young men were delighted that they had caught the merchant off
+his guard. "It's all right," they assured him. "Be a good fellow and we
+won't tell your wife or the minister of your church." When they had all
+the drinks they could carry, they got the merchant into the buggy and
+began to whip the horse. They had driven half way to Bidwell and all of
+them had fallen into a drunken sleep, when the horse became frightened
+at something in the road and ran away. The buggy was overturned and they
+were all thrown into the road. One of the young men had an arm broken
+and Pen Beck's coat was almost torn in two. He paid the young man's
+doctor's bill and settled with Clyde Neighbors for the damage to the
+buggy.
+
+For a long time the story of the merchant's adventure did not leak out,
+and when it did, but a few intimate friends of the young men knew it.
+Then it reached the ears of Smoky Pete. On the day he heard it he could
+hardly bear to wait until evening came. He hurried to Ben Head's saloon,
+had two drinks of whisky and then went to stand with the loafers before
+Birdie Spinks' drug store. At half past seven Pen Beck turned into Main
+Street from Cherry Street, where he lived. When he was more than three
+blocks away from the crowd of men before the drug store, Smoky Pete's
+roaring voice began to question him. "Well, Penny, my lad, so you went
+for a night among the ladies?" he shouted. "You've been fooling around
+with my girl, Nell Hunter, over at the county seat. I'd like to know
+what you mean. You'll have to make an explanation to me."
+
+The merchant stopped and stood on the sidewalk, unable to decide whether
+to face his tormentor or flee. It was just at the quiet time of the
+evening when the housewives of the town had finished their evening's
+work and stood resting by the kitchen doors. It seemed to Pen Beck that
+Smoky Pete's voice could be heard for a mile. He decided to face it out
+and if necessary to fight the blacksmith. As he came hurriedly toward
+the group before the drug store, Smoky Pete's voice took up the story of
+the merchant's wild night. He stepped out from the men in front of the
+store and seemed to be addressing himself to the whole street. Clerks,
+merchants, and customers rushed out of the stores. "Well," he cried, "so
+you made a night of it with my girl Nell Hunter. When you sat with her
+in the back room of the saloon you didn't know I was there. I was hidden
+under a table. If you'd done anything more than bite her on the neck I'd
+have come out and called you to time."
+
+Smoky Pete broke into a roaring laugh and waved his arms to the people
+gathered in the street and wondering what it was all about. It was for
+him one of the really delicious spots of his life. He tried to explain
+to the people what he was talking about. "He was with Nell Hunter in
+the back room of a saloon over at the county seat," he shouted. "Edgar
+Duncan and Dave Oldham saw him there. He came home with them and the
+horse ran away. He didn't commit adultery. I don't want you to think
+that happened. All that happened was he bit my best girl, Nell Hunter,
+on the neck. That's what makes me so mad. I don't like to have her
+bitten by him. She is my girl and belongs to me."
+
+The blacksmith, forerunner of the modern city newspaper reporter in
+his love of taking the center of the stage in order to drag into public
+sight the misfortunes of his fellows, did not finish his tirade. The
+merchant, white with anger, rushed up and struck him a blow on the chest
+with his small and rather fat fist. The blacksmith knocked him into the
+gutter and later, when he was arrested, went proudly off to the office
+of the town mayor and paid his fine.
+
+It was said by the enemies of Smoky Pete that he had not taken a bath
+for years. He lived alone in a small frame house at the edge of town.
+Behind his house was a large field. The house itself was unspeakably
+dirty. When the factories came to town, Tom Butterworth and Steve Hunter
+bought the field intending to cut it into building lots. They wanted to
+buy the blacksmith's house and finally did secure it by paying a high
+price. He agreed to move out within a year but after the money was paid
+repented and wished he had not sold. A rumor began to run about town
+connecting the name of Tom Butterworth with that of Fanny Twist, the
+town milliner. It was said the rich farmer had been seen coming out
+of her shop late at night. The blacksmith also heard another story
+whispered in the streets. Louise Trucker, the farmer's daughter who had
+at one time been seen creeping through a side street in the company of
+young Steve Hunter, had gone to Cleveland and it was said she had become
+the proprietor of a prosperous house of ill fame. Steve's money, it
+was declared, had been used to set her up in business. The two stories
+offered unlimited opportunity for expansion in the blacksmith's mind,
+but while he was preparing himself to do what he called bringing the two
+men down in the sight and hearing of the whole town, a thing happened
+that upset his plans. His son Fizzy Fry left his place as clerk in the
+hotel and went to work in the corn-cutting machine factory. One day
+his father saw him coming from the factory at noon with a dozen other
+workmen. The young man had on overalls and smoked a pipe. When he saw
+his father he stopped, and when the other men had gone on, explained his
+sudden transformation. "I'm in the shop now, but I won't be there long,"
+he said proudly. "You know Tom Butterworth stays at the hotel? Well,
+he's given me a chance. I got to stay in the shop for a while to learn
+about things. After that I'm to have a chance as shipping clerk. Then
+I'll be a traveler on the road." He looked at his father and his voice
+broke. "You haven't thought very much of me, but I'm not so bad," he
+said. "I don't want to be a sissy, but I'm not very strong. I worked at
+the hotel because there wasn't anything else I thought I could do."
+
+Peter Fry went home to his house but could not eat the food he had
+cooked for himself on the tiny stove in the kitchen. He went outdoors
+and stood for a long time, looking out across the cow-pasture Tom
+Butterworth and Steve Hunter had bought and that they proposed should
+become a part of the rapidly growing city. He had himself taken no part
+in the new impulses that had come upon the town, except that he had
+taken advantage of the failure of the town's first industrial effort
+to roar insults at those of his townsmen who had lost their money. One
+evening he and Ed Hall had got into a fight about the matter on Main
+Street, and the blacksmith had been compelled to pay another fine.
+Now he wondered what was the matter with him. He had evidently made a
+mistake about his son. Had he made a mistake about Tom Butterworth and
+Steve Hunter?
+
+The perplexed man went back to his shop and all the afternoon worked in
+silence. His heart had been set on the creation of a dramatic scene on
+Main Street, when he openly attacked the two most prominent men of the
+town, and he even pictured himself as likely to be put in the town jail
+where he would have an opportunity to roar things through the iron
+bars at the citizens gathered in the street. In anticipation of such an
+event, he had prepared himself to attack the reputation of other people.
+He had never attacked women but, if he were locked up, he intended to do
+so. John May had once told him that Tom Butterworth's daughter, who had
+been away to college for a year, had been sent away because she was
+in the family way. John May had claimed he was responsible for her
+condition. Several of Tom's farm hands he said had been on intimate
+terms with the girl. The blacksmith had told himself that if he got
+into trouble for publicly attacking the father he would be justified in
+telling what he knew about the daughter.
+
+The blacksmith did not come into Main Street that evening. As he went
+home from work he saw Tom Butterworth standing with Steve Hunter before
+the post-office. For several weeks Tom had been spending most of his
+time away from town, had only appeared in town for a few hours at
+a time, and had not been seen on the streets in the evening. The
+blacksmith had been waiting to catch both men on the street at one time.
+Now that this opportunity had come, he began to be afraid he would not
+dare take it. "What right have I to spoil my boy's chances?" he asked
+himself, as he went rather heavily along the street toward his own
+house.
+
+It rained on that evening and for the first time in years Smoky Pete did
+not go into Main Street. He told himself that the rain kept him at home,
+but the thought did not satisfy him. All evening he moved restlessly
+about the house and at half past eight went to bed. He did not, however,
+sleep, but lay with his trousers on and with his pipe in his mouth,
+trying to think. Every few minutes he took the pipe from his mouth, blew
+out a cloud of smoke and swore viciously. At ten o'clock the farmer, who
+had owned the cow-pasture back of his house and who still kept his cows
+there, saw his neighbor tramping about in the rain in the field and
+saying things he had planned to say on Main Street in the hearing of the
+entire town.
+
+The farmer also had gone to bed early, but at ten o'clock he decided
+that, as the rain continued to fall and as it was growing somewhat cold,
+he had better get up and let his cows into the barn. He did not dress,
+but threw a blanket about his shoulders and went out without a light.
+He let down the bars separating the field from the barnyard and then saw
+and heard Smoky Pete in the field. The blacksmith walked back and forth
+in the darkness, and as the farmer stood by the fence, began to talk in
+a loud voice. "Well, Tom Butterworth, you're fooling around with Fanny
+Twist," he cried into the silence and emptiness of the night. "You're
+sneaking into her shop late at night, eh? Steve Hunter has set Louise
+Trucker up in business in a house in Cleveland. Are you and Fanny Twist
+going to open a house here? Is that the next industrial enterprise we're
+to have here in this town?"
+
+The amazed farmer stood in the rain in the darkness, listening to the
+words of his neighbor. The cows came through the gate and went into the
+barn. His bare legs were cold and he drew them alternately up under the
+blanket. For ten minutes Peter Fry tramped up and down in the field.
+Once he came quite near the farmer, who drew himself down beside the
+fence and listened, filled with amazement and fright. He could dimly see
+the tall, old man striding along and waving his arms about. When he had
+said many bitter, hateful things regarding the two most prominent men
+of Bidwell, he began to abuse Tom Butterworth's daughter, calling her a
+bitch and the daughter of a dog. The farmer waited until Smoky Pete
+had gone back to his house and, when he saw a light in the kitchen, and
+fancied he could also see his neighbor cooking food at a stove, he went
+again into his own house. He had himself never quarreled with Smoky Pete
+and was glad. He was glad also that the field at the back of his house
+had been sold. He intended to sell the rest of his farm and move west to
+Illinois. "The man's crazy," he told himself. "Who but a crazy man would
+talk that way in the darkness? I suppose I ought to report him and get
+him locked up, but I guess I'll forget what I heard. A man who would
+talk like that about nice respectable people would do anything. He might
+set fire to my house some night or something like that. I guess I'll
+just forget what I heard."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOUR
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+After the success of his corn cutting machine and the apparatus for
+unloading coal cars that brought him a hundred thousand dollars in cash,
+Hugh could not remain the isolated figure he had been all through the
+first several years of his life in the Ohio community. From all sides
+men reached out their hands to him: and more than one woman thought she
+would like to be his wife. All men lead their lives behind a wall of
+misunderstanding they themselves have built, and most men die in silence
+and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his
+fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing
+something that is impersonal, useful, and beautiful. Word of his
+activities is carried over the walls. His name is shouted and is carried
+by the wind into the tiny inclosure in which other men live and in which
+they are for the most part absorbed in doing some petty task for the
+furtherance of their own comfort. Men and women stop their complaining
+about the unfairness and inequality of life and wonder about the man
+whose name they have heard.
+
+From Bidwell, Ohio, to farms all over the Middle West, Hugh McVey's
+name had been carried. His machine for cutting corn was called the McVey
+Corn-Cutter. The name was printed in white letters against a background
+of red on the side of the machine. Farmer boys in the States of Indiana,
+Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and all the great corn-growing States
+saw it and in idle moments wondered what kind of man had invented the
+machine they operated. A Cleveland newspaper man came to Bidwell and
+went to Pickleville to see Hugh. He wrote a story telling of Hugh's
+early poverty and his efforts to become an inventor. When the reporter
+talked to Hugh he found the inventor so embarrassed and uncommunicative
+that he gave up trying to get a story. Then he went to Steve Hunter who
+talked to him for an hour. The story made Hugh a strikingly romantic
+figure. His people, the story said, came out of the mountains of
+Tennessee, but they were not poor whites. It was suggested that they
+were of the best English stock. There was a tale of Hugh's having in
+his boyhood contrived some kind of an engine that carried water from a
+valley to a mountain community; another of his having seen a clock in
+a store in a Missouri town and of his having later made a clock of wood
+for his parents; and a tale of his having gone into the forest with his
+father's gun, shot a wild hog and carried it down the mountain side on
+his shoulder in order to get money to buy school books. After the tale
+was printed the advertising manager of the corn-cutter factory got Hugh
+to go with him one day to Tom Butterworth's farm. Many bushels of corn
+were brought out of the corn cribs and a great mountain of corn was
+built on the ground at the edge of a field. Back of the mountain of corn
+was a corn field just coming into tassel. Hugh was told to climb up on
+the mountain and sit there. Then his picture was taken. It was sent to
+newspapers all over the West with copies of the biography cut from the
+Cleveland paper. Later both the picture and the biography were used in
+the catalogue that described the McVey Corn-Cutter.
+
+The cutting of corn and putting it in shocks against the time of the
+husking is heavy work. In recent times it has come about that much of
+the corn grown on mid-American prairie lands is not cut. The corn is
+left standing in the fields, and men go through it in the late fall to
+pick the yellow ears. The workers throw the corn over their shoulders
+into a wagon driven by a boy, who follows them in their slow progress,
+and it is then hauled away to the cribs. When a field has been picked,
+the cattle are turned in and all winter they nibble at the dry corn
+blades and tramp the stalks into the ground. All day long on the wide
+western prairies when the gray fall days have come, you may see the men
+and the horses working their way slowly through the fields. Like tiny
+insects they crawl across the immense landscapes. After them in the late
+fall and in the winter when the prairies are covered with snow, come the
+cattle. They are brought from the far West in cattle cars and after they
+have nibbled the corn blades all day, are taken to barns and stuffed
+to bursting with corn. When they are fat they are sent to the great
+killing-pens in Chicago, the giant city of the prairies. In the still
+fall nights, as you stand on prairie roads or in the barnyard back of
+one of the farm houses, you may hear the rustling of the dry corn blades
+and then the crash of the heavy bodies of the beasts going forward as
+they nibble and trample the corn.
+
+In earlier days the method of corn harvesting was different. There was
+poetry in the operation then as there is now, but it was set to another
+rhythm. When the corn was ripe men went into the fields with heavy corn
+knives and cut the stalks of corn close to the ground. The stalks were
+cut with the right hand swinging the corn knife and carried on the left
+arm. All day a man carried a heavy load of the stalks from which yellow
+ears hung down. When the load became unbearably heavy it was carried to
+the shock, and when all the corn was cut in a certain area, the shock
+was made secure by binding it with tarred rope or with a tough stalk
+twisted to take the place of the rope. When the cutting was done the
+long rows of stalks stood up in the fields like sentinels, and the men
+crawled off to the farmhouses and to bed, utterly weary.
+
+Hugh's machine took all of the heavier part of the work away. It cut
+the corn near the ground and bound it into bundles that fell upon a
+platform. Two men followed the machine, one to drive the horses and the
+other to place the bundles of stalks against the shocks and to bind the
+completed shocks. The men went along smoking their pipes and talking.
+The horses stopped and the driver stared out over the prairies. His arms
+did not ache with weariness and he had time to think. The wonder and
+mystery of the wide open places got a little into his blood. At night
+when the work was done and the cattle fed and made comfortable in the
+barns, he did not go at once to bed but sometimes went out of his house
+and stood for a moment under the stars.
+
+This thing the brain of the son of a mountain man, the poor white of
+the river town, had done for the people of the plains. The dreams he had
+tried so hard to put away from him and that the New England woman
+Sarah Shepard had told him would lead to his destruction had come to
+something. The car-dumping apparatus, that had sold for two hundred
+thousand dollars, had given Steve Hunter money to buy the plant-setting
+machine factory, and with Tom Butterworth to start manufacturing the
+corn-cutters, had affected the lives of fewer people, but it had carried
+the Missourian's name into other places and had also made a new kind of
+poetry in railroad yards and along rivers at the back of cities where
+ships are loaded. On city nights as you lie in your houses you may hear
+suddenly a long reverberating roar. It is a giant that has cleared his
+throat of a carload of coal. Hugh McVey helped to free the giant. He
+is still doing it. In Bidwell, Ohio, he is still at it, making new
+inventions, cutting the bands that have bound the giant. He is one man
+who had not been swept aside from his purpose by the complexity of life.
+
+That, however, came near happening. After the coming of his success,
+a thousand little voices began calling to him. The soft hands of women
+reached out of the masses of people about him, out of the old dwellers
+and new dwellers in the city that was growing up about the factories
+where his machines were being made in ever increasing numbers. New
+houses were constantly being built along Turner's Pike that led down
+to his workshop at Pickleville. Beside Allie Mulberry a dozen mechanics
+were now employed in his experimental shop. They helped Hugh with a new
+invention, a hay-loading apparatus on which he was at work, and also
+made special tools for use in the corn-cutter factory and the new
+bicycle factory. A dozen new houses had been built in Pickleville
+itself. The wives of the mechanics lived in the houses and occasionally
+one of them came to see her husband at Hugh's shop. He found it less and
+less difficult to talk to people. The workmen, themselves not given to
+the use of many words, did not think his habitual silence peculiar. They
+were more skilled than Hugh in the use of tools and thought it rather an
+accident that he had done what they had not done. As he had grown rich
+by that road they also tried their hand at inventions. One of them made
+a patent door hinge that Steve sold for ten thousand dollars, keeping
+half the money for his services, as he had done in the case of Hugh's
+car-dumping apparatus. At the noon hour the men hurried to their houses
+to eat and then came back to loaf before the factory and smoke their
+noonday pipes. They talked of money-making, of the price of food stuffs,
+of the advisability of a man's buying a house on the partial payment
+plan. Sometimes they talked of women and of their adventures with women.
+Hugh sat by himself inside the door of the shop and listened. At night
+after he had gone to bed he thought of what they had said. He lived in
+a house belonging to a Mrs. McCoy, the widow of a railroad section hand
+killed in a railroad accident, who had a daughter. The daughter, Rose
+McCoy, taught a country school and most of the year was away from home
+from Monday morning until late on Friday afternoon. Hugh lay in bed
+thinking of what his workmen had said of women and heard the old
+housekeeper moving about down stairs. Sometimes he got out of bed to sit
+by an open window. Because she was the woman whose life touched his
+most closely, he thought often of the school teacher. The McCoy house, a
+small frame affair with a picket fence separating it from Turner's Pike,
+stood with its back door facing the Wheeling Railroad. The section hands
+on the railroad remembered their former fellow workman, Mike McCoy,
+and wanted to be good to his widow. They sometimes dumped half decayed
+railroad ties over the fence into a potato patch back of the house. At
+night, when heavily loaded coal trains rumbled past, the brakemen heaved
+large chunks of coal over the fence. The widow awoke whenever a train
+passed. When one of the brakemen threw a chunk of coal he shouted and
+his voice could be heard above the rumble of the coal cars. "That's for
+Mike," he cried. Sometimes one of the chunks knocked a picket out of the
+fence and the next day Hugh put it back again. When the train had passed
+the widow got out of bed and brought the coal into the house. "I don't
+want to give the boys away by leaving it lying around in the daylight,"
+she explained to Hugh. On Sunday mornings Hugh took a crosscut saw and
+cut the railroad ties into lengths that would go into the kitchen stove.
+Slowly his place in the McCoy household had become fixed, and when he
+received the hundred thousand dollars and everybody, even the mother
+and daughter, expected him to move, he did not do so. He tried
+unsuccessfully to get the widow to take more money for his board and
+when that effort failed, life in the McCoy household went as it had when
+he was a telegraph operator receiving forty dollars a month.
+
+In the spring or fall, as he sat by his window at night, and when the
+moon came up and the dust in Turner's Pike was silvery white, Hugh
+thought of Rose McCoy, sleeping in some farmer's house. It did not occur
+to him that she might also be awake and thinking. He imagined her lying
+very still in bed. The section hand's daughter was a slender woman of
+thirty with tired blue eyes and red hair. Her skin had been heavily
+freckled in her youth and her nose was still freckled. Although Hugh did
+not know it, she had once been in love with George Pike, the Wheeling
+station agent, and a day had been set for the marriage. Then a
+difficulty arose in regard to religious beliefs and George Pike married
+another woman. It was then she became a school teacher. She was a woman
+of few words and she and Hugh had never been alone together, but as
+Hugh sat by the window on fall evenings, she lay awake in a room in the
+farmer's house, where she was boarding during the school season, and
+thought of him. She thought that had Hugh remained a telegraph operator
+at forty dollars a month something might have happened between them.
+Then she had other thoughts, or rather, sensations that had little to do
+with thoughts. The room in which she lay was very still and a streak of
+moonlight came in through the window. In the barn back of the farmhouse
+she could hear the cattle stirring about. A pig grunted and in the
+stillness that followed she could hear the farmer, who lay in the next
+room with his wife, snoring gently. Rose was not very strong and the
+physical did not rule in her nature, but she was very lonely and thought
+that, like the farmer's wife, she would like to have a man to lie with
+her. Warmth crept over her body and her lips became dry so that she
+moistened them with her tongue. Had you been able to creep unobserved
+into the room, you might have thought her much like a kitten lying by
+a stove. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to dreams. In her
+conscious mind she dreamed of being the wife of the bachelor Hugh McVey,
+but deep within her there was another dream, a dream having its basis
+in the memory of her one physical contact with a man. When they were
+engaged to be married George had often kissed her. On one evening in the
+spring they had gone to sit together on the grassy bank beside the creek
+in the shadow of the pickle factory, then deserted and silent, and had
+come near to going beyond kissing. Why nothing else had happened Rose
+did not exactly know. She had protested, but her protest had been feeble
+and had not expressed what she felt. George Pike had desisted in his
+effort to press love upon her because they were to be married, and he
+did not think it right to do what he thought of as taking advantage of a
+girl.
+
+At any rate he did desist and long afterward, as she lay in the
+farmhouse consciously thinking of her mother's bachelor boarder, her
+thoughts became less and less distinct and when she had slipped off into
+sleep, George Pike came back to her. She stirred uneasily in bed and
+muttered words. Rough but gentle hands touched her cheeks and played in
+her hair. As the night wore on and the position of the moon shifted, the
+streak of moonlight lighted her face. One of her hands reached up and
+seemed to be caressing the moonbeams. The weariness had all gone out of
+her face. "Yes, George, I love you, I belong to you," she whispered.
+
+Had Hugh been able to creep like the moonbeam into the presence of the
+sleeping school teacher, he must inevitably have loved her. Also he
+would perhaps have understood that it is best to approach human beings
+directly and boldly as he had approached the mechanical problems by
+which his days were filled. Instead he sat by his window in the presence
+of the moonlit night and thought of women as beings utterly unlike
+himself. Words dropped by Sarah Shepard to the awakening boy came
+creeping back to his mind. He thought women were for other men but not
+for him, and told himself he did not want a woman.
+
+And then in Turner's Pike something happened. A farmer boy, who had been
+to town and who had the daughter of a neighbor in his buggy, stopped in
+front of the house. A long freight train, grinding its way slowly past
+the station, barred the passage along the road. He held the reins in one
+hand and put the other about the waist of his companion. The two heads
+sought each other and lips met. They clung to each other. The same moon
+that shed its light on Rose McCoy in the distant farmhouse lighted the
+open place where the lovers sat in the buggy in the road. Hugh had to
+close his eyes and fight to put down an almost overpowering physical
+hunger in himself. His mind still protested that women were not for him.
+When his fancy made for him a picture of the school teacher Rose
+McCoy sleeping in a bed, he saw her only as a chaste white thing to be
+worshiped from afar and not to be approached, at least not by himself.
+Again he opened his eyes and looked at the lovers whose lips still clung
+together. His long slouching body stiffened and he sat up very straight
+in his chair. Then he closed his eyes again. A gruff voice broke the
+silence. "That's for Mike," it shouted and a great chunk of coal thrown
+from the train bounded across the potato patch and struck against the
+back of the house. Downstairs he could hear old Mrs. McCoy getting out
+of bed to secure the prize. The train passed and the lovers in the
+buggy sank away from each other. In the silent night Hugh could hear the
+regular beat of the hoofs of the farmer boy's horse as it carried him
+and his woman away into the darkness.
+
+The two people, living in the house with the old woman who had almost
+finished her life, and themselves trying feebly to reach out to life,
+never got to anything very definite in relation to each other. One
+Saturday evening in the late fall the Governor of the State came to
+Bidwell. There was a parade to be followed by a political meeting and
+the Governor, who was a candidate for re-election, was to address the
+people from the steps of the town hall. Prominent citizens were to stand
+on the steps beside the Governor. Steve and Tom were to be there, and
+they had asked Hugh to come, but he had refused. He asked Rose McCoy
+to go to the meeting with him, and they set out from the house at eight
+o'clock and walked to town. Then they stood at the edge of the crowd
+in the shadow of a store building and listened to the speech. To Hugh's
+amazement his name was mentioned. The Governor spoke of the prosperity
+of the town, indirectly hinting that it was due to the political
+sagacity of the party of which he was a representative, and then
+mentioned several individuals also partly responsible. "The whole
+country is sweeping forward to new triumphs under our banner," he
+declared, "but not every community is so fortunate as I find you here.
+Labor is employed at good wages. Life here is fruitful and happy. You
+are fortunate here in having among you such business men as Steven
+Hunter and Thomas Butterworth; and in the inventor Hugh McVey you have
+one of the greatest intellects and the most useful men that ever lived
+to help lift the burden off the shoulder of labor. What his brain is
+doing for labor, our party is doing in another way. The protective
+tariff is really the father of modern prosperity."
+
+The speaker paused and a cheer arose from the crowd. Hugh took hold
+of the school teacher's arm and drew her away down a side street. They
+walked home in silence, but when they got to the house and were about
+to go in, the school teacher hesitated. She wanted to ask Hugh to walk
+about in the darkness with her but did not have the courage of her
+desires. As they stood at the gate and as the tall man with the long
+serious face looked down at her, she remembered the speaker's words.
+"How could he care for me? How could a man like him care anything for a
+homely little school teacher like me?" she asked herself. Aloud she said
+something quite different. As they had come along Turner's Pike she had
+made up her mind she would boldly suggest a walk under the trees along
+Turner's Pike beyond the bridge, and had told herself that she would
+later lead him to the place beside the stream and in the shadow of the
+old pickle factory where she and George Pike had come so near being
+lovers. Instead she hesitated for a moment by the gate and then laughed
+awkwardly and passed in. "You should be proud. I would be proud if I
+could be spoken of like that. I don't see why you keep living here in a
+cheap little house like ours," she said.
+
+On a warm spring Sunday night during the year in which Clara Butterworth
+came back to Bidwell to live, Hugh made what was for him an almost
+desperate effort to approach the school teacher. It had been a rainy
+afternoon and Hugh had spent a part of it in the house. He came over
+from his shop at noon and went to his room. When she was at home the
+school teacher occupied a room next his own. The mother who seldom left
+the house had on that day gone to the country to visit a brother. The
+daughter got dinner for herself and Hugh and he tried to help her wash
+the dishes. A plate fell out of his hands and its breaking seemed to
+break the silent, embarrassed mood that had possession of them. For a
+few minutes they were children and acted like children. Hugh picked
+up another plate and the school teacher told him to put it down. He
+refused. "You're as awkward as a puppy. How you ever manage to do
+anything over at that shop of yours is more than I know."
+
+Hugh tried to keep hold of the plate which the school teacher tried to
+snatch away and for a few minutes they struggled laughing. Her cheeks
+were flushed and Hugh thought she looked bewitching. An impulse he
+had never had before came to him. He wanted to shout at the top of his
+lungs, throw the plate at the ceiling, sweep all of the dishes off the
+table and hear them crash on the floor, play like some huge animal
+loose in a tiny world. He looked at Rose and his hands trembled from the
+strength of the strange impulse. As he stood staring she took the plate
+out of his hand and went into the kitchen. Not knowing what else to do
+he put on his hat and went for a walk. Later he went to the shop and
+tried to work, but his hand trembled when he tried to hold a tool and
+the hay-loading apparatus on which he was at work seemed suddenly a very
+trivial and unimportant thing.
+
+At four o'clock Hugh got back to the house and found it apparently
+empty, although the door leading to Turner's Pike was open. The rain
+had stopped falling and the sun struggled to work its way through the
+clouds. He went upstairs to his own room and sat on the edge of his bed.
+The conviction that the daughter of the house was in her room next door
+came to him, and although the thought violated all the beliefs he had
+ever held regarding women in relation to himself, he decided that she
+had gone to her room to be near him when he came in. For some reason he
+knew that if he went to her door and knocked she would not be surprised
+and would not refuse him admission. He took off his shoes and set
+them gently on the floor. Then he went on tiptoes out into the little
+hallway. The ceiling was so low that he had to stoop to avoid knocking
+his head against it. He raised his hand intending to knock on the door,
+and then lost courage. Several times he went into the hallway with the
+same intent, and each time returned noiselessly to his own room. He sat
+in the chair by the window and waited. An hour passed. He heard a noise
+that indicated that the school teacher had been lying on her bed. Then
+he heard footsteps on the stairs, and presently saw her go out of the
+house and go along Turner's Pike. She did not go toward town but over
+the bridge past his shop and into the country. Hugh drew himself back
+out of sight. He wondered where she could be going. "The roads are
+muddy. Why does she go out? Is she afraid of me?" he asked himself. When
+he saw her turn at the bridge and look back toward the house, his hands
+trembled again. "She wants me to follow. She wants me to go with her,"
+he thought.
+
+Hugh did presently go out of the house and along the road but did not
+meet the school teacher. She had in fact crossed the bridge and had gone
+along the bank of the creek on the farther side. Then she crossed
+over again on a fallen log and went to stand by the wall of the pickle
+factory. A lilac bush grew beside the wall and she stood out of sight
+behind it. When she saw Hugh in the road her heart beat so heavily that
+she had difficulty in breathing. He went along the road and presently
+passed out of sight, and a great weakness took possession of her.
+Although the grass was wet she sat on the ground against the wall of the
+building and closed her eyes. Later she put her face in her hands and
+wept.
+
+The perplexed inventor did not get back to his boarding house until
+late that night, and when he did he was unspeakably glad that he had not
+knocked on the door of Rose McCoy's room. He had decided during the walk
+that the whole notion that she had wanted him had been born in his own
+brain. "She's a nice woman," he had said to himself over and over during
+the walk, and thought that in coming to that conclusion he had swept
+away all possibilities of anything else in her. He was tired when he got
+home and went at once to bed. The old woman came home from the country
+and her brother sat in his buggy and shouted to the school teacher, who
+came out of her room and ran down the stairs. He heard the two women
+carry something heavy into the house and drop it on the floor. The
+farmer brother had given Mrs. McCoy a bag of potatoes. Hugh thought of
+the mother and daughter standing together downstairs and was unspeakably
+glad he had not given way to his impulse toward boldness. "She would be
+telling her now. She is a good woman and would be telling her now," he
+thought.
+
+At two o'clock that night Hugh got out of bed. In spite of the
+conviction that women were not for him, he had found himself unable to
+sleep. Something that shone in the eyes of the school teacher, when she
+struggled with him for the possession of the plate, kept calling to him
+and he got up and went to the window. The clouds had all gone out of the
+sky and the night was clear. At the window next his own sat Rose McCoy.
+She was dressed in a night gown and was looking away along Turner's Pike
+to the place where George Pike the station master lived with his wife.
+Without giving himself time to think, Hugh knelt on the floor and with
+his long arm reached across the space between the two windows. His
+fingers had almost touched the back of the woman's head and ached to
+play in the mass of red hair that fell down over her shoulders, when
+again self-consciousness overcame him. He drew his arm quickly back and
+stood upright in the room. His head banged against the ceiling and he
+heard the window of the room next door go softly down. With a conscious
+effort he took himself in hand. "She's a good woman. Remember, she's a
+good woman," he whispered to himself, and when he got again into his bed
+he refused to let his mind linger on the thoughts of the school teacher,
+but compelled them to turn to the unsolved problems he still had to face
+before he could complete his hay-loading apparatus. "You tend to your
+business and don't be going off on that road any more," he said, as
+though speaking to another person. "Remember she's a good woman and you
+haven't the right. That's all you have to do. Remember you haven't the
+right," he added with a ring of command in his voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Hugh first saw Clara Butterworth one day in July when she had been
+at home for a month. She came to his shop late one afternoon with
+her father and a man who had been employed to manage the new bicycle
+factory. The three got out of Tom's buggy and came into the shop to see
+Hugh's new invention, the hay-loading apparatus. Tom and the man named
+Alfred Buckley went to the rear of the shop, and Hugh was left alone
+with the woman. She was dressed in a light summer gown and her cheeks
+were flushed. Hugh stood by a bench near an open window and listened
+while she talked of how much the town had changed in the three years she
+had been away. "It is your doing, every one says that," she declared.
+
+Clara had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to Hugh. She began
+asking questions regarding his work and what was to come of it. "When
+everything is done by machines, what are people to do?" she asked. She
+seemed to take it for granted that the inventor had thought deeply
+on the subject of industrial development, a subject on which Kate
+Chanceller had often talked during a whole evening. Having heard Hugh
+spoken of as one who had a great brain, she wanted to see the brain at
+work.
+
+Alfred Buckley came often to her father's house and wanted to marry
+Clara. In the evening the two men sat on the front porch of the
+farmhouse and talked of the town and the big things that were to be done
+there. They spoke of Hugh, and Buckley, an energetic, talkative fellow
+with a long jaw and restless gray eyes who had come from New York City,
+suggested schemes for using him. Clara gathered that there was a plan
+on foot to get control of Hugh's future inventions and thereby gain an
+advantage over Steve Hunter.
+
+The whole matter puzzled Clara. Alfred Buckley had asked her to marry
+him and she had put the matter off. The proposal had been a formal
+thing, not at all what she had expected from a man she was to take as a
+partner for life, but Clara was at the moment very seriously determined
+upon marriage. The New York man was at her father's house several
+evenings every week. She had never walked about with him nor had they in
+any way come close to each other. He seemed too much occupied with work
+to be personal and had proposed marriage by writing her a letter. Clara
+got the letter from the post-office and it upset her so that she felt
+she could not for a time go into the presence of any one she knew. "I am
+unworthy of you, but I want you to be my wife. I will work for you. I am
+new here and you do not know me very well. All I ask is the privilege of
+proving my merit. I want you to be my wife, but before I dare come and
+ask you to do me so great an honor I feel I must prove myself worthy,"
+the letter said.
+
+Clara had driven into town alone on the day when she received it and
+later got into her buggy and drove south past the Butterworth farm into
+the hills. She forgot to go home to lunch or to the evening meal. The
+horse jogged slowly along, protesting and trying to turn back at every
+cross road, but she kept on and did not get home until midnight. When
+she reached the farmhouse her father was waiting. He went with her into
+the barnyard and helped unhitch the horse. Nothing was said, and after
+a moment's conversation having nothing to do with the subject that
+occupied both their minds, she went upstairs and tried to think the
+matter out. She became convinced that her father had something to do
+with the proposal of marriage that he knew about it and had waited for
+her to come home in order to see how it had affected her.
+
+Clara wrote a reply that was as non-committal as the proposal itself.
+"I do not know whether I want to marry you or not. I will have to become
+acquainted with you. I however thank you for the offer of marriage and
+when you feel that the right time has come, we will talk about it," she
+wrote.
+
+After the exchange of letters, Alfred Buckley came to her father's
+house more often than before, but he and Clara did not become better
+acquainted. He did not talk to her, but to her father. Although she
+did not know it, the rumor that she was to marry the New York man had
+already run about town. She did not know whether her father or Buckley
+had told the tale.
+
+On the front porch of the farmhouse through the summer evenings the two
+men talked of the progress, of the town and the part they were taking
+and hoped to take in its future growth. The New York man had proposed
+a scheme to Tom. He was to go to Hugh and propose a contract giving the
+two men an option on all his future inventions. As the inventions were
+completed they were to be financed in New York City, and the two men
+would give up manufacture and make money much more rapidly as promoters.
+They hesitated because they were afraid of Steve Hunter, and because Tom
+was afraid Hugh would not fall in with their plan. "It wouldn't surprise
+me if Steve already had such a contract with him. He's a fool if he
+hasn't," the older man said.
+
+Evening after evening the two men talked and Clara sat in the deep
+shadows at the back of the porch and listened. The enmity that had
+existed between herself and her father seemed to be forgotten. The man
+who had asked her to marry him did not look at her, but her father did.
+Buckley did most of the talking and spoke of New York City business
+men, already famous throughout the Middle West as giants of finance, as
+though they were his life-long friends. "They'll put over anything I ask
+them to," he declared.
+
+Clara tried to think of Alfred Buckley as a husband. Like Hugh McVey
+he was tall and gaunt but unlike the inventor, whom she had seen two
+or three times on the street, he was not carelessly dressed. There was
+something sleek about him, something that suggested a well-bred dog,
+a hound perhaps. As he talked he leaned forward like a greyhound in
+pursuit of a rabbit. His hair was carefully parted and his clothes
+fitted him like the skin of an animal. He wore a diamond scarf pin. His
+long jaw, it seemed to her, was always wagging. Within a few days after
+the receipt of his letter she had made up her mind that she did not want
+him as a husband, and she was convinced he did not want her. The whole
+matter of marriage had, she was sure, been in some way suggested by her
+father. When she came to that conclusion she was both angry and in
+an odd way touched. She did not interpret it as fear of some sort of
+indiscretion on her part, but thought that her father wanted her to
+marry because he wanted her to be happy. As she sat in the darkness
+on the front porch of the farmhouse the voices of the two men became
+indistinct. It was as though her mind went out of her body and like a
+living thing journeyed over the world. Dozens of men she had seen and
+had casually addressed, young fellows attending school at Columbus and
+boys of the town with whom she had gone to parties and dances when
+she was a young girl, came to stand before her. She saw their figures
+distinctly, but remembered them at some advantageous moment of her
+contact with them. At Columbus there was a young man from a town in the
+southern end of the State, one of the sort that is always in love with
+a woman. During her first year in school he had noticed Clara, had
+been undecided as to whether he had better pay attention to her or to a
+little black-eyed town girl who was in their classes. Several times he
+walked down the college hill and along the street with Clara. The two
+stood at a street crossing where she was in the habit of taking a car.
+Several cars went by as they stood together by a bush that grew by a
+high stone wall. They talked of trivial matters, a comedy club that had
+been organized in the school, the chances of victory for the football
+team. The young man was one of the actors in a play to be given by
+the comedy club and told Clara of his experiences at rehearsals. As he
+talked his eyes began to shine and he seemed to be looking, not at
+her face or body, but at something within her. For a time, perhaps for
+fifteen minutes, there was a possibility that the two people would love
+each other. Then the young man went away and later she saw him walking
+under the trees on the college campus with the little black-eyed town
+girl.
+
+As she sat on the porch in the darkness in the summer evenings, Clara
+thought of the incident and of dozens of other swift-passing contacts
+she had made with men. The voices of the two men talking of money-making
+went on and on. Whenever she came back out of her introspective world of
+thought, Alfred Buckley's long jaw was wagging. He was always at work,
+steadily, persistently urging something on her father. It was difficult
+for Clara to think of her father as a rabbit, but the notion that Alfred
+Buckley was like a hound stayed with her. "The wolf and the wolfhound,"
+she thought absent-mindedly.
+
+Clara was twenty-three and seemed to herself mature. She did not
+intend wasting any more time going to school and did not want to be a
+professional woman, like Kate Chanceller. There was something she did
+want and in a way some man, she did not know what man it would be, was
+concerned in the matter. She was very hungry for love, but might have
+got that from another woman. Kate Chanceller would have loved her. She
+was not unconscious of the fact that their friendship had been something
+more than friendship. Kate loved to hold Clara's hand and wanted to kiss
+and caress her. The inclination had been put down by Kate herself, a
+struggle had gone on in her, and Clara had been dimly conscious of it
+and had respected Kate for making it.
+
+Why? Clara asked herself that question a dozen times during the early
+weeks of that summer. Kate Chanceller had taught her to think. When
+they were together Kate did both the thinking and the talking, but now
+Clara's mind had a chance. There was something back of her desire for
+a man. She wanted something more than caresses. There was a creative
+impulse in her that could not function until she had been made love to
+by a man. The man she wanted was but an instrument she sought in order
+that she might fulfill herself. Several times during those evenings in
+the presence of the two men, who talked only of making money out of the
+products of another man's mind, she almost forced her mind out into a
+concrete thought concerning women, and then it became again befogged.
+
+Clara grew tired of thinking, and listened to the talk. The name of
+Hugh McVey played through the persistent conversation like a refrain.
+It became fixed in her mind. The inventor was not married. By the social
+system under which she lived that and that only made him a possibility
+for her purposes. She began to think of the inventor, and her mind,
+weary of playing about her own figure, played about the figure of the
+tall, serious-looking man she had seen on Main Street. When Alfred
+Buckley had driven away to town for the night, she went upstairs to her
+own room but did not get into bed. Instead, she put out her light and
+sat by an open window that looked out upon the orchard and from which
+she could see a little stretch of the road that ran past the farm house
+toward town. Every evening before Alfred Buckley went away, there was
+a little scene on the front porch. When the visitor got up to go, her
+father made some excuse for going indoors or around the corner of the
+house into the barnyard. "I will have Jim Priest hitch up your horse,"
+he said and hurried away. Clara was left in the company of the man who
+had pretended he wanted to marry her, and who, she was convinced,
+wanted nothing of the kind. She was not embarrassed, but could feel his
+embarrassment and enjoyed it. He made formal speeches.
+
+"Well, the night is fine," he said. Clara hugged the thought that he was
+uncomfortable. "He has taken me for a green country girl, impressed
+with him because he is from the city and dressed in fine clothes," she
+thought. Sometimes her father stayed away five or ten minutes and she
+did not say a word. When her father returned Alfred Buckley shook hands
+with him and then turned to Clara, apparently now quite at his ease. "We
+have bored you, I'm afraid," he said. He took her hand and leaning over,
+kissed the back of it ceremoniously. Her father looked away. Clara went
+upstairs and sat by the window. She could hear the two men continuing
+their talk in the road before the house. After a time the front door
+banged, her father came into the house and the visitor drove away.
+Everything became quiet and for a long time she could hear the hoofs of
+Alfred Buckley's horse beating a rapid tattoo on the road that led down
+into town.
+
+Clara thought of Hugh McVey. Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as a
+backwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notion
+that he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wondered
+if both of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor as
+they were about her. In the silent summer night, when the sound of the
+horse's hoofs had died away and when her father had quit stirring about
+the house, she heard another sound. The corn-cutting machine factory
+was very busy and had put on a night shift. When the night was still, or
+when there was a slight breeze blowing up the hill from town, there
+was a low rumbling sound coming from many machines working in wood and
+steel, followed at regular intervals by the steady breathing of a steam
+engine.
+
+The woman at the window, like every one else in her town and in all the
+towns of the mid-western country, became touched with the idea of the
+romance of industry. The dreams of the Missouri boy that he had fought,
+had by the strength of his persistency twisted into new channels so
+that they had expressed themselves in definite things, in corn-cutting
+machines and in machines for unloading coal cars and for gathering hay
+out of a field and loading it on wagons without aid of human hands, were
+still dreams and capable of arousing dreams in others. They awoke dreams
+in the mind of the woman. The figures of other men that had been playing
+through her mind slipped away and but the one figure remained. Her mind
+made up stories concerning Hugh. She had read the absurd tale that had
+been printed in the Cleveland paper and her fancy took hold of it. Like
+every other citizen of America she believed in heroes. In books and
+magazines she had read of heroic men who had come up out of poverty
+by some strange alchemy to combine in their stout persons all of the
+virtues. The broad, rich land demanded gigantic figures, and the minds
+of men had created the figures. Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Sherman, and a
+half dozen other men were something more than human in the minds of
+the generation that came immediately after the days of their stirring
+performance. Already industry was creating a new set of semi-mythical
+figures. The factory at work in the night-time in the town of Bidwell
+became, to the mind of the woman sitting by the window in the farm
+house, not a factory but a powerful animal, a powerful beast-like thing
+that Hugh had tamed and made useful to his fellows. Her mind ran
+forward and took the taming of the beast for granted. The hunger of her
+generation found a voice in her. Like every one else she wanted heroes,
+and Hugh, to whom she had never talked and about whom she knew nothing,
+became a hero. Her father, Alfred Buckley, Steve Hunter and the rest
+were after all pigmies. Her father was a schemer; he had even schemed
+to get her married, perhaps to further his own plans. In reality his
+schemes were so ineffective that she did not need to be angry with him.
+There was but one man of them all who was not a schemer. Hugh was what
+she wanted to be. He was a creative force. In his hands dead inanimate
+things became creative forces. He was what she wanted not herself
+but perhaps a son, to be. The thought, at last definitely expressed,
+startled Clara, and she arose from the chair by the window and prepared
+to go to bed. Something within her body ached, but she did not allow
+herself to pursue further the thoughts she had been having.
+
+On the day when she went with her father and Alfred Buckley to visit
+Hugh's shop, Clara knew that she wanted to marry the man she would see
+there. The thought was not expressed in her but slept like a seed newly
+planted in fertile soil. She had herself managed that she be taken to
+the factory and had also managed that she be left with Hugh while the
+two men went to look at the half-completed hay-loader at the back of the
+shop.
+
+She had begun talking to Hugh while the four people stood on the little
+grass plot before the shop. They went inside and her father and Buckley
+went through a door toward the rear. She stopped by a bench and as she
+continued talking Hugh was compelled to stop and stand beside her. She
+asked questions, paid him vague compliments, and as he struggled, trying
+to make conversation, she studied him. To cover his confusion he half
+turned away and looked out through a window into Turner's Pike. His
+eyes, she decided, were nice. They were somewhat small, but there was
+something gray and cloudy in them, and the gray cloudiness gave her
+confidence in the person behind the eyes. She could, she felt, trust
+him. There was something in his eyes that was like the things most
+grateful to her own nature, the sky seen across an open stretch of
+country or over a river that ran straight away into the distance. Hugh's
+hair was coarse like the mane of a horse, and his nose was like the nose
+of a horse. He was, she decided, very like a horse; an honest, powerful
+horse, a horse that was humanized by the mysterious, hungering thing
+that expressed itself through his eyes. "If I have to live with an
+animal; if, as Kate Chanceller once said, we women have to decide what
+other animal we are to live with before we can begin being humans,
+I would rather live with a strong, kindly horse than a wolf or a
+wolfhound," she found herself thinking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Hugh had no suspicion that Clara had him under consideration as a
+possible husband. He knew nothing about her, but after she went away he
+began to think. She was a woman and good to look upon and at once took
+Rose McCoy's place in his mind. All unloved men and many who are loved
+play in a half subconscious way with the figures of many women as
+women's minds play with the figures of men, seeing them in many
+situations, vaguely caressing them, dreaming of closer contacts. With
+Hugh the impulse toward women had started late, but it was becoming
+every day more active. When he talked to Clara and while she stayed
+in his presence, he was more embarrassed than he had ever been before,
+because he was more conscious of her than he had ever been of any other
+woman. In secret he was not the modest man he thought himself. The
+success of his corn-cutting machine and his car-dumping apparatus and
+the respect, amounting almost to worship, he sometimes saw in the eyes
+of the people of the Ohio town had fed his vanity. It was a time when
+all America was obsessed with one idea, and to the people of Bidwell
+nothing could be more important, necessary and vital to progress than
+the things Hugh had done. He did not walk and talk like the other people
+of the town, and his body was over-large and loosely put together, but
+in secret he did not want to be different even in a physical way. Now
+and then there came an opportunity for a test of physical strength: an
+iron bar was to be lifted or a part of some heavy machine swung into
+place in the shop. In such a test he had found he could lift almost
+twice the load another could handle. Two men grunted and strained,
+trying to lift a heavy bar off the floor and put it on a bench. He came
+along and did the job alone and without apparent effort.
+
+In his room at night or in the late afternoon or evening in the summer
+when he walked on country roads, he sometimes felt keen hunger for
+recognition of his merits from his fellows, and having no one to praise
+him, he praised himself. When the Governor of the State spoke in praise
+of him before a crowd and when he made Rose McCoy come away because it
+seemed immodest for him to stay and hear such words, he found himself
+unable to sleep. After tossing in his bed for two or three hours he got
+up and crept quietly out of the house. He was like a man who, having
+an unmusical voice, sings to himself in a bath-room while the water
+is making a loud, splashing noise. On that night Hugh wanted to be an
+orator. As he stumbled in the darkness along Turner's Pike he imagined
+himself Governor of a State addressing a multitude of people. A mile
+north of Pickleville a dense thicket grew beside the road, and Hugh
+stopped and addressed the young trees and bushes. In the darkness
+the mass of bushes looked not unlike a crowd standing at attention,
+listening. The wind blew and played in the thick, dry growth and there
+was a sound as of many voices whispering words of encouragement. Hugh
+said many foolish things. Expressions he had heard from the lips of
+Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth came into his mind and were repeated
+by his lips. He spoke of the swift growth that had come to the town of
+Bidwell as though it were an unmixed blessing, the factories, the homes
+of happy, contented people, the coming of industrial development as
+something akin to a visit of the gods. Rising to the height of egotism
+he shouted, "I have done it. I have done it."
+
+Hugh heard a buggy coming along the road and fled into the thicket. A
+farmer, who had gone to town for the evening and who had stayed after
+the political meeting to talk with other farmers in Ben Head's saloon,
+went homeward, asleep in his buggy. His head nodded up and down, heavy
+with the vapors rising from many glasses of beer. Hugh came out of the
+thicket feeling somewhat ashamed. The next day he wrote a letter to
+Sarah Shepherd and told her of his progress. "If you or Henry want any
+money, I can let you have all you want," he wrote, and did not resist
+the temptation to tell her something of what the Governor had said of
+his work and his mind. "Anyway they must think I amount to something
+whether I do or not," he said wistfully.
+
+Having awakened to his own importance in the life about him, Hugh wanted
+direct, human appreciation. After the failure of the effort both he and
+Rose had made to break through the wall of embarrassment and reserve
+that kept them apart, he knew pretty definitely that he wanted a woman,
+and the idea, once fixed in his mind, grew to gigantic proportions. All
+women became interesting, and he looked with hungry eyes at the wives
+of the workmen who sometimes came to the shop door to pass a word with
+their husbands, at young farm girls who drove along Turner's Pike on
+summer afternoons, town girls who walked in the Bidwell Main Street in
+the evening, at fair women and dark women. As he wanted a woman more
+consciously and determinedly he became more afraid of individual women.
+His success and his association with the workmen in his shop had made
+him less self-conscious in the presence of men, but the women were
+different. In their presence he was ashamed of his secret thoughts of
+them.
+
+On the day when he was left alone with Clara, Tom Butterworth and Alfred
+Buckley stayed at the back of the shop for nearly twenty minutes. It
+was a hot day and beads of sweat stood on Hugh's face. His sleeves were
+rolled to his elbows and his hands and hairy arms were covered with shop
+grime. He put up his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, leaving
+a long, black mark. Then he became aware of the fact that as she talked
+the woman looked at him in an absorbed, almost calculating way. It was
+as though he were a horse and she were a buyer examining him to be sure
+he was sound and of a kindly disposition. While she stood beside him her
+eyes were shining and her cheeks were flushed. The awakening, assertive
+male thing in him whispered that the flush on her cheeks and the shining
+eyes were indicative of something. His mind had been taught that lesson
+by the slight and wholly unsatisfactory experience with the school
+teacher at his boarding-house.
+
+Clara drove away from the shop with her father and Alfred Buckley. Tom
+drove and Alfred Buckley leaned forward and talked. "You must find out
+whether or not Steve has an option on the new tool. It would be foolish
+to ask outright and give ourselves away. That inventor is stupid and
+vain. Those fellows always are. They appear to be quiet and shrewd, but
+they always let the cat out of the bag. The thing to do is to flatter
+him in some way. A woman could find out all he knows in ten minutes." He
+turned to Clara and smiled. There was something infinitely impertinent
+in the fixed, animal-like stare of his eyes. "We do take you into our
+plans, your father and me, eh?" he said. "You must be careful not to
+give us away when you talk to that inventor."
+
+From his shop window Hugh stared at the backs of the heads of the three
+people. The top of Tom Butterworth's buggy had been let down, and when
+he talked Alfred Buckley leaned forward and his head disappeared. Hugh
+thought Clara must look like the kind of woman men meant when they spoke
+of a lady. The farmer's daughter had an instinct for clothes, and Hugh's
+mind got the idea of gentility by way of the medium of clothes. He
+thought the dress she had worn the most stylish thing he had ever seen.
+Clara's friend Kate Chanceller, while mannish in her dress, had an
+instinct for style and had taught Clara some valuable lessons. "Any
+woman can dress well if she knows how," Kate had declared. She had
+taught Clara how to study and emphasize by dress the good points of her
+body. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy and commonplace.
+
+Hugh went to the rear of his shop to where there was a water-tap and
+washed his hands. Then he went to a bench and tried to take up the work
+he had been doing. Within five minutes he went to wash his hands again.
+He went out of the shop and stood beside the small stream that rippled
+along beneath willow bushes and disappeared under the bridge beneath
+Turner's Pike, and then went back for his coat and quit work for the
+day. An instinct led him to go past the creek again and he knelt on the
+grass at the edge and again washed his hands.
+
+Hugh's growing vanity was fed by the thought that Clara was interested
+in him, but it was not yet strong enough to sustain the thought. He took
+a long walk, going north from the shop along Turner's Pike for two or
+three miles and then by a cross road between corn and cabbage fields to
+where he could, by crossing a meadow, get into a wood. For an hour he
+sat on a log at the wood's edge and looked south. Away in the distance,
+over the roofs of the houses of the town, he could see a white speck
+against a background of green--the Butterworth farm house. Almost at
+once he decided that the thing he had seen in Clara's eyes and that was
+sister to something he had seen in Rose McCoy's eyes had nothing to do
+with him. The mantle of vanity he had been wearing dropped off and left
+him naked and sad. "What would she be wanting of me?" he asked himself,
+and got up from the log to look with critical eyes at his long, bony
+body. For the first time in two or three years he thought of the words
+so often repeated in his presence by Sarah Shepard in the first few
+months after he left his father's shack by the shore of the Mississippi
+River and came to work at the railroad station. She had called his
+people lazy louts and poor white trash and had railed against his
+inclination to dreams. By struggle and work he had conquered the dreams
+but could not conquer his ancestry, nor change the fact that he was at
+bottom poor white trash. With a shudder of disgust he saw himself again
+a boy in ragged clothes that smelled of fish, lying stupid and half
+asleep in the grass beside the Mississippi River. He forgot the majesty
+of the dreams that sometimes came to him, and only remembered the swarms
+of flies that, attracted by the filth of their clothes, hovered over him
+and over the drunken father who lay sleeping beside him.
+
+A lump arose in his throat and for a moment he was consumed with
+self-pity. Then he went out of the wood, crossed the field, and with
+his peculiar, long, shambling gait that got him over the ground with
+surprising rapidity, went again along the road. Had there been a stream
+nearby he would have been tempted to tear off his clothes and plunge
+in. The notion that he could ever become a man who would in any way be
+attractive to a woman like Clara Butterworth seemed the greatest folly
+in the world. "She's a lady. What would she be wanting of me? I ain't
+fitten for her. I ain't fitten for her," he said aloud, unconsciously
+falling into the dialect of his father.
+
+Hugh walked the entire afternoon away and in the evening went back to
+his shop and worked until midnight. So energetically did he work that
+several knotty problems in the construction of the hay-loading apparatus
+were cleared away.
+
+On the second evening after the encounter with Clara, Hugh went for a
+walk in the streets of Bidwell. He thought of the work on which he had
+been engaged all day and then of the woman he had made up his mind he
+could under no circumstances win. As darkness came on he went into
+the country, and at nine returned along the railroad tracks past the
+corn-cutter factory. The factory was working day and night, and the new
+plant, also beside the tracks and but a short distance away, was almost
+completed. Behind the new plant was a field Tom Butterworth and Steve
+Hunter had bought and laid out in streets of workingmen's houses. The
+houses were cheaply constructed and ugly, and in all directions there
+was a vast disorder; but Hugh did not see the disorder or the ugliness
+of the buildings. The sight that lay before him strengthened his waning
+vanity. Something of the loose shuffle went out of his stride and he
+threw back his shoulders. "What I have done here amounts to something.
+I'm all right," he thought, and had almost reached the old corn-cutter
+plant when several men came out of a side door and getting upon the
+tracks, walked before him.
+
+In the corn-cutter plant something had happened that excited the men.
+Ed Hall the superintendent had played a trick on his fellow townsmen. He
+had put on overalls and gone to work at a bench in a long room with some
+fifty other men. "I'm going to show you up," he said, laughing. "You
+watch me. We're behind on the work and I'm going to show you up."
+
+The pride of the workmen had been touched, and for two weeks they had
+worked like demons to outdo the boss. At night when the amount of
+work done was calculated, they laughed at Ed. Then they heard that the
+piece-work plan was to be installed in the factory, and were afraid they
+would be paid by a scale calculated on the amount of work done during
+the two weeks of furious effort.
+
+The workman who stumbled along the tracks cursed Ed Hall and the men for
+whom he worked. "I lost six hundred dollars in the plant-setting machine
+failure and this is all I get, to be played a trick on by a young suck
+like Ed Hall," a voice grumbled. Another voice took up the refrain.
+In the dim light Hugh could see the speaker, a man with a bent back, a
+product of the cabbage fields, who had come to town to find employment.
+Although he did not recognize it, he had heard the voice before. It came
+from a son of the cabbage farmer, Ezra French and was the same voice he
+had once heard complaining at night as the French boys crawled across a
+cabbage field in the moonlight. The man now said something that startled
+Hugh. "Well," he declared, "it's a joke on me. I quit Dad and made him
+sore; now he won't take me back again. He says I'm a quitter and no
+good. I thought I'd come to town to a factory and find it easier here.
+Now I've got married and have to stick to my job no matter what they
+do. In the country I worked like a dog a few weeks a year, but here I'll
+probably have to work like that all the time. It's the way things go. I
+thought it was mighty funny, all this talk about the factory work being
+so easy. I wish the old days were back. I don't see how that inventor or
+his inventions ever helped us workers. Dad was right about him. He said
+an inventor wouldn't do nothing for workers. He said it would be better
+to tar and feather that telegraph operator. I guess Dad was right."
+
+The swagger went out of Hugh's walk and he stopped to let the men pass
+out of sight and hearing along the track. When they had gone a little
+away a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way
+responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall
+and accusations flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone
+that ran down along the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with
+dry weeds. It made a heavy crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps
+running. He was afraid the men were going to attack him, and climbed
+over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and got into an empty street. As he
+went along trying to understand what had happened and why the men were
+angry, he met Clara Butterworth, standing and apparently waiting for him
+under a street lamp.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh walked beside Clara, too perplexed to attempt to understand the new
+impulses crowding in upon his mind. She explained her presence in the
+street by saying she had been to town to mail a letter and intended
+walking home by a side road. "You may come with me if you're just
+out for a walk," she said. The two walked in silence. Hugh's mind,
+unaccustomed to traveling in wide circles, centered on his companion.
+Life seemed suddenly to be crowding him along strange roads. In two
+days he had felt more new emotions and had felt them more deeply than he
+would have thought possible to a human being. The hour through which
+he had just passed had been extraordinary. He had started out from his
+boarding-house sad and depressed. Then he had come by the factories and
+pride in what he thought he had accomplished swept in on him. Now it
+was apparent the workers in the factories were not happy, that there was
+something the matter. He wondered if Clara would know what was wrong
+and would tell him if he asked. He wanted to ask many questions. "That's
+what I want a woman for. I want some one close to me who understands
+things and will tell me about them," he thought. Clara remained silent
+and Hugh decided that she, like the complaining workman stumbling along
+the tracks, did not like him. The man had said he wished Hugh had never
+come to town. Perhaps every one in Bidwell secretly felt that way.
+
+Hugh was no longer proud of himself and his achievements. Perplexity had
+captured him. When he and Clara got out of town into a country road, he
+began thinking of Sarah Shepard, who had been friendly and kind to him
+when he was a lad, and wished she were with him, or better yet that
+Clara would take the attitude toward him she had taken. Had Clara taken
+it into her head to scold as Sarah Shepard had done he would have been
+relieved.
+
+Instead Clara walked in silence, thinking of her own affairs and
+planning to use Hugh for her own ends. It had been a perplexing day
+for her. Late that afternoon there had been a scene between her and
+her father and she had left home and come to town because she could no
+longer bear being in his presence. When she had seen Hugh coming toward
+her she had stopped under a street lamp to wait for him. "I could set
+everything straight by getting him to ask me to marry him," she thought.
+
+The new difficulty that had arisen between Clara and her father was
+something with which she had nothing to do. Tom, who thought himself so
+shrewd and crafty, had been taken in by the city man, Alfred Buckley. A
+federal officer had come to town during the afternoon to arrest Buckley.
+The man had turned out to be a notorious swindler wanted in several
+cities. In New York he had been one of a gang who distributed
+counterfeit money, and in other states he was wanted for swindling
+women, two of whom he married unlawfully.
+
+The arrest had been like a shot fired at Tom by a member of his own
+household. He had almost come to think of Alfred Buckley as one of his
+family, and as he drove rapidly along the road toward home, he had been
+profoundly sorry for his daughter and had intended to ask her to forgive
+him for his part in betraying her into a false position. That he had
+not openly committed himself to any of Buckley's schemes, had signed no
+papers and written no letters that would betray the conspiracy he had
+entered into against Steve, filled him with joy. He had intended to be
+generous, and even, if necessary, confess to Clara his indiscretion in
+talking of a possible marriage, but when he got to the farm house and
+had taken Clara into the parlor and had closed the door, he changed
+his mind. He told her of Buckley's arrest, and then started tramping
+excitedly up and down in the room. Her coolness infuriated him. "Don't
+set there like a clam!" he shouted. "Don't you know what's happened?
+Don't you know you're disgraced, have brought disgrace on my name?"
+
+The angry father explained that half the town knew of her engagement to
+marry Alfred Buckley, and when Clara declared they were not engaged and
+that she had never intended marrying the man, his anger did not abate.
+He had himself whispered the suggestion about town, had told Steve
+Hunter, Gordon Hart, and two or three others, that Alfred Buckley and
+his daughter would no doubt do what he spoke of as "hitting it off," and
+they had of course told their wives. The fact that he had betrayed his
+daughter into an ugly position gnawed at his consciousness. "I suppose
+the rascal told it himself," he said, in reply to her statement, and
+again gave way to anger. He glared at his daughter and wished she were
+a son so he could strike with his fists. His voice arose to a shout and
+could be heard in the barnyard where Jim Priest and a young farm
+hand were at work. They stopped work and listened. "She's been up to
+something. Do you suppose some man has got her in trouble?" the young
+farm hand asked.
+
+In the house Tom expressed his old dissatisfaction with his daughter.
+"Why haven't you married and settled down like a decent woman?" he
+shouted. "Tell me that. Why haven't you married and settled down? Why
+are you always getting in trouble? Why haven't you married and settled
+down?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara walked in the road beside Hugh and thought that all her troubles
+would come to an end if he would ask her to be his wife. Then she
+became ashamed of her thoughts. As they passed the last street lamp and
+prepared to set out by a roundabout way along a dark road, she turned
+to look at Hugh's long, serious face. The tradition that had made him
+appear different from other men in the eyes of the people of Bidwell
+began to affect her. Ever since she had come home she had been hearing
+people speak of him with something like awe in their voices. For her to
+marry the town's hero would, she knew, set her on a high place in the
+eyes of her people. It would be a triumph for her and would re-establish
+her, not only in her father's eyes but in the eyes of every one. Every
+one seemed to think she should marry; even Jim Priest had said so. He
+had said she was the marrying kind. Here was her chance. She wondered
+why she did not want to take it.
+
+Clara had written her friend Kate Chanceller a letter in which she had
+declared her intention of leaving home and going to work, and had come
+to town afoot to mail it. On Main Street as she went through the crowds
+of men who had come to loaf the evening away before the stores, the
+force of what her father had said concerning the connection of her name
+with that of Buckley the swindler had struck her for the first time. The
+men were gathered together in groups, talking excitedly. No doubt they
+were discussing Buckley's arrest. Her own name was, no doubt, being
+bandied about. Her cheeks burned and a keen hatred of mankind had
+possession of her. Now her hatred of others awoke in her an almost
+worshipful attitude toward Hugh. By the time they had walked together
+for five minutes all thought of using him to her own ends had gone.
+"He's not like Father or Henderson Woodburn or Alfred Buckley," she told
+herself. "He doesn't scheme and twist things about trying to get the
+best of some one else. He works, and because of his efforts things are
+accomplished." The figure of the farm hand Jim Priest working in a field
+of corn came to her mind. "The farm hand works," she thought, "and the
+corn grows. This man sticks to his task in his shop and makes a town
+grow."
+
+In her father's presence during the afternoon Clara had remained calm
+and apparently indifferent to his tirade. In town in the presence of the
+men she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, ready
+to fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh's shoulder and cry.
+
+They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to her
+father's house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with the
+school teacher and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight.
+Clara stopped. She did not want any one at the house to know that Hugh
+had walked home with her. "Father is so set on my getting married, he
+would go to see him to-morrow," she thought. She put her arms upon the
+rail of the bridge and bending over buried her face between them. Hugh
+stood behind her, turning his head from side to side and rubbing his
+hands on his trouser legs, beside himself with embarrassment. There was
+a flat, swampy field beside the road and not far from the bridge, and
+after a moment of silence the voices of a multitude of frogs broke the
+stillness. Hugh became overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a big
+man and deserved to have a woman to live with and understand him went
+entirely away. For the moment he wanted to be a boy and put his head on
+the shoulder of the woman. He did not look at Clara but at himself.
+In the dim light his hands, nervously fumbling about, his long,
+loosely-put-together body, everything connected with his person, seemed
+ugly and altogether unattractive. He could see the woman's small firm
+hands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They were, he thought, like
+everything connected with her person, shapely and beautiful, just as
+everything connected with his own person was unshapely and ugly.
+
+Clara aroused herself from the meditative mood that had taken possession
+of her, and after shaking Hugh's hand and explaining that she did not
+want him to go further went away. When he thought she had quite gone she
+came back. "You'll hear I was engaged to that Alfred Buckley who has got
+into trouble and has been arrested," she said. Hugh did not reply and
+her voice became sharp and a little challenging. "You'll hear we were
+going to be married. I don't know what you'll hear. It's a lie," she
+said and turning, hurried away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Hugh and Clara were married in less than a week after their first walk
+together. A chain of circumstances touching their two lives hurled them
+into marriage, and the opportunity for the intimacy with a woman for
+which Hugh so longed came to him with a swiftness that made him fairly
+dizzy.
+
+It was a Wednesday evening and cloudy. After dining in silence with his
+landlady, Hugh started along Turner's Pike toward Bidwell, but when he
+had got almost into town, turned back. He had left the house intending
+to go through town to the Medina Road and to the woman who now occupied
+so large a place in his thoughts, but hadn't the courage. Every evening
+for almost a week he had taken the walk, and every evening and at almost
+the same spot he turned back. He was disgusted and angry with himself
+and went to his shop, walking in the middle of the road and kicking up
+clouds of dust. People passed along the path under the trees at the side
+of the road and turned to stare at him. A workingman with a fat wife,
+who puffed as she walked at his side, turned to look and then began to
+scold. "I tell you what, old woman, I shouldn't have married and had
+kids," he grumbled. "Look at me, then look at that fellow. He goes along
+there thinking big thoughts that will make him richer and richer. I have
+to work for two dollars a day, and pretty soon I'll be old and thrown on
+the scrap-heap. I might have been a rich inventor like him had I given
+myself a chance."
+
+The workman went on his way, grumbling at his wife who paid no attention
+to his words. Her breath was needed for the labor of walking, and as for
+the matter of marriage, that had been attended to. She saw no reason for
+wasting words over the matter. Hugh went to the shop and stood leaning
+against the door frame. Two or three workmen were busy near the back
+door and had lighted gas lamps that hung over the work benches. They did
+not see Hugh, and their voices ran through the empty building. One of
+them, an old man with a bald head, entertained his fellows by giving
+an imitation of Steve Hunter. He lighted a cigar and putting on his hat
+tipped it a little to one side. Puffing out his chest he marched up and
+down talking of money. "Here's a ten-dollar cigar," he said, handing a
+long stogie to one of the other workmen. "I buy them by the thousands to
+give away. I'm interested in uplifting the lives of workmen in my home
+town. That's what takes all my attention."
+
+The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up
+and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the
+people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he
+could still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of
+the corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a
+sudden glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay
+over the town. The bells of the churches began to call people to the
+Wednesday evening prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun
+to build workmen's houses in a field beyond Hugh's shop and these were
+occupied by Italian laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some
+day be a tenement district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch
+belonging to Ezra French who had said God would not permit men to change
+the field of their labors.
+
+An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore
+a bright red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly
+colored shirt. Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to
+see foreigners about. He did not understand them and when he saw them
+going about the streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man's
+duty, he thought, to look as much as possible like all his fellow men,
+to lose himself in the crowds, and these fellows did not look like other
+men. They loved color, and as they talked they made rapid gestures with
+their hands. The Italian in the road was with a woman of his own race,
+and in the growing darkness put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh's heart
+began to beat rapidly and he forgot his American prejudices. He wished
+he were a workman and that Clara were a workman's daughter. Then, he
+thought, he might find courage to go to her. His imagination, quickened
+by the flame of desire and running in new channels, made it possible for
+him, at the moment to see himself in the young Italian's place, walking
+in the road with Clara. She was clad in a calico dress and her soft
+brown eyes looked at him full of love and understanding.
+
+The three workingmen had completed the job for which they had come back
+to work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came
+toward the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed
+himself by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were
+his thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.
+
+The workmen went out of the shop door and stood talking. The bald-headed
+man was telling a tale to which the others listened eagerly. "It's all
+over town," he said. "From what I hear every one say it isn't the first
+time she's been in such a mess. Old Tom Butterworth claimed he sent her
+away to school three years ago, but now they say that isn't the truth.
+What they say is that she was in the family way to one of her father's
+farm hands and had to get out of town." The man laughed. "Lord, if Clara
+Butterworth was my daughter she'd be in a nice fix, wouldn't she, eh?"
+he said, laughing. "As it is, she's all right. She's gone now and got
+herself mixed up with this swindler Buckley, but her father's money will
+make it all right. If she's going to have a kid, no one'll know. Maybe
+she's already had the kid. They say she's a regular one for the men."
+
+As the man talked Hugh came to the door and stood in the darkness
+listening. For a time the words would not penetrate his consciousness,
+and then he remembered what Clara had said. She had said something about
+Alfred Buckley and that there would be a story connecting her name with
+his. She had been hot and angry and had declared the story a lie. Hugh
+did not know what the story was about, but it was evident there was a
+story abroad, a scandalous story concerning her and Alfred Buckley. A
+hot, impersonal anger took possession of him. "She's in trouble--here's
+my chance," he thought. His tall figure straightened and as he stepped
+through the shop door his head struck sharply against the door frame,
+but he did not feel the blow that at another time might have knocked him
+down. During his whole life he had never struck any one with his fists,
+and had never felt a desire to do so, but now hunger to strike and even
+to kill took complete possession of him. With a cry of rage his fist
+shot out and the old man who had done the talking was knocked senseless
+into a clump of weeds that grew near the door. Hugh whirled and struck
+a second man who fell through the open doorway into the shop. The third
+man ran away into the darkness along Turner's Pike.
+
+Hugh walked rapidly to town and through Main Street. He saw Tom
+Butterworth walking in the street with Steve Hunter, but turned a corner
+to avoid a meeting. "My chance has come," he kept saying to himself
+as he hurried along Medina Road. "Clara's in some kind of trouble. My
+chance has come."
+
+By the time he got to the door of the Butterworth house, Hugh's
+new-found courage had almost left him, but before it had quite gone he
+raised his hand and knocked on the door. By good fortune Clara came to
+open it. Hugh took off his hat and turned it awkwardly in his hands.
+"I came out here to ask you to marry me," he said. "I want you to be my
+wife. Will you do it?"
+
+Clara stepped out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts
+ran through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then
+what there was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue.
+"Why shouldn't I do it?" she thought. "Here's my chance. This man is
+excited and upset now, but he is a man I can respect. It's the best
+marriage I'll ever have a chance to make. I do not love him, but perhaps
+that will come. This may be the way marriages are made."
+
+Clara put out her hand and laid it on Hugh's arm. "Well," she said,
+hesitatingly, "you wait here a moment."
+
+She went into the house and left Hugh standing in the darkness. He was
+terribly afraid. It seemed to him that every secret desire of his
+life had got itself suddenly and bluntly expressed. He felt naked and
+ashamed. "If she comes out and says she'll marry me, what will I do?
+What'll I do then?" he asked himself.
+
+When she did come out Clara wore her hat and a long coat. "Come," she
+said, and led him around the house and through the barnyard to one of
+the barns. She went into a dark stall and led forth a horse and with
+Hugh's help pulled a buggy out of a shed into the barnyard. "If we're
+going to do it there's no use putting it off," she said with a trembling
+voice. "We might as well go to the county seat and do it at once."
+
+The horse was hitched and Clara got into the buggy. Hugh climbed in and
+sat beside her. She had started to drive out of the barnyard when Jim
+Priest stepped suddenly out of the darkness and took hold of the horse's
+head. Clara held the buggy whip in her hand and raised it to hit the
+horse. A desperate determination that nothing should interfere with her
+marriage with Hugh had taken possession of her. "If necessary I'll
+ride the man down," she thought. Jim came to stand beside the buggy.
+He looked past Clara at Hugh. "I thought maybe it was that Buckley," he
+said. He put a hand on the buggy dash and laid the other on Clara's arm.
+"You're a woman now, Clara, and I guess you know what you're doing. I
+guess you know I'm your friend," he said slowly. "You been in trouble,
+I know. I couldn't help hearing what your father said to you about
+Buckley, he talked so loud. Clara, I don't want to see you get into
+trouble."
+
+The farm hand stepped away from the buggy and then came back and again
+put his hand on Clara's arm. The silence that lay over the barnyard
+lasted until the woman felt she could speak without a break in her
+voice.
+
+"I'm not going very far, Jim," she said, laughing nervously. "This is
+Mr. Hugh McVey and we're going over to the county seat to get married.
+We'll be back home before midnight. You put a candle in the window for
+us."
+
+Hitting the horse a sharp blow, Clara drove quickly past the house and
+into the road. She turned south into the hill country through which lay
+the road to the county seat. As the horse trotted quickly along, the
+voice of Jim Priest called to her out of the darkness of the barnyard,
+but she did not stop. The afternoon and evening had been cloudy and the
+night was dark. She was glad of that. As the horse went swiftly along
+she turned to look at Hugh who sat up very stiffly on the buggy seat and
+stared straight ahead. The long horse-like face of the Missourian
+with its huge nose and deeply furrowed cheeks was ennobled by the soft
+darkness, and a tender feeling crept over her. When he had asked her
+to become his wife, Clara had pounced like a wild animal abroad seeking
+prey and the thing in her that was like her father, hard, shrewd and
+quick-witted, had led her to decide to see the thing through at once.
+Now she became ashamed, and her tender mood took the hardness and
+shrewdness away. "This man and I have a thousand things we should say
+to each other before we rush into marriage," she thought, and was half
+inclined to turn the horse and drive back. She wondered if Hugh had also
+heard the stories connecting her name with that of Buckley, the stories
+she was sure were now running from lip to lip through the streets of
+Bidwell, and what version of the tale had been carried to him. "Perhaps
+he came to propose marriage in order to protect me," she thought, and
+decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair
+advantage. "It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a
+dirty, low-down trick,'" she told herself; but even as the thought came
+she leaned forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even
+more swiftly along the road.
+
+A mile south of the Butterworth farmhouse the road to the county seat
+crossed the crest of a hill, the highest point in the county, and from
+the road there was a magnificent view of the country lying to the south.
+The sky had begun to clear, and as they reached the point known as
+Lookout Hill, the moon broke through a tangle of clouds. Clara stopped
+the horse and turned to look down the hillside. Below lay the lights of
+her father's farmhouse--where he had come as a young man and to which
+long ago he had brought his bride. Far below the farmhouse a clustered
+mass of lights outlined the swiftly growing town. The determination
+that had carried Clara thus far wavered again and a lump came into her
+throat.
+
+Hugh also turned to look but did not see the dark beauty of the country
+wearing its night jewels of lights. The woman he wanted so passionately
+and of whom he was so afraid had her face turned from him, and he dared
+to look at her. He saw the sharp curve of her breasts and in the dim
+light her cheeks seemed to glow with beauty. An odd notion came to him.
+In the uncertain light her face seemed to move independent of her body.
+It drew near him and then drew away. Once he thought the dimly seen
+white cheek would touch his own. He waited breathless. A flame of desire
+ran through his body.
+
+Hugh's mind flew back through the years to his boyhood and young
+manhood. In the river town when he was a boy the raftsmen and hangers-on
+of the town's saloons, who had sometimes come to spend an afternoon on
+the river banks with his father John McVey, often spoke of women and
+marriage. As they lay on the burned grass in the warm sunlight they
+talked and the boy who lay half asleep nearby listened. The voices came
+to him as though out of the clouds or up out of the lazy waters of the
+great river and the talk of women awoke his boyhood lusts. One of the
+men, a tall young fellow with a mustache and with dark rings under his
+eyes, told in a lazy, drawling voice the tale of an adventure had with
+a woman one night when a raft on which he was employed had tied up near
+the city of St. Louis, and Hugh listened enviously. As he told the tale
+the young man a little awoke from his stupor, and when he laughed the
+other men lying about laughed with him. "I got the best of her after
+all," he boasted. "After it was all over we went into a little room at
+the back of a saloon. I watched my chance and when she went to sleep
+sitting in a chair I took eight dollars out of her stocking."
+
+That night in the buggy beside Clara, Hugh thought of himself lying
+by the river bank on the summer days. Dreams had come to him there,
+sometimes gigantic dreams; but there had also come ugly thoughts and
+desires. By his father's shack there was always the sharp rancid smell
+of decaying fish and swarms of flies filled the air. Out in the clean
+Ohio country, in the hills south of Bidwell, it seemed to him that the
+smell of decaying fish came back, that it was in his clothes, that it
+had in some way worked its way into his nature. He put up his hand
+and swept it across his face, an unconscious return of the perpetual
+movement of brushing flies away from his face as he lay half asleep by
+the river.
+
+Little lustful thoughts kept coming to Hugh and made him ashamed. He
+moved restlessly in the buggy seat and a lump came into his throat.
+Again he looked at Clara. "I'm a poor white," he thought. "It isn't
+fitten I should marry this woman."
+
+From the high spot in the road Clara looked down at her father's house
+and below at the lights of the town, that had already spread so far over
+the countryside, and up through the hills toward the farm where she had
+spent her girlhood and where, as Jim Priest had said, "the sap had
+begun to run up the tree." She began to love the man who was to be
+her husband, but like the dreamers of the town, saw him as something
+a little inhuman, as a man almost gigantic in his bigness. Many things
+Kate Chanceller had said as the two developing women walked and talked
+in the streets of Columbus came back to her mind. When they had started
+again along the road she continually worried the horse by tapping him
+with the whip. Like Kate, Clara wanted to be fair and square. "A woman
+should be fair and square, even with a man," Kate had said. "The man I'm
+going to have as a husband is simple and honest," she thought. "If
+there are things down there in town that are not square and fair, he
+had nothing to do with them." Realizing a little Hugh's difficulty
+in expressing what he must feel, she wanted to help him, but when she
+turned and saw how he did not look at her but continually stared into
+the darkness, pride kept her silent. "I'll have to wait until he's
+ready. Already I've taken things too much into my own hands. I'll put
+through this marriage, but when it comes to anything else he'll have to
+begin," she told herself, and a lump came into her throat and tears to
+her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+As he stood alone in the barnyard, excited at the thought of the
+adventure on which Clara and Hugh had set out, Jim Priest remembered Tom
+Butterworth. For more than thirty years Jim had worked for Tom and they
+had one strong impulse that bound them together--their common love of
+fine horses. More than once the two men had spent an afternoon together
+in the grand stand at the fall trotting meeting at Cleveland. In the
+late morning of such a day Tom found Jim wandering from stall to stall,
+looking at the horses being rubbed down and prepared for the afternoon's
+races. In a generous mood he bought his employee's lunch and took him to
+a seat in the grand stand. All afternoon the two men watched the races,
+smoked and quarreled. Tom contended that Bud Doble, the debonair, the
+dramatic, the handsome, was the greatest of all race horse drivers, and
+Jim Priest held Bud Doble in contempt. For him there was but one man of
+all the drivers he whole-heartedly admired, Pop Geers, the shrewd and
+silent. "That Geers of yours doesn't drive at all. He just sits up there
+like a stick," Tom grumbled. "If a horse can win all right, he'll ride
+behind him all right. What I like to see is a driver. Now you look at
+that Doble. You watch him bring a horse through the stretch."
+
+Jim looked at his employer with something like pity in his eyes. "Huh,"
+he exclaimed. "If you haven't got eyes you can't see."
+
+The farm hand had two strong loves in his life, his employer's daughter
+and the race horse driver, Geers. "Geers," he declared, "was a man born
+old and wise." Often he had seen Geers at the tracks on a morning before
+some important race. The driver sat on an upturned box in the sun before
+one of the horse stalls. All about him there was the bantering talk of
+horsemen and grooms. Bets were made and challenges given. On the
+tracks nearby horses, not entered in the races for that day, were being
+exercised. Their hoofbeats made a kind of music that made Jim's blood
+tingle. Negroes laughed and horses put their heads out at stall doors.
+The stallions neighed loudly and the heels of some impatient steed
+rattled against the sides of a stall.
+
+Every one about the stalls talked of the events of the afternoon and Jim
+leaned against the front of one of the stalls and listened, filled with
+happiness. He wished the fates had made him a racing man. Then he looked
+at Pop Geers, the silent one, who sat for hours dumb and uncommunicative
+on a feed box, tapping lightly on the ground with his racing whip and
+chewing straw. Jim's imagination was aroused. He had once seen
+that other silent American, General Grant, and had been filled with
+admiration for him.
+
+That was on a great day in Jim's life, the day on which he had seen
+Grant going to receive Lee's surrender at Appomattox. There had been a
+battle with the Union men pursuing the fleeing Rebs out of Richmond, and
+Jim, having secured a bottle of whisky, and having a chronic dislike of
+battles, had managed to creep away into a wood. In the distance he heard
+shouts and presently saw several men riding furiously down a road. It
+was Grant with his aides going to the place where Lee waited. They rode
+to the place near where Jim sat with his back against a tree and the
+bottle between his legs; then stopped. Then Grant decided not to take
+part in the ceremony. His clothes were covered with mud and his beard
+was ragged. He knew Lee and knew he would be dressed for the occasion.
+He was that kind of a man; he was one fitted for historic pictures and
+occasions. Grant wasn't. He told his aides to go on to the spot where
+Lee waited, told them what arrangements were to be made, then jumped his
+horse over a ditch and rode along a path under the trees toward the spot
+where Jim lay.
+
+That was an event Jim never forgot. He was fascinated at the thought
+of what the day meant to Grant and by his apparent indifference. He sat
+silently by the tree and when Grant got off his horse and came near,
+walking now in the path where the sunlight sifted down through the
+trees, he closed his eyes. Grant came to where he sat and stopped,
+apparently thinking him dead. His hand reached down and took the bottle
+of whisky. For a moment they had something between them, Grant and Jim.
+They both understood that bottle of whisky. Jim thought Grant was about
+to drink, and opened his eyes a little. Then he closed them. The cork
+was out of the bottle and Grant clutched it in his hand tightly. From
+the distance there came a vast shout that was picked up and carried by
+voices far away. The wood seemed to rock with it. "It's done. The war's
+over," Jim thought. Then Grant reached over and smashed the bottle
+against the trunk of the tree above Jim's head. A piece of the flying
+glass cut his cheek and blood came. He opened his eyes and looked
+directly into Grant's eyes. For a moment the two men stared at each
+other and the great shout again rolled over the country. Grant went
+hurriedly along the path to where he had left his horse, and mounting,
+rode away.
+
+Standing in the race track looking at Geers, Jim thought of Grant. Then
+his mind came back to this other hero. "What a man!" he thought. "Here
+he goes from town to town and from race track to race track all through
+the spring, summer and fall, and he never loses his head, never gets
+excited. To win horse races is the same as winning battles. When I'm at
+home plowing corn on summer afternoons, this Geers is away somewhere
+at some track with all the people gathered about and waiting. To me
+it would be like being drunk all the time, but you see he isn't drunk.
+Whisky could make him stupid. It couldn't make him drunk. There he
+sits hunched up like a sleeping dog. He looks as though he cared about
+nothing on earth, and he'll sit like that through three-quarters of the
+hardest race, waiting, taking advantage of every little stretch of firm
+hard ground on the track, saving his horse, watching, watching his horse
+too, waiting. What a man! He works the horse into fourth place, into
+third, into second. The crowd in the grand stand, such fellows as Tom
+Butterworth, have not seen what he's doing. He sits still. By God, what
+a man! He waits. He looks half asleep. If he doesn't have to do it, he
+makes no effort. If the horse has it in him to win without help he sits
+still. The people are shouting and jumping up out of their seats in the
+grand stand, and if that Bud Doble has a horse in the race he's leaning
+forward in the sulky, shouting at his horse and making a holy show of
+himself.
+
+"Ha, that Geers! He waits. He doesn't think of the people but of the
+horse he's driving. When the time comes, just the right time, that
+Geers, he lets the horse know. They are one at that moment, like Grant
+and I were over that bottle of whisky. Something happens between them.
+Something inside the man says, 'now,' and the message runs along the
+reins to the horse's brain. It flies down into his legs. There is a
+rush. The head of the horse has just worked its way out in front by
+inches--not too soon, nothing wasted. Ha, that Geers! Bud Doble, huh!"
+
+On the night of Clara's marriage after she and Hugh had disappeared
+down the county seat road, Jim hurried into the barn and, bringing out
+a horse, sprang on his back. He was sixty-three but could mount a horse
+like a young man. As he rode furiously toward Bidwell he thought, not of
+Clara and her adventure, but of her father. To both men the right kind
+of marriage meant success in life for a woman. Nothing else really
+mattered much if that were accomplished. He thought of Tom Butterworth,
+who, he told himself, had fussed with Clara just as Bud Doble often
+fussed with a horse in a race. He had himself been like Pop Geers. All
+along he had known and understood the mare colt, Clara. Now she had come
+through; she had won the race of life.
+
+"Ha, that old fool!" Jim whispered to himself as he rode swiftly down
+the dark road. When the horse ran clattering over a small wooden bridge
+and came to the first of the houses of the town, he felt like one coming
+to announce a victory, and half expected a vast shout to come out of the
+darkness, as it had come in the moment of Grant's victory over Lee.
+
+Jim could not find his employer at the hotel or in Main Street, but
+remembered a tale he had heard whispered. Fanny Twist the milliner lived
+in a little frame house in Garfield Street, far out at the eastern edge
+of town, and he went there. He banged boldly on the door and the woman
+appeared. "I've got to see Tom Butterworth," he said. "It's important.
+It's about his daughter. Something has happened to her."
+
+The door closed and presently Tom came around the corner of the house.
+He was furious. Jim's horse stood in the road, and he went straight
+to him and took hold of the bit. "What do you mean by coming here?" he
+asked sharply. "Who told you I was here? What business you got coming
+here and making a show of yourself? What's the matter of you? Are you
+drunk or out of your head?"
+
+Jim got off the horse and told Tom the news. For a moment the two stood
+looking at each other. "Hugh McVey--Hugh McVey, by crackies, are you
+right, Jim?" Tom exclaimed. "No missfire, eh? She's really gone and done
+it? Hugh McVey, eh? By crackies!"
+
+"They're on the way to the county seat now," Jim said softly. "Missfire!
+Not on your life." His voice lost the cool, quiet tone he had so often
+dreamed of maintaining in great emergencies. "I figure they'll be back
+by twelve or one," he said eagerly. "We got to blow 'em out, Tom. We got
+to give that girl and her husband the biggest blowout ever seen in this
+county, and we got just about three hours to get ready for it."
+
+"Get off that horse and give me a boost," Tom commanded. With a grunt
+of satisfaction he sprang to the horse's back. The belated impulse to
+philander that an hour before sent him creeping through back streets and
+alleyways to the door of Fanny Twist's house was all gone, and in its
+place had come the spirit of the man of affairs, the man who, as he
+himself often boasted, made things move and kept them on the move. "Now
+look here, Jim," he said sharply, "there are three livery stables in
+this town. You engage every horse they've got for the night. Have the
+horses hitched to any kind of rigs you can find, buggies, surreys,
+spring wagons, anything. Have them get drivers off the streets,
+anywhere. Then have them all brought around in front of the Bidwell
+House and held for me. When you've done that, you go to Henry Heller's
+house. I guess you can find it. You found this house where I was fast
+enough. He lives on Campus Street just beyond the new Baptist Church. If
+he's gone to bed you get him up. Tell him to get his orchestra together
+and have him bring all the lively music he's got. Tell him to bring his
+men to the Bidwell House as fast as he can get them there."
+
+Tom rode off along the street followed by Jim Priest, running at the
+horse's heels. When he had gone a little way he stopped. "Don't let any
+one fuss with you about prices to-night, Jim," he called. "Tell every
+one it's for me. Tell 'em Tom Butterworth'll pay what they ask. The
+sky's the limit to-night, Jim. That's the word, the sky's the limit."
+
+To the older citizens of Bidwell, those who lived there when every
+citizen's affairs were the affair of the town, that evening will be long
+remembered. The new men, the Italians, Greeks, Poles, Rumanians, and
+many other strange-talking, dark-skinned men who had come with the
+coming of the factories, went on with their lives on that evening as on
+all others. They worked in the night shift at the Corn-Cutting Machine
+Plant, at the foundry, the bicycle factory or at the big new Tool
+Machine Factory that had just moved to Bidwell from Cleveland. Those who
+were not at work lounged in the streets or wandered aimlessly in and out
+of saloons. Their wives and children were housed in the hundreds of new
+frame houses in the streets that now crept out in all directions. In
+those days in Bidwell new houses seemed to spring out of the ground like
+mushrooms. In the morning there was a field or an orchard on Turner Pike
+or on any one of a dozen roads leading out of town. On the trees in the
+orchard green apples hung down waiting, ready to ripen. Grasshoppers
+sang in the long grass beneath the trees.
+
+Then appeared Ben Peeler with a swarm of men. The trees were cut and
+the song of the grasshopper choked beneath piles of boards. There was
+a great shouting and rattling of hammers. A whole street of houses, all
+alike, universally ugly, had been added to the vast number of new houses
+already built by that energetic carpenter and his partner Gordon Hart.
+
+To the people who lived in these houses, the excitement of Tom
+Butterworth and Jim Priest meant nothing. Half sullenly they worked,
+striving to make money enough to take them back to their native lands.
+In the new place they had not, as they had hoped, been received as
+brothers. A marriage or a death there meant nothing to them.
+
+To the old townsmen however, those who remembered Tom when he was a
+simple farmer and when Steve Hunter was looked upon with contempt as a
+boasting young squirt, the night rocked with excitement. Men ran
+through the streets. Drivers lashed their horses along roads. Tom
+was everywhere. He was like a general in charge of the defenses of a
+besieged town. The cooks at all three of the town's hotels were sent
+back into their kitchens, waiters were found and hurried out to the
+Butterworth house, and Henry Heller's orchestra was instructed to get
+out there at once and to start playing the liveliest possible music.
+
+Tom asked every man and woman he saw to the wedding party. The hotel
+keeper was invited with his wife and daughter and two or three keepers
+of stores who came to the hotel to bring supplies were asked, commanded
+to come. Then there were the men of the factories, the office men and
+superintendents, new men who had never seen Clara. They also, with the
+town bankers and other solid fellows with money in the banks, who were
+investors in Tom's enterprises, were invited. "Put on the best clothes
+you've got in the world and have your women folks do the same," he
+said laughing. "Then you get out to my house as soon as you can. If you
+haven't any way to get there, come to the Bidwell House. I'll get you
+out."
+
+Tom did not forget that in order to have his wedding party go as he
+wished, he would need to serve drinks. Jim Priest went from bar to
+bar. "What wine you got--good wine? How much you got?" he asked at
+each place. Steve Hunter had in the cellar of his house six cases of
+champagne kept there against a time when some important guest, the
+Governor of the State or a Congressman, might come to town. He felt that
+on such occasions it was up to him to see that the town, as he said,
+"did itself proud." When he heard what was going on he hurried to the
+Bidwell House and offered to send his entire stock of wine out to Tom's
+house, and his offer was accepted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jim Priest had an idea. When the guests were all assembled and when the
+farm kitchen was filled with cooks and waiters who stumbled over each
+other, he took his idea to Tom. There was, he explained, a short-cut
+through fields and along lanes to a point on the county seat road, three
+miles from the house. "I'll go there and hide myself," he said. "When
+they come along, suspecting nothing, I'll cut out on horseback and get
+here a half hour before them. You make every one in the house hide and
+keep still when they drive into the yard. We'll put out all the lights.
+We'll give that pair the surprise of their lives."
+
+Jim had concealed a quart bottle of wine in his pocket and, as he rode
+away on his mission, stopped from time to time to take a hearty drink.
+As his horse trotted along lanes and through fields, the horse that was
+bringing Clara and Hugh home from their adventure cocked his ears and
+remembered the comfortable stall filled with hay in the Butterworth
+barn. The horse trotted swiftly along and Hugh in the buggy beside Clara
+was lost in the same dense silence that all the evening had lain over
+him like a cloak. In a dim way he was resentful and felt that time was
+running too fast. The hours and the passing events were like the waters
+of a river in flood time, and he was like a man in a boat without oars,
+being carried helplessly forward. Occasionally he thought courage had
+come to him and he half turned toward Clara and opened his mouth, hoping
+words would come to his lips, but the silence that had taken hold of
+him was like a disease whose grip on its victim could not be broken. He
+closed his mouth and wet his lips with his tongue. Clara saw him do the
+thing several times. He began to seem animal-like and ugly to her. "It's
+not true that I thought of her and asked her to be my wife only because
+I wanted a woman," Hugh reassured himself. "I've been lonely, all my
+life I've been lonely. I want to find my way into some one's heart, and
+she is the one."
+
+Clara also remained silent. She was angry. "If he didn't want to marry
+me, why did he ask me? Why did he come?" she asked herself. "Well, I'm
+married. I've done the thing we women are always thinking about," she
+told herself, her mind taking another turn. The thought frightened
+her and a shiver of dread ran over her body. Then her mind went to the
+defense of Hugh. "It isn't his fault. I shouldn't have rushed things as
+I have. Perhaps I'm not meant for marriage at all," she thought.
+
+The ride homeward dragged on indefinitely. The clouds were blown out
+of the sky, the moon came out and the stars looked down on the two
+perplexed people. To relieve the feeling of tenseness that had taken
+hold of her Clara's mind resorted to a trick. Her eyes sought out a tree
+or the lights of a farmhouse far ahead and she tried to count the
+hoof beats of the horse until they had come to it. She wanted to hurry
+homeward and at the same time looked forward with dread to the night
+alone in the dark farmhouse with Hugh. Not once during the homeward
+drive did she take the whip out of its socket or speak to the horse.
+
+When at last the horse trotted eagerly across the crest of the hill,
+from which there was such a magnificent view of the country below,
+neither Clara nor Hugh turned to look. With bowed heads they rode, each
+trying to find courage to face the possibilities of the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the farmhouse Tom and his guests waited in winelit suspense, and
+at last Jim Priest rode shouting out of a lane to the door. "They're
+coming--they're coming," he shouted, and ten minutes later and after Tom
+had twice lost his temper and cursed the girl waitresses from the town
+hotels who were inclined to giggle, all was silent and dark about the
+house and the barnyard. When all was quiet Jim Priest crept into the
+kitchen, and stumbling over the legs of the guests, made his way to a
+front window where he placed a lighted candle. Then he went out of the
+house to lie on his back beneath a bush in the yard. In the house he
+had secured for himself a second bottle of wine, and as Clara with her
+husband turned in at the gate and drove into the barnyard, the only
+sound that broke the intense silence came from the soft gurgle of the
+wine finding its way down his throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+As in most older American homes, the kitchen at the rear of the
+Butterworth farmhouse was large and comfortable. Much of the life of
+the house had been led there. Clara sat in a deep window that looked out
+across a little gully where in the spring a small stream ran down along
+the edge of the barnyard. She was then a quiet child and loved to sit
+for hours unobserved and undisturbed. At her back was the kitchen with
+the warm, rich smells and the soft, quick, persistent footsteps of her
+mother. Her eyes closed and she slept. Then she awoke. Before her lay a
+world into which her fancy could creep out. Across the stream before her
+eyes went a small, wooden bridge and over this in the spring horses went
+away to the fields or to sheds where they were hitched to milk or ice
+wagons. The sound of the hoofs of the horses pounding on the bridge was
+like thunder, harnesses rattled, voices shouted. Beyond the bridge was a
+path leading off to the left and along the path were three small houses
+where hams were smoked. Men came from the wagon sheds bearing the meat
+on their shoulders and went into the little houses. Fires were lighted
+and smoke crawled lazily up through the roofs. In a field that lay
+beyond the smoke houses a man came to plow. The child, curled into a
+little, warm ball in the window seat, was happy. When she closed her
+eyes fancies came like flocks of white sheep running out of a green
+wood. Although she was later to become a tomboy and run wild over the
+farm and through the barns, and although all her life she loved the
+soil and the sense of things growing and of food for hungry mouths being
+prepared, there was in her, even as a child, a hunger for the life of
+the spirit. In her dreams women, beautifully gowned and with rings on
+their hands, came to brush the wet, matted hair back from her forehead.
+Across the little wooden bridge before her eyes came wonderful men,
+women, and children. The children ran forward. They cried out to her.
+She thought of them as brothers and sisters who were to come to live in
+the farmhouse and who were to make the old house ring with laughter. The
+children ran toward her with outstretched hands, but never arrived at
+the house. The bridge extended itself. It stretched out under their feet
+so that they ran forward forever on the bridge.
+
+And behind the children came men and women, sometimes together,
+sometimes walking alone. They did not seem like the children to belong
+to her. Like the women who came to touch her hot forehead, they were
+beautifully gowned and walked with stately dignity.
+
+The child climbed out of the window and stood on the kitchen floor. Her
+mother hurried about. She was feverishly active and often did not hear
+when the child spoke. "I want to know about my brothers and sisters:
+where are they, why don't they come here?" she asked, but the mother did
+not hear, and if she did, had nothing to say. Sometimes she stopped to
+kiss the child and tears came to her eyes. Then something cooking on the
+kitchen stove demanded attention. "You run outside," she said hurriedly,
+and turned again to her work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the chair where Clara sat at the wedding feast provided by the
+energy of her father and the enthusiasm of Jim Priest, she could see
+over her father's shoulder into the farm house kitchen. As when she was
+a child, she closed her eyes and dreamed of another kind of feast.
+With a growing sense of bitterness she realized that all her life, all
+through her girlhood and young womanhood, she had been waiting for this,
+her wedding night, and that now, having come, the occasion for which she
+had waited so long and concerning which she had dreamed so many dreams,
+had aborted into an occasion for the display of ugliness and vulgarity.
+Her father, the only other person in the room in any way related to
+her, sat at the other end of the long table. Her aunt had gone away on
+a visit, and in the crowded, noisy room there was no woman to whom she
+could turn for understanding. She looked past her father's shoulder and
+directly into the wide window seat where she had spent so many hours of
+her childhood. Again she wanted brothers and sisters. "The beautiful men
+and women of the dreams were meant to come at this time, that's what
+the dreams were about; but, like the unborn children that ran with
+outstretched hands, they cannot get over the bridge and into the house,"
+she thought vaguely. "I wish Mother had lived, or that Kate Chanceller
+were here," she whispered to herself as, raising her eyes, she looked at
+her father.
+
+Clara felt like an animal driven into a corner and surrounded by foes.
+Her father sat at the feast between two women, Mrs. Steve Hunter who was
+inclined to corpulency, and a thin woman named Bowles, the wife of an
+undertaker of Bidwell. They continually whispered, smiled, and nodded
+their heads. Hugh sat on the opposite side of the same table, and when
+he raised his eyes from the plate of food before him, could see past the
+head of a large, masculine-looking woman into the farmhouse parlor where
+there was another table, also filled with guests. Clara turned from
+looking at her father to look at her husband. He was merely a tall man
+with a long face, who could not raise his eyes. His long neck stuck
+itself out of a stiff white collar. To Clara he was, at the moment, a
+being without personality, one that the crowd at the table had swallowed
+up as it so busily swallowed food and wine. When she looked at him he
+seemed to be drinking a good deal. His glass was always being filled and
+emptied. At the suggestion of the woman who sat beside him, he performed
+the task of emptying it, without raising his eyes, and Steve Hunter,
+who sat on the other side of the table, leaned over and filled it again.
+Steve like her father whispered and winked. "On the night of my wedding
+I was piped, you bet, as piped as a hatter. It's a good thing. It gives
+a man nerve," he explained to the masculine-looking woman to whom he was
+telling, with a good deal of attention to details, the tale of his own
+marriage night.
+
+Clara did not look at Hugh again. What he did seemed no concern of hers.
+Bowles the Bidwell undertaker had surrendered to the influence of the
+wine that had been flowing freely since the guests arrived and now got
+to his feet and began to talk. His wife tugged at his coat and tried to
+force him back into his seat, but Tom Butterworth jerked her arm away.
+"Ah, let him alone. He's got a story to tell," he said to the woman,
+who blushed and put her handkerchief over her face. "Well, it's a fact,
+that's how it happened," the undertaker declared in a loud voice. "You
+see the sleeves of her nightgown were tied in hard knots by her rascally
+brothers. When I tried to unfasten them with my teeth I bit big holes in
+the sleeves."
+
+Clara gripped the arm of her chair. "If I can let the night pass without
+showing these people how much I hate them I'll do well enough," she
+thought grimly. She looked at the dishes laden with food and wished she
+could break them one by one over the heads of her father's guests. As a
+relief to her mind, she again looked past her father's head and through
+a doorway into the kitchen.
+
+In the big room three or four cooks were busily engaged in the
+preparation of food, and waitresses continually brought steaming dishes
+and put them on the tables. She thought of her mother's life, the life
+led in that room, married to the man who was her own father and who no
+doubt, but for the fact that circumstances had made him a man of wealth,
+would have been satisfied to see his daughter led into just such another
+life.
+
+"Kate was right about men. They want something from women, but what do
+they care what kind of lives we lead after they get what they want?" she
+thought grimly.
+
+The more to separate herself from the feasting, laughing crowd, Clara
+tried to think out the details of her mother's life. "It was the life
+of a beast," she thought. Like herself, her mother had come to the
+house with her husband on the night of her marriage. There was just such
+another feast. The country was new then and the people for the most part
+desperately poor. Still there was drinking. She had heard her father and
+Jim Priest speak of the drinking bouts of their youth. The men came
+as they had come now, and with them came women, women who had been
+coarsened by the life they led. Pigs were killed and game brought from
+the forests. The men drank, shouted, fought, and played practical jokes.
+Clara wondered if any of the men and women in the room would dare go
+upstairs into her sleeping room and tie knots in her night clothes. They
+had done that when her mother came to the house as a bride. Then they
+had all gone away and her father had taken his bride upstairs. He was
+drunk, and her own husband Hugh was now getting drunk. Her mother had
+submitted. Her life had been a story of submission. Kate Chanceller had
+said it was so married women lived, and her mother's life had proven
+the truth of the statement. In the farmhouse kitchen, where now three or
+four cooks worked so busily, she had worked her life out alone. From the
+kitchen she had gone directly upstairs and to bed with her husband. Once
+a week on Saturday afternoons she went into town and stayed long enough
+to buy supplies for another week of cooking. "She must have been kept
+going until she dropped down dead," Clara thought, and her mind taking
+another turn, added, "and many others, both men and women, must have
+been forced by circumstances to serve my father in the same blind way.
+It was all done in order that prosperity and money with which to do
+vulgar things might be his."
+
+Clara's mother had brought but one child into the world. She wondered
+why. Then she wondered if she would become the mother of a child. Her
+hands no longer gripped the arms of her chair, but lay on the table
+before her. She looked at them and they were strong. She was herself
+a strong woman. After the feast was over and the guests had gone away,
+Hugh, given courage by the drinks he continued to consume, would come
+upstairs to her. Some twist of her mind made her forget her husband,
+and in fancy she felt herself about to be attacked by a strange man on
+a dark road at the edge of a forest. The man had tried to take her
+into his arms and kiss her and she had managed to get her hands on his
+throat. Her hands lying on the table twitched convulsively.
+
+In the big farmhouse dining-room and in the parlor where the second
+table of guests sat, the wedding feast went on. Afterward when she
+thought of it, Clara always remembered her wedding feast as a horsey
+affair. Something in the natures of Tom Butterworth and Jim Priest, she
+thought, expressed itself that night. The jokes that went up and down
+the table were horsey, and Clara thought the women who sat at the tables
+heavy and mare-like.
+
+Jim did not come to the table to sit with the others, was in fact not
+invited, but all evening he kept appearing and reappearing and had the
+air of a master of ceremonies. Coming into the dining room he stood by
+the door, scratching his head. Then he went out. It was as though he had
+said to himself, "Well, it's all right, everything is going all right,
+everything is lively, you see." All his life Jim had been a drinker of
+whisky and knew his limitations. His system as a drinking man had always
+been quite simple. On Saturday afternoons, when the work about the barns
+was done for the day and the other employees had gone away, he went
+to sit on the steps of a corncrib with the bottle in his hand. In the
+winter he went to sit by the kitchen fire in a little house below the
+apple orchard where he and the other employees slept. He took a long
+drink from the bottle and then holding it in his hand sat for a
+time thinking of the events of his life. Whisky made him somewhat
+sentimental. After one long drink he thought of his youth in a town in
+Pennsylvania. He had been one of six children, all boys, and at an early
+age his mother had died. Jim thought of her and then of his father. When
+he had himself come west into Ohio, and later when he was a soldier in
+the Civil War, he despised his father and reverenced the memory of his
+mother. In the war he had found himself physically unable to stand up
+before the enemy during a battle. When the report of guns was heard
+and the other men of his company got grimly into line and went forward,
+something happened to his legs and he wanted to run away. So great
+was the desire in him that craftiness grew in his brain. Watching his
+chance, he pretended to have been shot and fell to the ground, and when
+the others had gone on crept away and hid himself. He found it was not
+impossible to disappear altogether and reappear in another place. The
+draft went into effect and many men not liking the notion of war were
+willing to pay large sums to the men who would go in their places. Jim
+went into the business of enlisting and deserting. All about him were
+men talking of the necessity of saving the country, and for four years
+he thought only of saving his own hide. Then suddenly the war was over
+and he became a farm hand. As he worked all week in the fields, and in
+the evening sometimes, as he lay in his bed and the moon came up, he
+thought of his mother and of the nobility and sacrifice of her life. He
+wished to be such another. After having two or three drinks out of the
+bottle, he admired his father, who in the Pennsylvania town had borne
+the reputation of being a liar and a rascal. After his mother's death
+his father had managed to marry a widow who owned a farm. "The old
+man was a slick one," he said aloud, tipping up the bottle and
+taking another long drink. "If I had stayed at home until I got more
+understanding, the old man and I together might have done something."
+He finished the bottle and went away to sleep on the hay, or if it
+were winter, threw himself into one of the bunks in the bunk house.
+He dreamed of becoming one who went through life beating people out of
+money, living by his wits, getting the best of every one.
+
+Until the night of Clara's wedding Jim had never tasted wine, and as
+it did not bring on a desire for sleep, he thought himself unaffected.
+"It's like sweetened water," he said, going into the darkness of the
+barnyard and emptying another half bottle down his throat. "The stuff
+has no kick. Drinking it is like drinking sweet cider."
+
+Jim got into a frolicsome mood and went through the crowded kitchen and
+into the dining room where the guests were assembled. At the moment the
+rather riotous laughter and story telling had ceased and everything
+was quiet. He was worried. "Things aren't going well. Clara's party
+is becoming a frost," he thought resentfully. He began to dance a
+heavy-footed jig on a little open place by the kitchen door and the
+guests stopped talking to watch. They shouted and clapped their hands. A
+thunder of applause arose. The guests who were seated in the parlor and
+who could not see the performance got up and crowded into the doorway
+that connected the two rooms. Jim became extraordinarily bold, and as
+one of the young women Tom had hired as waitresses at that moment went
+past bearing a large dish of food, he swung himself quickly about and
+took her into his arms. The dish flew across the floor and broke against
+a table leg and the young woman screamed. A farm dog that had found
+its way into the kitchen rushed into the room and barked loudly. Henry
+Heller's orchestra, concealed under a stairway that led to the upper
+part of the house, began to play furiously. A strange animal fervor
+swept over Jim. His legs flew rapidly about and his heavy feet made a
+great clatter on the floor. The young woman in his arms screamed and
+laughed. Jim closed his eyes and shouted. He felt that the wedding party
+had until that moment been a failure and that he was transforming it
+into a success. Rising to their feet the men shouted, clapped their
+hands and beat with their fists on the table. When the orchestra came
+to the end of the dance, Jim stood flushed and triumphant before the
+guests, holding the woman in his arms. In spite of her struggles he held
+her tightly against his breast and kissed her eyes, cheeks, and mouth.
+Then releasing her he winked and made a gesture for silence. "On
+a wedding night some one's got to have the nerve to do a little
+love-making," he said, looking pointedly toward the place where Hugh sat
+with head bent and with his eyes staring at a glass of wine that sat at
+his elbow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was past two o'clock when the feast came to an end. When the guests
+began to depart, Clara stood for a moment alone and tried to get herself
+in hand. Something inside her felt cold and old. If she had often
+thought she wanted a man, and that life as a married woman would put an
+end to her problems, she did not think so at that moment. "What I want
+above everything else is a woman," she thought. All the evening her mind
+had been trying to clutch and hold the almost forgotten figure of her
+mother, but it was too vague and shadowy. With her mother she had never
+walked and talked late at night through streets of towns when the world
+was asleep and when thoughts were born in herself. "After all," she
+thought, "Mother may also have belonged to all this." She looked at the
+people preparing to depart. Several men had gathered in a group by the
+door. One of them told a story at which the others laughed loudly. The
+women standing about had flushed and, Clara thought, coarse faces.
+"They have gone into marriage like cattle," she told herself. Her mind,
+running out of the room, began to caress the memory of her one woman
+friend, Kate Chanceller. Often on late spring afternoons as she and Kate
+had walked together something very like love-making had happened between
+them. They went along quietly and evening came on. Suddenly they stopped
+in the street and Kate had put her arms about Clara's shoulders. For
+a moment they stood thus close together and a strange gentle and yet
+hungry look came into Kate's eyes. It only lasted a moment and when it
+happened both women were somewhat embarrassed. Kate laughed and taking
+hold of Clara's arm pulled her along the sidewalk. "Let's walk like the
+devil," she said, "come on, let's get up some speed."
+
+Clara put her hands to her eyes as though to shut out the scene in the
+room. "If I could have been with Kate this evening I could have come to
+a man believing in the possible sweetness of marriage," she thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Jim Priest was very drunk, but insisted on hitching a team to the
+Butterworth carriage and driving it loaded with guests to town. Every
+one laughed at him, but he drove up to the farmhouse door and in a
+loud voice declared he knew what he was doing. Three men got into the
+carriage and beating the horses furiously Jim sent them galloping away.
+
+When an opportunity offered, Clara went silently out of the hot
+dining-room and through a door to a porch at the back of the house.
+The kitchen door was open and the waitresses and cooks from town were
+preparing to depart. One of the young women came out into the darkness
+accompanied by a man, evidently one of the guests. They had both been
+drinking and stood for a moment in the darkness with their bodies
+pressed together. "I wish it were our wedding night," the man's voice
+whispered, and the woman laughed. After a long kiss they went back into
+the kitchen.
+
+A farm dog appeared and going up to Clara licked her hand. She went
+around the house and stood back of a bush in the darkness near where the
+carriages were being loaded. Her father with Steve Hunter and his wife
+came and got into a carriage. Tom was in an expansive, generous mood.
+"You know, Steve, I told you and several others my Clara was engaged to
+Alfred Buckley," he said. "Well, I was mistaken. The whole thing was a
+lie. The truth is I shot off my mouth without talking to Clara. I had
+seen them together and now and then Buckley used to come out here to the
+house in the evening, although he never came except when I was here.
+He told me Clara had promised to marry him, and like a fool I took his
+word. I never even asked. That's the kind of a fool I was and I was a
+bigger fool to go telling the story. All the time Clara and Hugh were
+engaged and I never suspected. They told me about it to-night."
+
+Clara stood by the bush until she thought the last of the guests had
+gone. The lie her father had told seemed only a part of the evening's
+vulgarity. Near the kitchen door the waitresses, cooks and musicians
+were being loaded into the bus that had been driven out from the Bidwell
+House. She went into the dining-room. Sadness had taken the place of the
+anger in her, but when she saw Hugh the anger came back. Piles of dishes
+filled with food lay all about the room and the air was heavy with
+the smell of food. Hugh stood by a window looking out into the dark
+farmyard. He held his hat in his hand. "You might put your hat away,"
+she said sharply. "Have you forgotten you're married to me and that you
+now live here in this house?" She laughed nervously and walked to the
+kitchen door.
+
+Her mind still clung to the past and to the days when she was a child
+and had spent so many hours in the big, silent kitchen. Something was
+about to happen that would take her past away--destroy it, and the
+thought frightened her. "I have not been very happy in this house
+but there have been certain moments, certain feelings I've had," she
+thought. Stepping through the doorway she stood for a moment in the
+kitchen with her back to the wall and with her eyes closed. Through
+her mind went a troop of figures, the stout determined figure of Kate
+Chanceller who had known how to love in silence; the wavering, hurrying
+figure of her mother; her father as a young man coming in after a long
+drive to warm his hands by the kitchen fire; a strong, hard-faced woman
+from town who had once worked for Tom as cook and who was reported to
+have been the mother of two illegitimate children; and the figures
+of her childhood fancy walking over the bridge toward her, clad in
+beautiful raiment.
+
+Back of these figures were other figures, long forgotten but now sharply
+remembered--farm girls who had come to work by the day; tramps who had
+been fed at the kitchen door; young farm hands who suddenly disappeared
+from the routine of the farm's life and were never seen again, a young
+man with a red bandana handkerchief about his neck who had thrown her a
+kiss as she stood with her face pressed against a window.
+
+Once a high school girl from town had come to spend the night with
+Clara. After the evening meal the two girls walked into the kitchen
+and stood by a window, looking out. Something had happened within them.
+Moved by a common impulse they went outside and walked for a long way
+under the stars along the silent country roads. They came to a field
+where men were burning brush. Where there had been a forest there was
+now only a stump field and the figures of the men carrying armloads of
+the dry branches of trees and throwing them on the fire. The fire made
+a great splash of color in the gathering darkness and for some obscure
+reason both girls were deeply moved by the sight, sound, and perfume of
+the night. The figures of the men seemed to dance back and forth in
+the light. Instinctively Clara turned her face upward and looked at
+the stars. She was conscious of them and of their beauty and the wide
+sweeping beauty of night as she had never been before. A wind began
+to sing in the trees of a distant forest, dimly seen far away across
+fields. The sound was soft and insistent and crept into her soul. In
+the grass at her feet insects sang an accompaniment to the soft, distant
+music.
+
+How vividly Clara now remembered that night! It came sharply back as
+she stood with closed eyes in the farm kitchen and waited for the
+consummation of the adventure on which she had set out. With it came
+other memories. "How many fleeting dreams and half visions of beauty I
+have had!" she thought.
+
+Everything in life that she had thought might in some way lead toward
+beauty now seemed to Clara to lead to ugliness. "What a lot I've
+missed," she muttered, and opening her eyes went back into the
+dining-room and spoke to Hugh, still standing and staring out into the
+darkness.
+
+"Come," she said sharply, and led the way up a stairway. The two went
+silently up the stairs, leaving the lights burning brightly in the rooms
+below. They came to a door leading to a bedroom, and Clara opened it.
+"It's time for a man and his wife to go to bed," she said in a low,
+husky voice. Hugh followed her into the room. He walked to a chair by a
+window and sitting down, took off his shoes and sat holding them in his
+hand. He did not look at Clara but into the darkness outside the window.
+Clara let down her hair and began to unfasten her dress. She took off
+an outer dress and threw it over a chair. Then she went to a drawer
+and pulling it out looked for a night dress. She became angry and threw
+several garments on the floor. "Damn!" she said explosively, and went
+out of the room.
+
+Hugh sprang to his feet. The wine he had drunk had not taken effect and
+Steve Hunter had been forced to go home disappointed. All the evening
+something stronger than wine had been gripping him. Now he knew what it
+was. All through the evening thoughts and desires had whirled through
+his brain. Now they were all gone. "I won't let her do it," he muttered,
+and running quickly to the door closed it softly. With the shoes still
+held in his hand he crawled through a window. He had expected to leap
+into the darkness, but by chance his stocking feet alighted on the roof
+of the farm kitchen that extended out from the rear of the house. He ran
+quickly down the roof and jumped, alighting in a clump of bushes that
+tore long scratches on his cheeks.
+
+For five minutes Hugh ran toward the town of Bidwell, then turned, and
+climbing a fence, walked across a field. The shoes were still gripped
+tightly in his hand and the field was stony, but he did not notice and
+was unconscious of pain from his bruised feet or from the torn places
+on his cheeks. Standing in the field he heard Jim Priest drive homeward
+along the road.
+
+  "My bonny lies over the ocean,
+  My bonny lies over the sea,
+  My bonny lies over the ocean,
+  O, bring back my bonny to me."
+
+sang the farm hand.
+
+Hugh walked across several fields, and when he came to a small stream,
+sat down on the bank and put on his shoes. "I've had my chance and
+missed it," he thought bitterly. Several times he repeated the words.
+"I've had my chance and I've missed," he said again as he stopped by
+a fence that separated the fields in which he had been walking. At the
+words he stopped and put his hand to his throat. A half-stifled sob
+broke from him. "I've had my chance and missed," he said again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+On the day after the feast managed by Tom and Jim, it was Tom who
+brought Hugh back to live with his wife. The older man had come to the
+farmhouse on the next morning bringing three women from town who were,
+as he explained to Clara, to clear away the mess left by the guests.
+The daughter had been deeply touched by what Hugh had done, and at the
+moment loved him deeply, but did not choose to let her father know how
+she felt. "I suppose you got him drunk, you and your friends," she said.
+"At any rate, he's not here."
+
+Tom said nothing, but when Clara had told the story of Hugh's
+disappearance, drove quickly away. "He'll come to the shop," he thought
+and went there, leaving his horse tied to a post in front. At two
+o'clock his son-in-law came slowly over the Turner's Pike bridge and
+approached the shop. He was hatless and his clothes and hair were
+covered with dust, while in his eyes was the look of a hunted animal.
+Tom met him with a smile and asked no questions. "Come," he said, and
+taking Hugh by the arm led him to the buggy. As he untied the horse
+he stopped to light a cigar. "I'm going down to one of my lower farms.
+Clara thought you would like to go with me," he said blandly.
+
+Tom drove to the McCoy house and stopped.
+
+"You'd better clean up a little," he said without looking at Hugh. "You
+go in and shave and change your clothes. I'm going up-town. I got to go
+to a store."
+
+Driving a short distance along the road, Tom stopped and shouted. "You
+might pack your grip and bring it along," he called. "You'll be needing
+your things. We won't be back here to-day."
+
+The two men stayed together all that day, and in the evening Tom took
+Hugh to the farmhouse and stayed for the evening meal. "He was a little
+drunk," he explained to Clara. "Don't be hard on him. He was a little
+drunk."
+
+For both Clara and Hugh that evening was the hardest of their lives.
+After the servants had gone, Clara sat under a lamp in the dining-room
+and pretended to read a book and in desperation Hugh also tried to read.
+
+Again the time came to go upstairs to the bedroom, and again Clara led
+the way. She went to the door of the room from which Hugh had fled and
+opening it stepped aside. Then she put out her hand. "Good-night," she
+said, and going down a hallway went into another room and closed the
+door.
+
+Hugh's experience with the school teacher was repeated on that second
+night in the farmhouse. He took off his shoes and prepared for bed. Then
+he crept out into the hallway and went softly to the door of Clara's
+room. Several times he made the journey along the carpeted hallway, and
+once his hand was on the knob of the door, but each time he lost heart
+and returned to his own room. Although he did not know it Clara, like
+Rose McCoy on that other occasion, expected him to come to her, and
+knelt on the floor just inside the door, waiting, hoping for, and
+fearing the coming of the man.
+
+Unlike the school teacher, Clara wanted to help Hugh. Marriage had
+perhaps given her that impulse, but she did not follow it, and when at
+last Hugh, shaken and ashamed, gave up the struggle with himself, she
+arose and went to her bed where she threw herself down and wept, as Hugh
+had wept standing in the darkness of the fields on the night before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a hot, dusty day, a week after Hugh's marriage to Clara, and Hugh
+was at work in his shop at Bidwell. How many days, weeks, and months he
+had already worked there, thinking in iron--twisted, turned, tortured
+to follow the twistings and turnings of his mind--standing all day by
+a bench beside other workmen--before him always the little piles
+of wheels, strips of unworked iron and steel, blocks of wood, the
+paraphernalia of the inventor's trade. Beside him, now that money had
+come to him, more and more workmen, men who had invented nothing, who
+were without distinction in the life of the community, who had married
+no rich man's daughter.
+
+In the morning the other workmen, skillful fellows, who knew as Hugh had
+never known, the science of their iron craft, came straggling through
+the shop door into his presence. They were a little embarrassed before
+him. The greatness of his name rang in their minds.
+
+Many of the workmen were husbands, fathers of families. In the morning
+they left their houses gladly but nevertheless came somewhat reluctantly
+to the shop. As they came along the street, past other houses, they
+smoked a morning pipe. Groups were formed. Many legs straggled along
+the street. At the door of the shop each man stopped. There was a sharp
+tapping sound. Pipe bowls were knocked out against the door sill. Before
+he came into the shop, each man looked out across the open country that
+stretched away to the north.
+
+For a week Hugh had been married to a woman who had not yet become his
+wife. She belonged, still belonged, to a world he had thought of as
+outside the possibilities of his life. Was she not young, strong,
+straight of body? Did she not array herself in what seemed unbelievably
+beautiful clothes? The clothes she wore were a symbol of herself. For
+him she was unattainable.
+
+And yet she had consented to become his wife, had stood with him before
+a man who had said words about honor and obedience.
+
+Then there had come the two terrible evenings--when he had gone back to
+the farmhouse with her to find the wedding feast set in their honor,
+and that other evening when old Tom had brought him to the farmhouse
+a defeated, frightened man who hoped the woman would put out her hand,
+would reassure him.
+
+Hugh was sure he had missed the great opportunity of his life. He had
+married, but his marriage was not a marriage. He had got himself into
+a position from which there was no possibility of escaping. "I'm a
+coward," he thought, looking at the other workmen in the shop. They,
+like himself, were married men and lived in a house with a woman. At
+night they went boldly into the presence of the woman. He had not done
+that when the opportunity offered, and Clara could not come to him. He
+could understand that. His hands had builded a wall and the passing days
+were huge stones put on top of the wall. What he had not done became
+every day a more and more impossible thing to do.
+
+Tom, having taken Hugh back to Clara, was still concerned over the
+outcome of their adventure. Every day he came to the shop and in the
+evening came to see them at the farmhouse. He hovered about, was like a
+mother bird whose offspring had been prematurely pushed out of the nest.
+Every morning he came into the shop to talk with Hugh. He made jokes
+about married life. Winking at a man standing nearby he put his hand
+familiarly on Hugh's shoulder. "Well, how does married life go? It seems
+to me you're a little pale," he said laughing.
+
+In the evening he came to the farmhouse and sat talking of his affairs,
+of the progress and growth of the town and his part in it. Without
+hearing his words both Clara and Hugh sat in silence, pretending to
+listen, glad of his presence.
+
+Hugh came to the shop at eight. On other mornings, all through that long
+week of waiting, Clara had driven him to his work, the two riding in
+silence down Medina Road and through the crowded streets of the town;
+but on that morning he had walked.
+
+On Medina Road, near the bridge where he had once stood with Clara and
+where he had seen her hot with anger, something had happened, a trivial
+thing. A male bird pursued a female among the bushes beside the road.
+The two feathered, living creatures, vividly colored, alive with life,
+pitched and swooped through the air. They were like moving balls of
+light going in and out of the dark green of foliage. There was in them a
+madness, a riot of life.
+
+Hugh had been tricked into stopping by the roadside. A tangle of things
+that had filled his mind, the wheels, cogs, levers, all the intricate
+parts of the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his mind
+until his hand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust.
+For a moment he watched the living riotous things and then, as though
+jerking himself back into a path from which his feet had wandered,
+hurried onward to the shop, looking as he went not into the branches of
+trees, but downward at the dust of the road.
+
+In the shop Hugh tried all morning to refurnish the warehouse of his
+mind, to put back into it the things blown so recklessly away. At ten
+Tom came in, talked for a moment and then flitted away. "You are still
+there. My daughter still has you. You have not run away again," he
+seemed to be saying to himself.
+
+The day grew warm and the sky, seen through the shop window by the bench
+where Hugh tried to work, was overcast with clouds.
+
+At noon the workmen went away, but Clara, who on other days had come
+to drive Hugh to the farmhouse for lunch, did not appear. When all was
+silent in the shop he stopped work, washed his hands and put on his
+coat.
+
+He went to the shop door and then came back to the bench. Before him
+lay an iron wheel on which he had been at work. It was intended to drive
+some intricate part of the hay-loading machine. Hugh took it in his hand
+and carried it to the back of the shop where there was an anvil. Without
+consciousness and scarcely realizing what he did he laid it on the anvil
+and taking a great sledge in his hand swung it over his head.
+
+The blow struck was terrific. Into it Hugh put all of his protest
+against the grotesque position into which he had been thrown by his
+marriage to Clara.
+
+The blow accomplished nothing. The sledge descended and the
+comparatively delicate metal wheel was twisted, knocked out of shape. It
+spurted from under the head of the sledge and shot past Hugh's head and
+out through a window, breaking a pane of glass. Fragments of the broken
+glass fell with a sharp little tinkling sound upon a heap of twisted
+pieces of iron and steel lying beside the anvil....
+
+Hugh did not eat lunch that day nor did he go to the farmhouse or return
+to work at the shop. He walked, but this time did not walk in country
+roads where male and female birds dart in and out of bushes. An intense
+desire to know something intimate and personal concerning men and women
+and the lives they led in their houses had taken possession of him. He
+walked in the daylight up and down in the streets of Bidwell.
+
+To the right, over the bridge leading out of Turner's Road, the main
+street of Bidwell ran along a river bank. In that direction the hills
+out of the country to the south came down to the river's edge and there
+was a high bluff. On the bluff and back of it on a sloping hillside many
+of the more pretentious new houses of the prosperous Bidwell citizens
+had been built. Facing the river were the largest houses, with grounds
+in which trees and shrubs had been planted and in the streets along the
+hill, less and less pretentious as they receded from the river, were
+other houses built and being built, long rows of houses, long streets of
+houses, houses in brick, stone, and wood.
+
+Hugh went from the river front back into this maze of streets and
+houses. Some instinct led him there. It was where the men and women
+of Bidwell who had prospered and had married went to live, to make
+themselves houses. His father-in-law had offered to buy him a river
+front place and already that meant much in Bidwell.
+
+He wanted to see women who, like Clara, had got themselves husbands,
+what they were like. "I've seen enough of men," he thought half
+resentfully as he went along.
+
+All afternoon he walked in streets, going up and down before houses in
+which women lived with their men. A detached mood had possession of
+him. For an hour he stood under a tree idly watching workmen engaged in
+building another house. When one of the workmen spoke to him he walked
+away and went into a street where men were laying a cement pavement
+before a completed house.
+
+In a furtive way he kept looking about for women, hungering to see their
+faces. "What are they up to? I'd like to find out," his mind seemed to
+be saying.
+
+The women came out of the doors of the houses and passed him as he went
+slowly along. Other women in carriages drove in the streets. They were
+well-dressed women and seemed sure of themselves. "Things are all right
+with me. For me things are settled and arranged," they seemed to say.
+All the streets in which he walked seemed to be telling the story of
+things settled and arranged. The houses spoke of the same things. "I am
+a house. I am not built until things are settled and arranged. I mean
+that," they said.
+
+Hugh grew very tired. In the later afternoon a small bright-eyed
+woman--no doubt she had been one of the guests at his wedding
+feast--stopped him. "Are you planning to buy or build up our way, Mr.
+McVey?" she asked. He shook his head. "I'm looking around," he said and
+hurried away.
+
+Anger took the place of perplexity in him. The women he saw in the
+streets and in the doors of the houses were such women as his own woman
+Clara. They had married men--"no better than myself," he told himself,
+growing bold.
+
+They had married men and something had happened to them. Something was
+settled. They could live in streets and in houses. Their marriages had
+been real marriages and he had a right to a real marriage. It was not
+too much to expect out of life.
+
+"Clara has a right to that also," he thought and his mind began to
+idealize the marriages of men and women. "On every hand here I see them,
+the neat, well-dressed, handsome women like Clara. How happy they are!
+
+"Their feathers have been ruffled though," he thought angrily. "It was
+with them as with that bird I saw being pursued through the trees. There
+has been pursuit and a pretense of trying to escape. There has been
+an effort made that was not an effort, but feathers have been ruffled
+here."
+
+When his thoughts had driven him into a half desperate mood Hugh went
+out of the streets of bright, ugly, freshly built, freshly painted and
+furnished houses, and down into the town. Several men homeward bound at
+the end of their day of work called to him. "I hope you are thinking of
+buying or building up our way," they said heartily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It began to rain and darkness came, but Hugh did not go home to Clara.
+It did not seem to him that he could spend another night in the
+house with her, lying awake, hearing the little noises of the night,
+waiting--for courage. He could not sit under the lamp through another
+evening pretending to read. He could not go with Clara up the stairs
+only to leave her with a cold "good-night" at the top of the stairs.
+
+Hugh went up the Medina Road almost to the house and then retraced his
+steps and got into a field. There was a low swampy place in which the
+water came up over his shoetops, and after he had crossed that there was
+a field overgrown with a tangle of vines. The night became so dark that
+he could see nothing and darkness reigned over his spirit. For hours he
+walked blindly, but it did not occur to him that as he waited, hating
+the waiting, Clara also waited; that for her also it was a time of trial
+and uncertainty. To him it seemed her course was simple and easy. She
+was a white pure thing--waiting--for what? for courage to come in to him
+in order that an assault be made upon her whiteness and purity.
+
+That was the only answer to the question Hugh could find within himself.
+The destruction of what was white and pure was a necessary thing in
+life. It was a thing men must do in order that life go on. As for women,
+they must be white and pure--and wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Filled with inward resentment Hugh at last did go to the farmhouse. Wet
+and with dragging, heavy feet he turned out of the Medina Road to find
+the house dark and apparently deserted.
+
+Then a new and puzzling situation arose. When he stepped over the
+threshold and into the house he knew Clara was there.
+
+On that day she had not driven him to work in the morning or gone for
+him at noon hour because she did not want to look at him in the light of
+day, did not want again to see the puzzled, frightened look in his eyes.
+She had wanted him in the darkness alone, had waited for darkness. Now
+it was dark in the house and she waited for him.
+
+How simple it was! Hugh came into the living-room, stumbled forward into
+the darkness, and found the hat-rack against the wall near the stairway
+leading to the bedrooms above. Again he had surrendered what he would no
+doubt have called the manhood in himself, and hoped only to be able to
+escape the presence he felt in the room, to creep off upstairs to his
+bed, to lie awake listening to noises, waiting miserably for another day
+to come. But when he had put his dripping hat on one of the pegs of the
+rack and had found the lower step with his foot thrust into darkness, a
+voice called to him.
+
+"Come here, Hugh," Clara said softly and firmly, and like a boy caught
+doing a forbidden act he went toward her. "We have been very silly,
+Hugh," he heard her voice saying softly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh went to where Clara sat in a chair by a window. From him there was
+no protest and no attempt to escape the love-making that followed. For
+a moment he stood in silence and could see her white figure below him in
+the chair. It was like something still far away, but coming swiftly as a
+bird flies to him--upward to him. Her hand crept up and lay in his hand.
+It seemed unbelievably large. It was not soft, but hard and firm. When
+her hand had rested in his for a moment she arose and stood beside him.
+Then the hand went out of his and touched, caressed his wet coat, his
+wet hair, his cheeks. "My flesh must be white and cold," he thought, and
+then he did not think any more.
+
+Gladness took hold of him, a gladness that came up out of the inner
+parts of himself as she had come up to him out of the chair. For days,
+weeks, he had been thinking of his problem as a man's problem, his
+defeat had been a man's defeat.
+
+Now there was no defeat, no problem, no victory. In himself he did not
+exist. Within himself something new had been born or another something
+that had always lived with him had stirred to life. It was not awkward.
+It was not afraid. It was a thing as swift and sure as the flight of
+the male bird through the branches of trees and it was in pursuit of
+something light and swift in her, something that would fly through light
+and darkness but fly not too swiftly, something of which he need not
+be afraid, something that without the need of understanding he could
+understand as one understands the need of breath in a close place.
+
+With a laugh as soft and sure as her own Hugh took Clara into his arms.
+A few minutes later they went up stairs and twice Hugh stumbled on the
+stairway. It did not matter. His long awkward body was a thing outside
+himself. It might stumble and fall many times but the new thing he had
+found, the thing inside himself that responded to the thing inside the
+shell that was Clara his wife, did not stumble. It flew like a bird out
+of darkness into the light. At the moment he thought the sweeping flight
+of life thus begun would run on forever.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SIX
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It was a summer night in Ohio and the wheat in the long, flat fields
+that stretched away to the north from the town of Bidwell was ripe for
+the cutting. Between the wheat fields lay corn and cabbage fields. In
+the corn fields the green stalks stood up like young trees. Facing the
+fields lay the white roads, once the silent roads, hushed and empty
+through the nights and often during many hours of the day, the night
+silence broken only at long intervals by the clattering hoofs of
+homeward bound horses and the silence of days by creaking wagons. Along
+the roads on a summer evening went the young farm hand in his buggy for
+which he had spent a summer's wage, a long summer of sweaty toil in
+hot fields. The hoofs of his horse beat a soft tattoo on the roads. His
+sweetheart sat beside him and he was in no hurry. All day he had been
+at work in the harvest and on the morrow he would work again. It did
+not matter. For him the night would last until the cocks in isolated
+farmyards began to hail the dawn. He forgot the horse and did not care
+what turning he took. All roads led to happiness for him.
+
+Beside the long roads was an endless procession of fields broken now and
+then by a strip of woodland, where the shadows of trees fell upon the
+roads and made pools of an inky blackness. In the long, dry grass in
+fence corners insects sang; in the young cabbage fields rabbits ran,
+flitting away like shadows in the moonlight. The cabbage fields were
+beautiful too.
+
+Who has written or sung of the beauties of corn fields in Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, or of the vast Ohio cabbage fields? In the cabbage fields
+the broad outer leaves fall down to make a background for the shifting,
+delicate colors of soils. The leaves are themselves riotous with color.
+As the season advances they change from light to dark greens, a thousand
+shades of purples, blues and reds appear and disappear.
+
+In silence the cabbage fields slept beside the roads in Ohio. Not
+yet had the motor cars come to tear along the roads, their flashing
+lights--beautiful too, when seen by one afoot on the roads on a summer
+night--had not yet made the roads an extension of the cities. Akron, the
+terrible town, had not yet begun to roll forth its countless millions of
+rubber hoops, filled each with its portion of God's air compressed
+and in prison at last like the farm hands who have gone to the cities.
+Detroit and Toledo had not begun to send forth their hundreds of
+thousands of motor cars to shriek and scream the nights away on country
+roads. Willis was still a mechanic in an Indiana town, and Ford still
+worked in a bicycle repair shop in Detroit.
+
+It was a summer night in the Ohio country and the moon shone. A country
+doctor's horse went at a humdrum pace along the roads. Softly and at
+long intervals men afoot stumbled along. A farm hand whose horse was
+lame walked toward town. An umbrella mender, benighted on the roads,
+hurried toward the lights of the distant town. In Bidwell, the place
+that had been on other summer nights a sleepy town filled with gossiping
+berry pickers, things were astir.
+
+Change, and the thing men call growth, was in the air. Perhaps in its
+own way revolution was in the air, the silent, the real revolution that
+grew with the growth of the towns. In the stirring, bustling town of
+Bidwell that quiet summer night something happened that startled men.
+Something happened, and then in a few minutes it happened again. Heads
+wagged, special editions of daily newspapers were printed, the great
+hive of men was disturbed, under the invisible roof of the town that had
+so suddenly become a city, the seeds of self-consciousness were planted
+in new soil, in American soil.
+
+Before all this began, however, something else happened. The first motor
+car ran through the streets of Bidwell and out upon the moonlit roads.
+The motor car was driven by Tom Butterworth and in it sat his daughter
+Clara with her husband Hugh McVey. During the week before, Tom had
+brought the car from Cleveland, and the mechanic who rode with him had
+taught him the art of driving. Now he drove alone and boldly. Early in
+the evening he had run out to the farmhouse to take his daughter and
+son-in-law for their first ride. Hugh sat in the seat beside him and
+after they had started and were clear of the town, Tom turned to him.
+"Now watch me step on her tail," he said proudly, using for the first
+time the motor slang he had picked up from the Cleveland mechanic.
+
+As Tom sent the car hurling over the roads, Clara sat alone in the back
+seat unimpressed by her father's new acquisition. For three years she
+had been married and she felt that she did not yet know the man she had
+married. Always the story had been the same, moments of light and then
+darkness again. A new machine that went along roads at a startlingly
+increased rate of speed might change the whole face of the world, as
+her father declared it would, but it did not change certain facts of her
+life. "Am I a failure as a wife, or is Hugh impossible as a husband?"
+she asked herself for perhaps the thousandth time as the car, having
+got into a long stretch of clear, straight road, seemed to leap and sail
+through the air like a bird. "At any rate I have married me a husband
+and yet I have no husband, I have been in a man's arms but I have
+no lover, I have taken hold of life, but life has slipped through my
+fingers."
+
+Like her father, Hugh seemed to Clara absorbed in only the things
+outside himself, the outer crust of life. He was like and yet unlike
+her father. She was baffled by him. There was something in the man she
+wanted and could not find. "The fault must be in me," she told herself.
+"He's all right, but what's the matter with me?"
+
+After that night when he ran away from her bridal bed, Clara had more
+than once thought the miracle had happened. It did sometimes. On that
+night when he came to her out of the rain it had happened. There was a
+wall a blow could shatter, and she raised her hand to strike the blow.
+The wall was shattered and then builded itself again. Even as she lay at
+night in her husband's arms the wall reared itself up in the darkness of
+the sleeping room.
+
+Over the farmhouse on such nights dense silence brooded and she and
+Hugh, as had become their habit together, were silent. In the darkness
+she put up her hand to touch her husband's face and hair. He lay still
+and she had the impression of some great force holding him back, holding
+her back. A sharp sense of struggle filled the room. The air was heavy
+with it.
+
+When words came they did not break the silence. The wall remained.
+
+The words that came were empty, meaningless words. Hugh suddenly broke
+forth into speech. He spoke of his work at the shop and of his progress
+toward the solution of some difficult, mechanical problem. If it were
+evening when the thing happened the two people got out of the lighted
+house where they had been sitting together, each feeling darkness would
+help the effort they were both making to tear away the wall. They walked
+along a lane, past the barns and over the little wooden bridge across
+the stream that ran down through the barnyard. Hugh did not want to talk
+of the work at the shop, but could find words for no other talk. They
+came to a fence where the lane turned and from where they could look
+down the hillside and into the town. He did not look at Clara but
+stared down the hillside and the words, in regard to the mechanical
+difficulties that had occupied his mind all day, ran on and on. When
+later they went back to the house he felt a little relieved. "I've said
+words. There is something achieved," he thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now after the three years as a married woman Clara sat in the motor
+with her father and husband and with them was sent whirling swiftly
+through the summer night. The car ran down the hill road from the
+Butterworth farm, through a dozen residence streets in town and then out
+upon the long, straight roads in the rich, flat country to the north. It
+had skirted the town as a hungry wolf might have encircled silently and
+swiftly the fire-lit camp of a hunter. To Clara the machine seemed like
+a wolf, bold and cunning and yet afraid. Its great nose pushed through
+the troubled air of the quiet roads, frightening horses, breaking the
+silence with its persistent purring, drowning the song of insects. The
+headlights also disturbed the slumbers of the night. They flashed into
+barnyards where fowls slept on the lower branches of trees, played
+on the sides of barns sent the cattle in fields galloping away into
+darkness, and frightened horribly the wild things, the red squirrels and
+chipmunks that live in wayside fences in the Ohio country. Clara hated
+the machine and began to hate all machines. Thinking of machinery and
+the making of machines had, she decided, been at the bottom of
+her husband's inability to talk with her. Revolt against the whole
+mechanical impulse of her generation began to take possession of her.
+
+And as she rode another and more terrible kind of revolt against the
+machine began in the town of Bidwell. It began in fact before Tom with
+his new motor left the Butterworth farm, it began before the summer
+moon came up, before the gray mantle of night had been laid over the
+shoulders of the hills south of the farmhouse.
+
+Jim Gibson, the journeyman harness maker who worked in Joe Wainsworth's
+shop, was beside himself on that night. He had just won a great victory
+over his employer and felt like celebrating. For several days he had
+been telling the story of his anticipated victory in the saloons and
+store, and now it had happened. After dining at his boarding-house he
+went to a saloon and had a drink. Then he went to other saloons and had
+other drinks, after which he swaggered through the streets to the door
+of the shop. Although he was in his nature a spiritual bully, Jim did
+not lack energy, and his employer's shop was filled with work demanding
+attention. For a week both he and Joe had been returning to their work
+benches every evening. Jim wanted to come because some driving influence
+within made him love the thought of keeping the work always on the move,
+and Joe because Jim made him come.
+
+Many things were on the move in the striving, hustling town on that
+evening. The system of checking on piece work, introduced by the
+superintendent Ed Hall in the corn-cutting machine plant, had brought
+on Bidwell's first industrial strike. The discontented workmen were not
+organized, and the strike was foredoomed to failure, but it had stirred
+the town deeply. One day, a week before, quite suddenly some fifty
+or sixty men had decided to quit. "We won't work for a fellow like Ed
+Hall," they declared. "He sets a scale of prices and then, when we have
+driven ourselves to the limit to make a decent day's pay, he cuts the
+scale." Leaving the shop the men went in a body to Main Street and two
+or three of them, developing unexpected eloquence, began delivering
+speeches on street corners. On the next day the strike spread and for
+several days the shop had been closed. Then a labor organizer came from
+Cleveland and on the day of his arrival the story ran through the street
+that strike breakers were to be brought in.
+
+And on that evening of many adventures another element was introduced
+into the already disturbed life of the community. At the corner of Main
+and McKinley Streets and just beyond the place where three old buildings
+were being torn down to make room for the building of a new hotel,
+appeared a man who climbed upon a box and attacked, not the piece work
+prices at the corn-cutting machine plant, but the whole system that
+built and maintained factories where the wage scale of the workmen could
+be fixed by the whim or necessity of one man or a group of men. As the
+man on the box talked, the workmen in the crowd who were of American
+birth began to shake their heads. They went to one side and gathering in
+groups discussed the stranger's words. "I tell you what," said a little
+old workman, pulling nervously at his graying mustache, "I'm on strike
+and I'm for sticking out until Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth fire Ed
+Hall, but I don't like this kind of talk. I'll tell you what that man's
+doing. He's attacking our Government, that's what he's doing." The
+workmen went off to their homes grumbling. The Government was to them a
+sacred thing, and they did not fancy having their demands for a better
+wage scale confused by the talk of anarchists and socialists. Many of
+the laborers of Bidwell were sons and grandsons of pioneers who had
+opened up the country where the great sprawling towns were now growing
+into cities. They or their fathers had fought in the great Civil War.
+During boyhood they had breathed a reverence for government out of the
+very air of the towns. The great men of whom the school-books talked had
+all been connected with the Government. In Ohio there had been Garfield,
+Sherman, McPherson the fighter and others. From Illinois had come
+Lincoln and Grant. For a time the very ground of the mid-American
+country had seemed to spurt forth great men as now it was spurting forth
+gas and oil. Government had justified itself in the men it had produced.
+
+And now there had come among them men who had no reverence for
+government. What a speaker for the first time dared say openly on the
+streets of Bidwell, had already been talked in the shops. The new men,
+the foreigners coming from many lands, had brought with them strange
+doctrines. They began to make acquaintances among the American workmen.
+"Well," they said, "you've had great men here; no doubt you have; but
+you're getting a new kind of great men now. These new men are not born
+out of people. They're being born out of capital. What is a great man?
+He's one who has the power. Isn't that a fact? Well, you fellows here
+have got to find out that nowadays power comes with the possession of
+money. Who are the big men of this town?--not some lawyer or politician
+who can make a good speech, but the men who own the factories where you
+have to work. Your Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth are the great men of
+this town."
+
+The socialist, who had come to speak on the streets of Bidwell, was
+a Swede, and his wife had come with him. As he talked his wife made
+figures on a blackboard. The old story of the trick by which the
+citizens of the town had lost their money in the plant-setting machine
+company was revived and told over and over. The Swede, a big man with
+heavy fists, spoke of the prominent citizens of the town as thieves who
+by a trick had robbed their fellows. As he stood on the box beside
+his wife, and raising his fists shouted crude sentences condemning the
+capitalist class, men who had gone away angry came back to listen.
+The speaker declared himself a workman like themselves and, unlike the
+religious salvationists who occasionally spoke on the streets, did not
+beg for money. "I'm a workman like yourselves," he shouted. "Both my
+wife and myself work until we've saved a little money. Then we come out
+to some town like this and fight capital until we're busted. We've been
+fighting for years now and we'll keep on fighting as long as we live."
+
+As the orator shouted out his sentences he raised his fist as though to
+strike, and looked not unlike one of his ancestors, the Norsemen, who
+in old times had sailed far and wide over unknown seas in search of the
+fighting they loved. The men of Bidwell began to respect him. "After
+all, what he says sounds like mighty good sense," they declared, shaking
+their heads. "Maybe Ed Hall isn't any worse than any one else. We got to
+break up the system. That's a fact. Some of these days we got to break
+up the system."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jim Gibson got to the door of Joe's shop at half-past seven o'clock.
+Several men stood on the sidewalk and he stopped and stood before them,
+intending to tell again the story of his triumph over his employer.
+Inside the shop Joe was already at his bench and at work. The men,
+two of them strikers from the corn-cutting machine plant, complained
+bitterly of the difficulty of supporting their families, and a third
+man, a fellow with a big black mustache who smoked a pipe, began to
+repeat some of the axioms in regard to industrialism and the class war
+he had picked up from the socialist orator. Jim listened for a moment
+and then, turning, put his thumb on his buttocks and wriggled his
+fingers. "Oh, hell," he sneered, "what are you fools talking about?
+You're going to get up a union or get into the socialist party. What're
+you talking about? A union or a party can't help a man who can't look
+out for himself."
+
+The blustering and half intoxicated harness maker stood in the open
+shop door and told again and in detail the story of his triumph over his
+employer. Then another thought came and he spoke of the twelve hundred
+dollars Joe had lost in the stock, of the plant-setting machine company.
+"He lost his money and you fellows are going to get licked in this
+fight," he declared. "You're all wrong, you fellows, when you talk about
+unions or joining the socialist party. What counts is what a man can do
+for himself. Character counts. Yes, sir, character makes a man what he
+is."
+
+Jim pounded on his chest and glared about him.
+
+"Look at me," he said. "I was a drunkard and down and out when I came
+to this town; a drunkard, that's what I was and that's what I am. I came
+here to this shop to work, and now, if you want to know, ask any one
+in town who runs this place. The socialist says money is power. Well,
+there's a man inside here who has the money, but you bet I've got the
+power."
+
+Slapping his knees with his hands Jim laughed heartily. A week before, a
+traveling man had come to the shop to sell machine-made harness. Joe had
+ordered the man out and Jim had called him back. He had placed an order
+for eighteen sets of the harness and had made Joe sign the order. The
+harness had arrived that afternoon and was now hung in the shop. "It's
+hanging in the shop now," Jim cried. "Go see for yourself."
+
+Triumphantly Jim walked up and down before the men on the sidewalk, and
+his voice rang through the shop where Joe sat on his harness-maker's
+horse under a swinging lamp hard at work. "I tell you, character's the
+thing that counts," the roaring voice cried. "You see I'm a workingman
+like you fellows, but I don't join a union or a socialist party. I get
+my way. My boss Joe in there's a sentimental old fool, that's what he
+is. All his life he's made harnesses by hand and he thinks that's the
+only way. He claims he has pride in his work, that's what he claims."
+
+Jim laughed again. "Do you know what he did the other day when that
+traveler had gone out of the shop and after I had made him sign that
+order?" he asked. "Cried, that's what he did. By God, he did,--sat there
+and cried."
+
+Again Jim laughed, but the workmen on the sidewalk did not join in his
+merriment. Going to one of them, the one who had declared his intention
+of joining the union, Jim began to berate him. "You think you can lick
+Ed Hall with Steve Hunter and Tom Butterworth back of him, eh?" he asked
+sharply. "Well, I'll tell you what--you can't. All the unions in the
+world won't help you. You'll get licked--for why?
+
+"For why? Because Ed Hall is like me, that's for why. He's got
+character, that's what he's got."
+
+Growing weary of his boasting and the silence of his audience, Jim
+started to walk in at the door, but when one of the workmen, a pale man
+of fifty with a graying mustache, spoke, he turned to listen. "You're a
+suck, a suck and a lickspittle, that's what you are," said the pale man,
+his voice trembling with passion.
+
+Jim ran through the crowd of men and knocked the speaker to the sidewalk
+with a blow of his fist. Two of the other workmen seemed about to take
+up the cause of their fallen brother, but when in spite of their threats
+Jim stood his ground, they hesitated. They went to help the pale workman
+to his feet, and Jim went into the shop and closed the door. Climbing
+onto his horse he went to work, and the men went off along the sidewalk,
+still threatening to do what they had not done when the opportunity
+offered.
+
+Joe worked in silence beside his employee and night began to settle down
+over the disturbed town. Above the clatter of many voices in the street
+outside could be heard the loud voice of the socialist orator who had
+taken up his stand for the evening at a nearby corner. When it had
+become quite dark outside, the old harness maker climbed down from his
+horse and going to the front door opened it softly and looked up and
+down the street. Then he closed it again and walked toward the rear of
+the shop. In his hand he held his harness-maker's knife, shaped like a
+half moon and with an extraordinarily sharp circular edge. The harness
+maker's wife had died during the year before and since that time he had
+not slept well at night. Often for a week at a time he did not sleep
+at all, but lay all night with wide-open eyes, thinking strange, new
+thoughts. In the daytime and when Jim was not about, he sometimes spent
+hours sharpening the moon-shaped knife on a piece of leather; and on the
+day after the incident of the placing of the order for the factory-made
+harness he had gone into a hardware store and bought a cheap revolver.
+He had been sharpening the knife as Jim talked to the workmen outside.
+When Jim began to tell the story of his humiliation he had stopped
+sewing at the broken harness in his vise and, getting up, had taken the
+knife from its hiding-place under a pile of leather on a bench to give
+its edge a few last caressing strokes.
+
+Holding the knife in his hand Joe went with shambling steps toward the
+place where Jim sat absorbed in his work. A brooding silence seemed to
+lie over the shop and even outside in the street all noises suddenly
+ceased. Old Joe's gait changed. As he passed behind the horse on which
+Jim sat, life came into his figure and he walked with a soft, cat-like
+tread. Joy shone in his eyes. As though warned of something impending,
+Jim turned and opened his mouth to growl at his employer, but his words
+never found their way to his lips. The old man made a peculiar half
+step, half leap past the horse, and the knife whipped through the air.
+At one stroke he had succeeded in practically severing Jim Gibson's head
+from his body.
+
+There was no sound in the shop. Joe threw the knife into a corner and
+ran quickly past the horse where the body of Jim Gibson sat upright.
+Then the body fell to the floor with a thump and there was the sharp
+rattle of heels on the board floor. The old man locked the front door
+and listened impatiently. When all was again quiet he went to search for
+the knife he had thrown away, but could not find it. Taking Jim's
+knife from a bench under the hanging lamp, he stepped over the body and
+climbed upon his horse to turn out the lights.
+
+For an hour Joe stayed in the shop with the dead man. The eighteen
+sets of harness shipped from a Cleveland factory had been received that
+morning, and Jim had insisted they be unpacked and hung on hooks along
+the shop walls. He had bullied Joe into helping hang the harnesses, and
+now Joe took them down alone. One by one they were laid on the floor and
+with Jim's knife the old man cut each strap into little pieces that made
+a pile of litter on the floor reaching to his waist. When that was done
+he went again to the rear of the shop, again stepping almost carelessly
+over the dead man, and took the revolver out of the pocket of an
+overcoat that hung by the door.
+
+Joe went out of the shop by the back door, and having locked it
+carefully, crept through an alleyway and into the lighted street where
+people walked up and down. The next place to his own was a barber shop,
+and as he hurried along the sidewalk, two young men came out and called
+to him. "Hey," they called, "do you believe in factory-made harness
+now-days, Joe Wainsworth? Hey, what do you say? Do you sell factory-made
+harness?"
+
+Joe did not answer, but stepping off the sidewalk, walked in the road.
+A group of Italian laborers passed, talking rapidly and making gestures
+with their hands. As he went more deeply into the heart of the growing
+city, past the socialist orator and a labor organizer who was addressing
+a crowd of men on another corner, his step became cat-like as it had
+been in the moment before the knife flashed at the throat of Jim Gibson.
+The crowds of people frightened him. He imagined himself set upon by
+a crowd and hanged to a lamp-post. The voice of the labor orator arose
+above the murmur of voices in the street. "We've got to take power into
+our hands. We've got to carry on our own battle for power," the voice
+declared.
+
+The harness maker turned a corner into a quiet street, his hand
+caressing affectionately the revolver in the side pocket of his coat.
+He intended to kill himself, but had not wanted to die in the same room
+with Jim Gibson. In his own way he had always been a very sensitive
+man and his only fear was that rough hands fall upon him before he had
+completed the evening's work. He was quite sure that had his wife
+been alive she would have understood what had happened. She had always
+understood everything he did or said. He remembered his courtship. His
+wife had been a country girl and on Sundays, after their marriage, they
+had gone together to spend the day in the wood. After Joe had brought
+his wife to Bidwell they continued the practice. One of his customers, a
+well-to-do farmer, lived five miles north of town, and on his farm there
+was a grove of beech trees. Almost every Sunday for several years he got
+a horse from the livery stable and took his wife there. After dinner at
+the farmhouse, he and the farmer gossiped for an hour, while the women
+washed the dishes, and then he took his wife and went into the beech
+forest. No underbrush grew under the spreading branches of the trees,
+and when the two people had remained silent for a time, hundreds of
+squirrels and chipmunks came to chatter and play about them. Joe had
+brought nuts in his pocket and threw them about. The quivering little
+animals drew near and then with a flip of their tails scampered away.
+One day a boy from a neighboring farm came to the wood and shot one
+of the squirrels. It happened just as Joe and his wife came from the
+farmhouse and he saw the wounded squirrel hang from the branch of a
+tree, and then fall. It lay at his feet and his wife grew ill and leaned
+against him for support. He said nothing, but stared at the quivering
+thing on the ground. When it lay still the boy came and picked it up.
+Still Joe said nothing. Taking his wife's arm he walked to where they
+were in the habit of sitting, and reached in his pocket for the nuts to
+scatter on the ground. The farm boy, who had felt the reproach in the
+eyes of the man and woman, had gone out of the wood. Suddenly Joe
+began to cry. He was ashamed and did not want his wife to see, and she
+pretended she had not seen.
+
+On the night when he had killed Jim, Joe decided he would walk to the
+farm and the beech forest and there kill himself. He hurried past a long
+row of dark stores and warehouses in the newly built section of town and
+came to a residence street. He saw a man coming toward him and stepped
+into the stairway of a store building. The man stopped under a street
+lamp to light a cigar, and the harness maker recognized him. It was
+Steve Hunter, who had induced him to invest the twelve hundred dollars
+in the stock of the plant-setting machine company, the man who had
+brought the new times to Bidwell, the man who was at the bottom of all
+such innovations as machine-made harnesses. Joe had killed his employee,
+Jim Gibson, in cold anger, but now a new kind of anger took possession
+of him. Something danced before his eyes and his hands trembled so that
+he was afraid the gun he had taken out of his pocket would fall to the
+sidewalk. It wavered as he raised it and fired, but chance came to his
+assistance. Steve Hunter pitched forward to the sidewalk.
+
+Without stopping to pick up the revolver that had fallen out of his
+hand, Joe now ran up a stairway and got into a dark, empty hall. He felt
+his way along a wall and came presently to another stairway, leading
+down. It brought him into an alleyway, and going along this he came out
+near the bridge that led over the river and into what in the old days
+had been Turner's Pike, the road out which he had driven with his wife
+to the farm and the beech forest.
+
+But one thing now puzzled Joe Wainsworth. He had lost his revolver and
+did not know how he was to manage his own death. "I must do it some
+way," he thought, when at last, after nearly three hours steady plodding
+and hiding in fields to avoid the teams going along the road he got to
+the beech forest. He went to sit under a tree near the place where he
+had so often sat through quiet Sunday afternoons with his wife beside
+him. "I'll rest a little and then I'll think how I can do it," he
+thought wearily, holding his head in his hands. "I mustn't go to sleep.
+If they find me they'll hurt me. They'll hurt me before I have a chance
+to kill myself. They'll hurt me before I have a chance to kill myself,"
+he repeated, over and over, holding his head in his hands and rocking
+gently back and forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The car driven by Tom Butterworth stopped at a town, and Tom got out to
+fill his pockets with cigars and incidentally to enjoy the wonder and
+admiration of the citizens. He was in an exalted mood and words flowed
+from him. As the motor under its hood purred, so the brain under the
+graying old head purred and threw forth words. He talked to the idlers
+before the drug stores in the towns and, when the car started again and
+they were out in the open country, his voice, pitched in a high key to
+make itself heard above the purring engine, became shrill. Having struck
+the shrill tone of the new age the voice went on and on.
+
+But the voice and the swift-moving car did not stir Clara. She tried
+not to hear the voice, and fixing her eyes on the soft landscape flowing
+past under the moon, tried to think of other times and places. She
+thought of nights when she had walked with Kate Chanceller through the
+streets of Columbus, and of the silent ride she had taken with Hugh that
+night they were married. Her mind went back into her childhood and she
+remembered the long days she had spent riding with her father in this
+same valley, going from farm to farm to haggle and dicker for the
+purchase of calves and pigs. Her father had not talked then but
+sometimes, when they had driven far and were homeward bound in the
+failing light of evening, words did come to him. She remembered one
+evening in the summer after her mother died and when her father often
+took her with him on his drives. They had stopped for the evening meal
+at the house of a farmer and when they got on the road again, the moon
+came out. Something present in the spirit of the night stirred Tom, and
+he spoke of his life as a boy in the new country and of his fathers and
+brothers. "We worked hard, Clara," he said. "The whole country was new
+and every acre we planted had to be cleared." The mind of the prosperous
+farmer fell into a reminiscent mood and he spoke of little things
+concerning his life as a boy and young man; the days of cutting wood
+alone in the silent, white forest when winter came and it was time for
+getting out firewood and logs for new farm buildings, the log rollings
+to which neighboring farmers came, when great piles of logs were made
+and set afire that space might be cleared for planting. In the winter
+the boy went to school in the village of Bidwell and as he was even then
+an energetic, pushing youth, already intent on getting on in the world,
+he set traps in the forest and on the banks of streams and walked the
+trap line on his way to and from school. In the spring he sent his pelts
+to the growing town of Cleveland where they were sold. He spoke of the
+money he got and of how he had finally saved enough to buy a horse of
+his own.
+
+Tom had talked of many other things on that night, of the spelling-downs
+at the schoolhouse in town, of huskings and dances held in the barns and
+of the evening when he went skating on the river and first met his wife.
+"We took to each other at once," he said softly. "There was a fire built
+on the bank of the river and after I had skated with her we went and sat
+down to warm ourselves.
+
+"We wanted to get married to each other right away," he told Clara. "I
+walked home with her after we got tired of skating, and after that I
+thought of nothing but how to get my own farm and have a home of my
+own."
+
+As the daughter sat in the motor listening to the shrill voice of the
+father, who now talked only of the making of machines and money, that
+other man talking softly in the moonlight as the horse jogged slowly
+along the dark road seemed very far away. All such men seemed very far
+away. "Everything worth while is very far away," she thought bitterly.
+"The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far
+from the old sweet things."
+
+The motor flew along the roads and Tom thought of his old longing to
+own and drive fast racing horses. "I used to be half crazy to own fast
+horses," he shouted to his son-in-law. "I didn't do it, because owning
+fast horses meant a waste of money, but it was in my mind all the time.
+I wanted to go fast: faster than any one else." In a kind of ecstasy he
+gave the motor more gas and shot the speed up to fifty miles an hour.
+The hot, summer air, fanned into a violent wind, whistled past his head.
+"Where would the damned race horses be now," he called, "where would
+your Maud S. or your J.I.C. be, trying to catch up with me in this car?"
+
+Yellow wheat fields and fields of young corn, tall now and in the light
+breeze that was blowing whispering in the moonlight, flashed past,
+looking like squares on a checker board made for the amusement of
+the child of some giant. The car ran through miles of the low farming
+country, through the main streets of towns, where the people ran out of
+the stores to stand on the sidewalks and look at the new wonder, through
+sleeping bits of woodlands--remnants of the great forests in which
+Tom had worked as a boy--and across wooden bridges over small streams,
+beside which grew tangled masses of elderberries, now yellow and
+fragrant with blossoms.
+
+At eleven o'clock having already achieved some ninety miles Tom turned
+the car back. Running more sedately he again talked of the mechanical
+triumphs of the age in which he had lived. "I've brought you whizzing
+along, you and Clara," he said proudly. "I tell you what, Hugh, Steve
+Hunter and I have brought you along fast in more ways that one. You've
+got to give Steve credit for seeing something in you, and you've got to
+give me credit for putting my money back of your brains. I don't want to
+take no credit from Steve. There's credit enough for all. All I got
+to say for myself is that I saw the hole in the doughnut. Yes, sir, I
+wasn't so blind. I saw the hole in the doughnut."
+
+Tom stopped to light a cigar and then drove on again. "I'll tell you
+what, Hugh," he said, "I wouldn't say so to any one not of my family,
+but the truth is, I'm the man that's been putting over the big things
+there in Bidwell. The town is going to be a city now and a mighty big
+city. Towns in this State like Columbus, Toledo and Dayton, had better
+look out for themselves. I'm the man has always kept Steve Hunter steady
+and going straight ahead down the track, as this car goes with my hand
+at the steering wheel.
+
+"You don't know anything about it, and I don't want you should talk,
+but there are new things coming to Bidwell," he added. "When I was in
+Chicago last month I met a man who has been making rubber buggy and
+bicycle tires. I'm going in with him and we're going to start a plant
+for making automobile-tires right in Bidwell. The tire business is bound
+to be one of the greatest on earth and they ain't no reason why Bidwell
+shouldn't be the biggest tire center ever known in the world." Although
+the car now ran quietly, Tom's voice again became shrill. "There'll
+be hundreds of thousands of cars like this tearing over every road in
+America," he declared. "Yes, sir, they will; and if I calculate right
+Bidwell'll be the great tire town of the world."
+
+For a long time Tom drove in silence, and when he again began to talk it
+was a new mood. He told a tale of life in Bidwell that stirred both Hugh
+and Clara deeply. He was angry and had Clara not been in the car would
+have become violently profane.
+
+"I'd like to hang the men who are making trouble in the shops in town,"
+he broke forth. "You know who I mean, I mean the labor men who are
+trying to make trouble for Steve Hunter and me. There's a socialist
+talking every night on the street over there. I'll tell you, Hugh, the
+laws of this country are wrong." For ten minutes he talked of the labor
+difficulties in the shops.
+
+"They better look out," he declared, and was so angry that his voice
+rose to something like a suppressed scream. "We're inventing new
+machines pretty fast now-days," he cried. "Pretty soon we'll do all the
+work by machines. Then what'll we do? We'll kick all the workers out and
+let 'em strike till they're sick, that's what we'll do. They can talk
+their fool socialism all they want, but we'll show 'em, the fools."
+
+His angry mood passed, and as the car turned into the last fifteen-mile
+stretch of road that led to Bidwell, he told the tale that so deeply
+stirred his passengers. Chuckling softly he told of the struggle of
+the Bidwell harness maker, Joe Wainsworth, to prevent the sale of
+machine-made harness in the community, and of his experience with his
+employee, Jim Gibson. Tom had heard the tale in the bar-room of the
+Bidwell House and it had made a profound impression on his mind. "I'll
+tell you what," he declared, "I'm going to get in touch with Jim
+Gibson. That's the kind of man to handle workers. I only heard about him
+to-night, but I'm going to see him to-morrow."
+
+Leaning back in his seat Tom laughed heartily as he told of the
+traveling man who had visited Joe Wainsworth's shop and the placing of
+the order for the factory-made harness. In some intangible way he felt
+that when Jim Gibson laid the order for the harness on the bench in the
+shop and by the force of his personality compelled Joe Wainsworth to
+sign, he justified all such men as himself. In imagination he lived in
+that moment with Jim, and like Jim the incident aroused his inclination
+to boast. "Why, a lot of cheap laboring skates can't down such men as
+myself any more than Joe Wainsworth could down that Jim Gibson," he
+declared. "They ain't got the character, you see, that's what the
+matter, they ain't got the character." Tom touched some mechanism
+connected with the engine of the car and it shot suddenly forward.
+"Suppose one of them labor leaders were standing in the road there," he
+cried. Instinctively Hugh leaned forward and peered into the darkness
+through which the lights of the car cut like a great scythe, and on the
+back seat Clara half rose to her feet. Tom shouted with delight and
+as the car plunged along the road his voice rose in triumph. "The damn
+fools!" he cried. "They think they can stop the machines. Let 'em try.
+They want to go on in their old hand-made way. Let 'em look out. Let 'em
+look out for such men as Jim Gibson and me."
+
+Down a slight incline in the road shot the car and swept around a wide
+curve, and then the jumping, dancing light, running far ahead, revealed
+a sight that made Tom thrust out his foot and jam on the brakes.
+
+In the road and in the very center of the circle of light, as though
+performing a scene on the stage, three men were struggling. As the car
+came to a stop, so sudden that it pitched both Clara and Hugh out of
+their seats, the struggle came to an end. One of the struggling figures,
+a small man without coat or hat, had jerked himself away from the
+others and started to run toward the fence at the side of the road
+and separating it from a grove of trees. A large, broad-shouldered man
+sprang forward and catching the tail of the fleeing man's coat pulled
+him back into the circle of light. His fist shot out and caught the
+small man directly on the mouth. He fell like a dead thing, face
+downward in the dust of the road.
+
+Tom ran the car slowly forward and its headlight continued to play over
+the three figures. From a little pocket at the side of his driver's seat
+he took a revolver. He ran the car quickly to a position near the group
+in the road and stopped.
+
+"What's up?" he asked sharply.
+
+Ed Hall the factory superintendent, the man who had struck the blow
+that had felled the little man, stepped forward and explained the
+tragic happenings of the evening in town. The factory superintendent had
+remembered that as a boy he had once worked for a few weeks on the
+farm of which the wood beside the road was a part, and that on Sunday
+afternoons the harness maker had come to the farm with his wife and the
+two people had gone to walk in the very place where he had just been
+found. "I had a hunch he would be out here," he boasted. "I figured it
+out. Crowds started out of town in all directions, but I cut out alone.
+Then I happened to see this fellow and just for company I brought him
+along." He put up his hand and, looking at Tom, tapped his forehead.
+"Cracked," he declared, "he always was. A fellow I knew saw him once in
+that woods," he said pointing. "Somebody had shot a squirrel and he took
+on about it as though he had lost a child. I said then he was crazy, and
+he has sure proved I was right."
+
+At a word from her father Clara went to sit on the front seat on Hugh's
+knees. Her body trembled and she was cold with fear. As her father
+had told the story of Jim Gibson's triumph over Joe Wainsworth she had
+wanted passionately to kill that blustering fellow. Now the thing was
+done. In her mind the harness maker had come to stand for all the men
+and women in the world who were in secret revolt against the absorption
+of the age in machines and the products of machines. He had stood as
+a protesting figure against what her father had become and what she
+thought her husband had become. She had wanted Jim Gibson killed and it
+had been done. As a child she had gone often to Wainsworth's shop with
+her father or some farm hand, and she now remembered sharply the peace
+and quiet of the place. At the thought of the same place, now become
+the scene of a desperate killing, her body shook so that she clutched at
+Hugh's arms, striving to steady herself.
+
+Ed Hall took the senseless figure of the old man in the road into his
+arms and half threw it into the back seat of the car. To Clara it was as
+though his rough, misunderstanding hands were on her own body. The
+car started swiftly along the road and Ed told again the story of the
+night's happenings. "I tell you, Mr. Hunter is in mighty bad shape, he
+may die," he said. Clara turned to look at her husband and thought him
+totally unaffected by what had happened. His face was quiet like her
+father's face. The factory superintendent's voice went on explaining his
+part in the adventures of the evening. Ignoring the pale workman who sat
+lost in the shadows in a corner of the rear seat, he spoke as though
+he had undertaken and accomplished the capture of the murderer
+single-handed. As he afterwards explained to his wife, Ed felt he had
+been a fool not to come alone. "I knew I could handle him all right," he
+explained. "I wasn't afraid, but I had figured it all out he was crazy.
+That made me feel shaky. When they were getting up a crowd to go out on
+the hunt, I says to myself, I'll go alone. I says to myself, I'll bet
+he's gone out to that woods on the Riggly farm where he and his wife
+used to go on Sundays. I started and then I saw this other man standing
+on a corner and I made him come with me. He didn't want to come and
+I wish I'd gone alone. I could have handled him and I'd got all the
+credit."
+
+In the car Ed told the story of the night in the streets of Bidwell.
+Some one had seen Steve Hunter shot down in the street and had declared
+the harness maker had done it and had then run away. A crowd had gone to
+the harness shop and had found the body of Jim Gibson. On the floor of
+the shop were the factory-made harnesses cut into bits. "He must have
+been in there and at work for an hour or two, stayed right in there with
+the man he had killed. It's the craziest thing any man ever done."
+
+The harness maker, lying on the floor of the car where Ed had thrown
+him, stirred and sat up. Clara turned to look at him and shivered. His
+shirt was torn so that the thin, old neck and shoulders could be plainly
+seen in the uncertain light, and his face was covered with blood that
+had dried and was now black with dust. Ed Hall went on with the tale of
+his triumph. "I found him where I said to myself I would. Yes, sir, I
+found him where I said to myself I would."
+
+The car came to the first of the houses of the town, long rows of
+cheaply built frame houses standing in what had once been Ezra French's
+cabbage patch, where Hugh had crawled on the ground in the moonlight,
+working out the mechanical problems that confronted him in the building
+of his plant-setting machine. Suddenly the distraught and frightened
+man crouched on the floor of the car, raised himself on his hands and
+lurched forward, trying to spring over the side. Ed Hall caught him by
+the arm and jerked him back. He drew back his arm to strike again but
+Clara's voice, cold and intense with passion, stopped him. "If you touch
+him, I'll kill you," she said. "No matter what he does, don't you dare
+strike him again."
+
+Tom drove the car slowly through the streets of Bidwell to the door of a
+police station. Word of the return of the murderer had run ahead, and
+a crowd had gathered. Although it was past two o'clock the lights still
+burned in stores and saloons, and crowds stood at every corner. With the
+aid of a policeman, Ed Hall, with one eye fixed cautiously on the front
+seat where Clara sat, started to lead Joe Wainsworth away. "Come on now,
+we won't hurt you," he said reassuringly, and had got his man free of
+the car when he broke away. Springing back into the rear seat the crazed
+man turned to look at the crowd. A sob broke from his lips. For a moment
+he stood trembling with fright, and then turning, he for the first time
+saw Hugh, the man in whose footsteps he had once crept in the darkness
+in Turner's Pike, the man who had invented the machine by which the
+earnings of a lifetime had been swept away. "It wasn't me. You did it.
+You killed Jim Gibson," he screamed, and springing forward sank his
+fingers and teeth into Hugh's neck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+One day in the month of October, four years after the time of his first
+motor ride with Clara and Tom, Hugh went on a business trip to the city
+of Pittsburgh. He left Bidwell in the morning and got to the steel city
+at noon. At three o'clock his business was finished and he was ready to
+return.
+
+Although he had not yet realized it, Hugh's career as a successful
+inventor had received a sharp check. The trick of driving directly at
+the point, of becoming utterly absorbed in the thing before him, had
+been lost. He went to Pittsburgh to see about the casting of new parts
+for the hay-loading machine, but what he did in Pittsburgh was of
+no importance to the men who would manufacture and sell that worthy,
+labor-saving tool. Although he did not know it, a young man from
+Cleveland, in the employ of Tom and Steve, had already done what Hugh
+was striving half-heartedly to do. The machine had been finished and
+ready to market in October three years before, and after repeated tests
+a lawyer had made formal application for patent. Then it was discovered
+that an Iowa man had already made application for and been granted a
+patent on a similar apparatus.
+
+When Tom came to the shop and told him what had happened Hugh had been
+ready to drop the whole matter, but that was not Tom's notion. "The
+devil!" he said. "Do you think we're going to waste all this money and
+labor?"
+
+Drawings of the Iowa man's machine were secured, and Tom set Hugh at the
+task of doing what he called "getting round" the other fellow's patents.
+"Do the best you can and we'll go ahead," he said. "You see we've got
+the money and that means power. Make what changes you can and then we'll
+go on with our manufacturing plans. We'll whipsaw this other fellow
+through the courts. We'll fight him till he's sick of fight and then
+we'll buy him out cheap. I've had the fellow looked up and he hasn't any
+money and is a boozer besides. You go ahead. We'll get that fellow all
+right."
+
+Hugh had tried valiantly to go along the road marked out for him by his
+father-in-law and had put aside other plans to rebuild the machine
+he had thought of as completed and out of the way. He made new parts,
+changed other parts, studied the drawings of the Iowa man's machine, did
+what he could to accomplish his task.
+
+Nothing happened. A conscientious determination not to infringe on the
+work of the Iowa man stood in his way.
+
+Then something did happen. At night as he sat alone in his shop after a
+long study of the drawings of the other man's machine, he put them aside
+and sat staring into the darkness beyond the circle of light cast by his
+lamp. He forgot the machine and thought of the unknown inventor, the man
+far away over forests, lakes and rivers, who for months had worked on
+the same problem that had occupied his mind. Tom had said the man had
+no money and was a boozer. He could be defeated, bought cheap. He was
+himself at work on the instrument of the man's defeat.
+
+Hugh left his shop and went for a walk, and the problem connected with
+the twisting of the iron and steel parts of the hay-loading apparatus
+into new forms was again left unsolved. The Iowa man had become a
+distinct, almost understandable personality to Hugh. Tom had said he
+drank, got drunk. His own father had been a drunkard. Once a man, the
+very man who had been the instrument of his own coming to Bidwell, had
+taken it for granted he was a drunkard. He wondered if some twist of
+life might not have made him one.
+
+Thinking of the Iowa man, Hugh began to think of other men. He thought
+of his father and of himself. When he was striving to come out of the
+filth, the flies, the poverty, the fishy smells, the shadowy dreams of
+his life by the river, his father had often tried to draw him back into
+that life. In imagination he saw before him the dissolute man who had
+bred him. On afternoons of summer days in the river town, when Henry
+Shepard was not about, his father sometimes came to the station where he
+was employed. He had begun to earn a little money and his father wanted
+it to buy drinks. Why?
+
+There was a problem for Hugh's mind, a problem that could not be solved
+in wood and steel. He walked and thought about it when he should have
+been making new parts for the hay-loading apparatus. He had lived but
+little in the life of the imagination, had been afraid to live that
+life, had been warned and re-warned against living it. The shadowy
+figure of the unknown inventor in the state of Iowa, who had been
+brother to himself, who had worked on the same problems and had come
+to the same conclusions, slipped away, followed by the almost equally
+shadowy figure of his father. Hugh tried to think of himself and his own
+life.
+
+For a time that seemed a simple and easy way out of the new and
+intricate task he had set for his mind. His own life was a matter of
+history. He knew about himself. Having walked far out of town, he turned
+and went back toward his shop. His way led through the new city that
+had grown up since his coming to Bidwell. Turner's Pike that had been
+a country road along which on summer evenings lovers strolled to the
+Wheeling station and Pickleville was now a street. All that section of
+the new city was given over to workers' homes and here and there a store
+had been built. The Widow McCoy's place was gone and in its place was a
+warehouse, black and silent under the night sky. How grim the street
+in the late night! The berry pickers who once went along the road at
+evening were now gone forever. Like Ezra French's sons they had perhaps
+become factory hands. Apple and cherry trees once grew along the road.
+They had dropped their blossoms on the heads of strolling lovers. They
+also were gone. Hugh had once crept along the road at the heels of Ed
+Hall, who walked with his arm about a girl's waist. He had heard Ed
+complaining of his lot in life and crying out for new times. It was Ed
+Hall who had introduced the piecework plan in the factories of Bidwell
+and brought about the strike, during which three men had been killed and
+ill-feeling engendered in hundreds of silent workers. That strike had
+been won by Tom and Steve and they had since that time been victorious
+in a larger and more serious strike. Ed Hall was now at the head of a
+new factory being built along the Wheeling tracks. He was growing fat
+and was prosperous.
+
+When Hugh got to his shop he lighted his lamp and again got out the
+drawings he had come from home to study. They lay unnoticed on the desk.
+He looked at his watch. It was two o'clock. "Clara may be awake. I must
+go home," he thought vaguely. He now owned his own motor car and it
+stood in the road before the shop. Getting in he drove away into the
+darkness over the bridge, out of Turner's Pike and along a street lined
+with factories and railroad sidings. Some of the factories were working
+and were ablaze with lights. Through lighted windows he could see men
+stationed along benches and bending over huge, iron machines. He had
+come from home that evening to study the work of an unknown man from the
+far away state of Iowa, to try to circumvent that man. Then he had gone
+to walk and to think of himself and his own life. "The evening has been
+wasted. I have done nothing," he thought gloomily as his car climbed up
+a long street lined with the homes of the wealthier citizens of his town
+and turned into the short stretch of Medina Road still left between the
+town and the Butterworth farmhouse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the day when he went to Pittsburgh, Hugh got to the station where
+he was to take the homeward train at three, and the train did not leave
+until four. He went into a big waiting-room and sat on a bench in a
+corner. After a time he arose and going to a stand bought a newspaper,
+but did not read it. It lay unopened on the bench beside him. The
+station was filled with men, women, and children who moved restlessly
+about. A train came in and a swarm of people departed, were carried into
+faraway parts of the country, while new people came into the station
+from a nearby street. He looked at those who were going out into the
+train shed. "It may be that some of them are going to that town in Iowa
+where that fellow lives," he thought. It was odd how thoughts of the
+unknown Iowa man clung to him.
+
+One day, during the same summer and but a few months earlier, Hugh had
+gone to the town of Sandusky, Ohio, on the same mission that had brought
+him to Pittsburgh. How many parts for the hay-loading machine had been
+cast and later thrown away! They did the work, but he decided each time
+that he had infringed on the other man's machine. When that happened he
+did not consult Tom. Something within him warned him against doing that.
+He destroyed the part. "It wasn't what I wanted," he told Tom who had
+grown discouraged with his son-in-law but did not openly voice his
+dissatisfaction. "Oh, well, he's lost his pep, marriage has taken the
+life out of him. We'll have to get some one else on the job," he said to
+Steve, who had entirely recovered from the wound received at the hands
+of Joe Wainsworth.
+
+On that day when he went to Sandusky, Hugh had several hours to wait
+for his homebound train and went to walk by the shores of a bay. Some
+brightly colored stones attracted his attention and he picked several
+of them up and put them in his pockets. In the station at Pittsburgh he
+took them out and held them in his hand. A light came in at a window, a
+long, slanting light that played over the stones. His roving, disturbed
+mind was caught and held. He rolled the stones back and forth. The
+colors blended and then separated again. When he raised his eyes, a
+woman and a child on a nearby bench, also attracted by the flashing bit
+of color held like a flame in his hand, were looking at him intently.
+
+He was confused and walked out of the station into the street. "What a
+silly fellow I have become, playing with colored stones like a child,"
+he thought, but at the same time put the stones carefully into his
+pockets.
+
+Ever since that night when he had been attacked in the motor, the sense
+of some indefinable, inner struggle had been going on in Hugh, as it
+went on that day in the station at Pittsburgh and on the night in the
+shop, when he found himself unable to fix his attention on the prints
+of the Iowa man's machine. Unconsciously and quite without intent he had
+come into a new level of thought and action. He had been an unconscious
+worker, a doer and was now becoming something else. The time of the
+comparatively simple struggle with definite things, with iron and steel,
+had passed. He fought to accept himself, to understand himself, to
+relate himself with the life about him. The poor white, son of the
+defeated dreamer by the river, who had forced himself in advance of his
+fellows along the road of mechanical development, was still in advance
+of his fellows of the growing Ohio towns. The struggle he was making was
+the struggle his fellows of another generation would one and all have to
+make.
+
+Hugh got into his home-bound train at four o'clock and went into the
+smoking car. The somewhat distorted and twisted fragment of thoughts
+that had all day been playing through his mind stayed with him. "What
+difference does it make if the new parts I have ordered for the machine
+have to be thrown away?" he thought. "If I never complete the machine,
+it's all right. The one the Iowa man had made does the work."
+
+For a long time he struggled with that thought. Tom, Steve, all the
+Bidwell men with whom he had been associated, had a philosophy into
+which the thought did not fit. "When you put your hand to the plow do
+not turn back," they said. Their language was full of such sayings. To
+attempt to do a thing and fail was the great crime, the sin against the
+Holy Ghost. There was unconscious defiance of a whole civilization in
+Hugh's attitude toward the completion of the parts that would help Tom
+and his business associates "get around" the Iowa man's patent.
+
+The train from Pittsburgh went through northern Ohio to a junction
+where Hugh would get another train for Bidwell. Great booming towns,
+Youngstown, Akron, Canton, Massillon--manufacturing towns all--lay along
+the way. In the smoker Hugh sat, again playing with the colored stones
+held in his hand. There was relief for his mind in the stones. The light
+continually played about them, and their color shifted and changed. One
+could look at the stones and get relief from thoughts. Raising his
+eyes he looked out of the car window. The train was passing through
+Youngstown. His eyes looked along grimy streets of worker's houses
+clustered closely about huge mills. The same light that had played over
+the stones in his hand began to play over his mind, and for a moment
+he became not an inventor but a poet. The revolution within had really
+begun. A new declaration of independence wrote itself within him. "The
+gods have thrown the towns like stones over the flat country, but the
+stones have no color. They do not burn and change in the light," he
+thought.
+
+Two men who sat in a seat in the westward bound train began to talk,
+and Hugh listened. One of them had a son in college. "I want him to be
+a mechanical engineer," he said. "If he doesn't do that I'll get him
+started in business. It's a mechanical age and a business age. I want to
+see him succeed. I want him to keep in the spirit of the times."
+
+Hugh's train was due in Bidwell at ten, but did not arrive until half
+after eleven. He walked from the station through the town toward the
+Butterworth farm.
+
+At the end of their first year of marriage a daughter had been born to
+Clara, and some time before his trip to Pittsburgh she had told him
+she was again pregnant. "She may be sitting up. I must get home," he
+thought, but when he got to the bridge near the farmhouse, the bridge on
+which he had stood beside Clara that first time they were together, he
+got out of the road and went to sit on a fallen log at the edge of a
+grove of trees.
+
+"How quiet and peaceful the night!" he thought and leaning forward held
+his long, troubled face in his hands. He wondered why peace and quiet
+would not come to him, why life would not let him alone. "After all,
+I've lived a simple life and have done good work," he thought. "Some of
+the things they've said about me are true enough. I've invented machines
+that save useless labor, I've lightened men's labor."
+
+Hugh tried to cling to that thought, but it would not stay in his mind.
+All the thoughts that gave his mind peace and quiet flew away like birds
+seen on a distant horizon at evening. It had been so ever since that
+night when he was suddenly and unexpectedly attacked by the crazed
+harness maker in the motor. Before that his mind had often been
+unsettled, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted men and women and close
+association with men and women. Often his problem was yet more simple.
+He wanted a woman, one who would love him and lie close to him at night.
+He wanted the respect of his fellows in the town where he had come to
+live his life. He wanted to succeed at the particular task to which he
+had set his hand.
+
+The attack made upon him by the insane harness maker had at first
+seemed to settle all his problems. At the moment when the frightened and
+desperate man sank his teeth and fingers into Hugh's neck, something had
+happened to Clara. It was Clara who, with a strength and quickness quite
+amazing, had torn the insane man away. All through that evening she had
+been hating her husband and father, and then suddenly she loved Hugh.
+The seeds of a child were already alive in her, and when the body of her
+man was furiously attacked, he became also her child. Swiftly, like
+the passing of a shadow over the surface of a river on a windy day, the
+change in her attitude toward her husband took place. All that evening
+she had been hating the new age she had thought so perfectly personified
+in the two men, who talked of the making of machines while the beauty
+of the night was whirled away into the darkness with the cloud of dust
+thrown into the air by the flying motor. She had been hating Hugh
+and sympathizing with the dead past he and other men like him were
+destroying, the past that was represented by the figure of the old
+harness maker who wanted to do his work by hand in the old way, by the
+man who had aroused the scorn and derision of her father.
+
+And then the past rose up to strike. It struck with claws and teeth, and
+the claws and teeth sank into Hugh's flesh, into the flesh of the man
+whose seed was already alive within her.
+
+At that moment the woman who had been a thinker stopped thinking. Within
+her arose the mother, fierce, indomitable, strong with the strength of
+the roots of a tree. To her then and forever after Hugh was no hero,
+remaking the world, but a perplexed boy hurt by life. He never again
+escaped out of boyhood in her consciousness of him. With the strength
+of a tigress she tore the crazed harness maker away from Hugh, and with
+something of the surface brutality of another Ed Hall, threw him to
+the floor of the car. When Ed and the policeman, assisted by several
+bystanders, came running forward, she waited almost indifferently while
+they forced the screaming and kicking man through the crowd and in at
+the door of the police station.
+
+For Clara the thing for which she had hungered had, she thought,
+happened. In quick, sharp tones she ordered her father to drive the
+car to a doctor's house and later stood by while the torn and lacerated
+flesh of Hugh's cheek and neck was bandaged. The thing for which Joe
+Wainsworth stood and that she had thought was so precious to herself no
+longer existed in her consciousness, and if later she was for some weeks
+nervous and half ill, it was not because of any thought given to the
+fate of the old harness maker.
+
+The sudden attack out of the town's past had brought Hugh to Clara, had
+made him a living if not quite satisfying companion to her, but it had
+brought something quite different to Hugh. The bite of the man's teeth
+and the torn places on his cheeks left by the tense fingers had mended,
+leaving but a slight scar; but a virus had got into his veins. The
+disease of thinking had upset the harness maker's mind and the germ of
+that disease had got into Hugh's blood. It had worked up into his eyes
+and ears. Words men dropped thoughtlessly and that in the past had been
+blown past his ears, as chaff is blown from wheat in the harvest, now
+stayed to echo and re-echo in his mind. In the past he had seen towns
+and factories grow and had accepted without question men's word that
+growth was invariably good. Now his eyes looked at the towns, at
+Bidwell, Akron, Youngstown, and all the great, new towns scattered
+up and down mid-western America as on the train and in the station at
+Pittsburgh he had looked at the colored stones held in his hand. He
+looked at the towns and wanted light and color to play over them as they
+played over the stones, and when that did not happen, his mind, filled
+with strange new hungers engendered by the disease of thinking, made up
+words over which lights played. "The gods have scattered towns over
+the flat lands," his mind had said, as he sat in the smoking car of the
+train, and the phrase came back to him later, as he sat in the darkness
+on the log with his head held in his hands. It was a good phrase and
+lights could play over it as they played over the colored stones, but it
+would in no way answer the problem of how to "get around" the Iowa's man
+patent on the hay loading device.
+
+Hugh did not get to the Butterworth farmhouse until two o'clock in the
+morning, but when he got there his wife was awake and waiting for him.
+She heard his heavy, dragging footsteps in the road as he turned in at
+the farm gate, and getting quickly out of bed, threw a cloak over her
+shoulders and came out to the porch facing the barns. A late moon had
+come up and the barnyard was washed with moonlight. From the barns came
+the low, sweet sound of contented animals nibbling at the hay in the
+mangers before them, from a row of sheds back of one of the barns came
+the soft bleating of sheep and in a far away field a calf bellowed
+loudly and was answered by its mother.
+
+When Hugh stepped into the moonlight around the corner of the house,
+Clara ran down the steps to meet him, and taking his arm, led him past
+the barns and over the bridge where as a child she had seen the figures
+of her fancy advancing towards her. Sensing his troubled state her
+mother spirit was aroused. He was unfilled by the life he led. She
+understood that. It was so with her. By a lane they went to a fence
+where nothing but open fields lay between the farm and the town far
+below. Although she sensed his troubled state, Clara was not thinking
+of Hugh's trip to Pittsburgh nor of the problems connected with the
+completion of the hay-loading machine. It may be that like her father
+she had dismissed from her mind all thoughts of him as one who would
+continue to help solve the mechanical problems of his age. Thoughts
+of his continued success had never meant much to her, but during the
+evening something had happened to Clara and she wanted to tell him about
+it, to take him into the joy of it. Their first child had been a girl
+and she was sure the next would be a man child. "I felt him to-night,"
+she said, when they had got to the place by the fence and saw below the
+lights of the town. "I felt him to-night," she said again, "and oh, he
+was strong! He kicked like anything. I am sure this time it's a boy."
+
+For perhaps ten minutes Clara and Hugh stood by the fence. The disease
+of thinking that was making Hugh useless for the work of his age had
+swept away many old things within him and he was not self-conscious in
+the presence of his woman. When she told him of the struggle of the man
+of another generation, striving to be born he put his arm about her and
+held her close against his long body. For a time they stood in silence,
+and then started to return to the house and sleep. As they went past
+the barns and the bunkhouse where several men now slept they heard, as
+though coming out of the past, the loud snoring of the rapidly ageing
+farm hand, Jim Priest, and then above that sound and above the sound of
+the animals stirring in the barns arose another sound, a sound shrill
+and intense, greetings perhaps to an unborn Hugh McVey. For some reason,
+perhaps to announce a shift in crews, the factories of Bidwell that were
+engaged in night work set up a great whistling and screaming. The sound
+ran up the hillside and rang in the ears of Hugh as, with his arm about
+Clara's shoulders, he went up the steps and in at the farmhouse door.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor White, by Sherwood Anderson
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