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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor White, by Sherwood Anderson
+#4 in our series by Sherwood Anderson
+
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+Title: Poor White
+
+Author: Sherwood Anderson
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7414]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 26, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR WHITE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, William Flis
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+[Note: The evident misprint of Book Six for Book Five in the original
+is preserved here.]
+
+
+                        POOR WHITE
+
+
+                        A NOVEL BY
+
+                    SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+                         AUTHOR OF
+
+                     WINESBURG, OHIO
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TO
+
+                TENNESSEE MITCHELL ANDERSON
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR WHITE ***
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