Poor White: A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER X

  Clara Butterworth left Bidwell, Ohio, in September of the year in whichSteve Hunter's plant-setting machine company went into the hands of areceiver, and in January of the next year that enterprising young man,together with Tom Butterworth, bought the plant. In March a new companywas organized and at once began making Hugh's corn-cutting machine, asuccess from the beginning. The failure of the first company and thesale of the plant had created a furor in the town. Both Steve and TomButterworth could, however, point to the fact that they had held on totheir stock and lost their money in common with every one else. Tom hadindeed 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?" heasked the men assembled in the stores. "Go look at the books of thecompany. Let's have an investigation here. You will find that Steveand I stuck to the rest of the stockholders. We lost our money with therest. If any one was crooked and when they saw a failure coming went andgot out from under at the expense of some one else, it wasn't Steve andme. The books of the company will show we were game. It wasn't our faultthe plant-setting machine wouldn't work."

  In the back room of the bank, John Clark and young Gordon Hart cursedSteve and Tom, who, they declared, had sold them out. They had lost nomoney by the failure, but on the other hand they had gained nothing. Thefour 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 hadgone to a firm of Cleveland lawyers who bid a little more, and laterhad been resold at private sale to Steve and Tom. An investigation wasstarted and it was found that Steve and Tom held large blocks of stockin the defunct company, while the bankers held practically none. Steveopenly said that he had known of the possibility of failure for sometime and had warned the larger stock-holders and asked them not tosell their stock. "While I was working my head off trying to save thecompany, what were they up to?" he asked sharply, and his question wasrepeated in the stores and in the homes of the people.

  The truth of the matter, and the thing the town never found out, wasthat 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 withhim. He was afraid of John Clark. For two or three days he thought aboutthe matter and decided that the banker was not to be trusted. "He's toogood a friend to Tom Butterworth," he told himself. "If I tell him myscheme, he'll tell Tom. I'll go to Tom myself. He's a money maker anda man who knows the difference between a bicycle and a wheelbarrow whenyou put one of them into bed with him."

  Steve drove out to Tom's house late one evening in September. He hatedto go but was convinced it would be better to do so. "I don't want toburn all my bridges behind me," he told himself. "I've got to haveat least one friend among the solid men here in town. I've got to dobusiness with these rubes, maybe all my life. I can't shut myself offtoo much, at least not yet a while."

  When Steve got to the farm he asked Tom to get into his buggy, and thetwo men went for a long drive. The horse, a gray gelding with one blindeye hired for the occasion from liveryman Neighbors, went slowly alongthrough the hill country south of Bidwell. He had hauled hundreds ofyoung men with their sweethearts. Ambling slowly along, thinking perhapsof 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 quietcontinued to reign over the two people in the buggy, the whip would notcome out of its socket and he would not be expected to hurry.

  On the September evening, however, the gray gelding had behind him sucha load as he had never carried before. The two people in the buggy onthat evening were not foolish, meandering sweethearts, thinking onlyof love, and allowing themselves to be influenced in their mood by thebeauty of the night, the softness of the black shadows in the road, andthe gentle night winds that crept down over the crests of hills. Theywere 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 themakers of governments, the molders of public opinion, the owners of thepress, the publishers of books, buyers of pictures, and in the goodnessof their hearts, the feeders of an occasional starving and improvidentpoet, lost on other roads. In any event the two men sat in the buggy andthe gray gelding meandered along through the hills. Great splashes ofmoonlight lay in the road. By chance it was on the same evening thatClara Butterworth left home to become a student in the State University.Remembering the kindness and tenderness of the rough old farm hand, JimPriest, who had brought her to the station, she lay in her berth in thesleeping car and looked out at the roads, washed with moonlight, thatslid away into the distance like ghosts. She thought of her father onthat night and of the misunderstanding that had grown up between them.For the moment she was tender with regrets. "After all, Jim Priest andmy father must be a good deal alike," she thought. "They have lived onthe same farm, eaten the same food; they both love horses. There can'tbe any great difference between them." All night she thought of thematter. An obsession, that the whole world was aboard the moving trainand that, as it ran swiftly along, it was carrying the people of theworld into some strange maze of misunderstanding, took possession ofher. So strong was it that it affected her deeply buried unconsciousself and made her terribly afraid. It seemed to her that the walls ofthe sleeping-car berth were like the walls of a prison that had shut heraway 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 heryouthful desire to reach a hand out of the beauty in herself to theburied beauty in others. She sat up in the berth and forced down adesire in herself to break the car window and leap out of the swiftlymoving train into the quiet night bathed with moonlight. With girlishgenerosity she took upon her own shoulders the responsibility for themisunderstanding that had grown up between herself and her father. Latershe lost the impulse that led her to come to that decision, but duringthat night it persisted. It was, in spite of the terror caused by thehallucination regarding the moving walls of the berth that seemed aboutto crush her and that came back time after time, the most beautifulnight she had ever lived through, and it remained in her memorythroughout her life. She in fact came to think later of that night asthe time when, most of all, it would have been beautiful and right forher to have been able to give herself to a lover. Although she did notknow it, the kiss on the cheek from the bewhiskered lips of Jim Priesthad no doubt something to do with that thought when it came.

  And while the girl fought her battle with the strangeness of life andtried to break through the imaginary walls that shut her off from theopportunity to live, her father also rode through the night. With ashrewd eye he watched the face of Steve Hunter. It had already begun toget a little fat, but Tom realized suddenly that it was the face of aman of ability. There was something about the jowls that made Tom, whohad dealt much in live stock, think of the face of a pig. "The man goesafter what he wants. He's greedy," the farmer thought. "Now he's up tosomething. To get what he wants he'll give me a chance to get somethingI want. He's going to make some kind of proposal to me in connectionwith the factory. He's hatched up a scheme to shut Gordon Hart and JohnClark out because he doesn't want too many partners. All right, I'll goin with him. Either one of them would have done the same thing had theyhad the chance."

  Steve smoked a black cigar and talked. As he grew more sure of himselfand the affairs that absorbed him, he also became more smooth andpersuasive in the matter of words. He talked for a time of the necessityof certain men's surviving and growing constantly stronger and strongerin 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 ifthey are fewer and relatively stronger it's better." He turned to looksharply at his companion. "Well," he exclaimed, "we talked there in thebank 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 thetime, 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 tosell any of your stock. I didn't want to get the whole town bitter. Theywouldn't have lost anything. I promised to see them through, to get theplant for them at a low price, to put them in the way to make some realmoney. They played the game in a small-town way. Some men can think ofthousands of dollars, others have to think of hundreds. It's all theirminds are big enough to comprehend. They snatch at a little measlyadvantage 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 hisstock, wondered if Steve knew. He decided he did. "However, he's decidedto deal with me. He needs some one and has chosen me," he thought. Hemade up his mind to be bold. After all, Steve was young. Only a year ortwo before he was nothing but a young upstart and the very boys in thestreet laughed at him. Tom grew a little indignant, but was careful totake thought before he spoke. "Perhaps, although he's young and don'tlook like much, he's a faster and shrewder thinker than any of us," hetold himself.

  "You do talk like a fellow who has something up his sleeve," he saidlaughing. "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. Itmay be the small-town way, but you know things maybe I don't know. Youcan't blame me for living up to my lights. I always did believe in thesurvival of the fittest and I got a daughter to support and put throughcollege. I want to make a lady of her. You ain't got any kids yet andyou're younger. Maybe you want to take chances I don't want to take. Howdo 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 machineHugh had invented might not prove practical and that in the end he mightbe left with a factory on his hands and with nothing to manufacture init. He did not, however, hesitate. Again, as on the day in the bank whenhe was confronted by the two older men, he made a bluff. "Well, you cancome 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 tomanufacture corn-cutting machines. Already I have promises of ordersenough to keep running for a year. I can't take you in with me and haveit said around town you were one of the fellows who sold out the smallinvestors. 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. Youwon't ever have to pay it. The earnings of the new factory will cleanyou up. You got to come clean, though. Of course you can go get JohnClark 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 willtake it somewhere else and manufacture it. I don't mind telling youthat, if we split up, I will pretty well advertise what you threefellows did to the small investors after I asked you not to do it. Youcan all stay here and own your empty factory and get what satisfactionyou can out of the love and respect you'll get from the people. Youcan do what you please. I don't care. My hands are clean. I ain't doneanything I'm ashamed of, and if you want to come in with me, you and Itogether will pull off something in this town we don't neither one of ushave to be ashamed of."

  The two men drove back to the Butterworth farm house and Tom got outof the buggy. He intended to tell Steve to go to the devil, but as theydrove along the road, he changed his mind. The young school teacherfrom Bidwell, who had come on several occasions to call on his daughterClara, was on that night abroad with another young woman. He sat in abuggy with his arm around her waist and drove slowly through the hillcountry. Tom and Steve drove past them and the farmer, seeing in themoonlight the woman in the arms of the man, imagined his daughter in herplace. The thought made him furious. "I'm losing the chance to be a bigman in the town here in order to play safe and be sure of money to leaveto Clara, and all she cares about is to galavant around with some youngsquirt," he thought bitterly. He began to see himself as a wrongedand unappreciated father. When he got out of the buggy, he stood for amoment by the wheel and looked hard at Steve. "I'm as good a sport asyou are," he said finally. "Bring around your stock and I'll give youthe note. That's all it will be, you understand: just my note. I don'tpromise to back it up with any collateral and I don't expect you tooffer it for sale." Steve leaned out of the buggy and took him by thehand. "I won't sell your note, Tom," he said. "I'll put it away. I wanta 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 houseand to bed. Like his daughter he did not sleep. For a time he thoughtof her and in imagination saw her again in the buggy with the schoolteacher who had her in his arms. The thought made him stir restlesslyabout beneath the sheets. "Damn women anyway," he muttered. To relievehis mind he thought of other things. "I'll make out a deed and turnthree of my farms over to Clara," he decided shrewdly. "If thingsgo wrong we won't be entirely broke. I know Charlie Jacobs in thecourt-house over at the county seat. I ought to be able to get a deedrecorded 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 themidst of a struggle, no less intense because no words were said.Both Henderson Wood, burn and his wife felt that Clara owed them anexplanation of the scene at the front door with Frank Metcalf. When shedid not offer it they were offended. When he threw open the door andconfronted the two people, the plow manufacturer had got an impressionthat Clara was trying to escape Frank Metcalf's embraces. He told hiswife that he did not think she was to blame for the scene on the frontporch. 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 allto blame. I daresay he followed her home. She's upset now, but in themorning she'll tell us the story of what happened."

  The days went past and Clara said nothing. During her last week in thehouse she and the two older people scarcely spoke. The young womanwas in an odd way relieved. Every evening she went to dine with KateChanceller who, when she heard the story of the afternoon in the suburband the incident on the porch, went off without Clara's knowing of itand had a talk with Henderson Woodburn in his office. After the talk themanufacturer was puzzled and just a little afraid of both Clara and herfriend. 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'tunderstand, that Kate. She says Clara wasn't to blame for what happenedbetween her and Frank Metcalf, but don't want to tell us the story,because she thinks young Metcalf wasn't to blame either." Although hehad been respectful and courteous as he listened to Kate's talk, he grewangry when he tried to tell his wife what she had said. "I'm afraid itwas just a lot of mixed up nonsense," he declared. "It makes me glad wehaven't a daughter. If neither of them were to blame what were they upto? What's getting the matter with the women of the new generation? Whenyou come down to it what's the matter with Kate Chanceller?"

  The plow manufacturer advised his wife to say nothing to Clara. "Let'swash our hands of it," he suggested. "She'll go home in a few daysnow and we will say nothing about her coming back next year. Let's bepolite, 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 toKate's apartment. The brother came home and after dinner played on thepiano. 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. Theytalked of a thousand hidden phases of life Clara had hardly dared thinkof before. During all the rest of her life she thought of those lastweeks in Columbus as the most deeply satisfactory time she ever livedthrough. In the Woodburn house she was uncomfortable because of thesilence and the hurt, offended look on her aunt's face, but she didnot spend much time there. In the morning Henderson Woodburn ate hisbreakfast alone at seven, and clutching his ever present portfolio ofpapers, was driven off to the p
low factory. Clara and her aunt had asilent breakfast at eight, and then Clara also hurried away. "I'll beout for lunch and will go to Kate's for dinner," she said as she wentout of her aunt's presence, and she said it, not with the air of oneasking permission as had been her custom before the Frank Metcalfincident, but as one having the right to dispose of her own time. Onlyonce did her aunt break the frigid air of offended dignity she hadassumed. One morning she followed Clara to the front door, and as shewatched her go down the steps from the front porch to the walk thatled to the street, called to her. Some faint recollection of a time ofrevolt 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 prowledabout seeking women to devour, and she was afraid something dreadfulwould happen to her niece. "If you don't want to tell me anything, it'sall right," she said bravely, "but I wish you felt you could." WhenClara turned to look at her, she hastened to explain. "Mr. Woodburnsaid 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 thestreet with the air of a frightened child that looks into a den ofbeasts. "O Clara, be a good girl," she said. "I know you're grown upnow, but, O Clara, do be careful! Don't get into trouble."

  The Woodburn house in Columbus, like the Butterworth house in thecountry south of Bidwell, sat on a hill. The street fell away rathersharply as one went toward the business portion of the city and thestreet car line, and on the morning when her aunt spoke to her and triedwith her feeble hands to tear some stones out of the wall that was beingbuilt between them, Clara hurried along the street under the trees,feeling as though she would like also to weep. She saw no possibility ofexplaining to her aunt the new thoughts she was beginning to have aboutlife and did not want to hurt her by trying. "How can I explain mythoughts when they're not clear in my own mind, when I am myself justgroping 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 theconclusion that, judging by her standards, I have been altogether toogood? What's the use trying to talk to her when I would only hurt herand make things harder than ever?" She got to a street crossing andlooked back. Her aunt was still standing at the door of her house andlooking at her. There was something soft, small, round, insistent, bothterribly weak and terribly strong about the completely feminine thingshe 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 notform 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 looksout at him through the iron bars of a town jail. Clara was startled asthe boy would be startled and, like the boy, she wanted to run quicklyaway. "I must think of something else and of other kinds of women orI'll get things terribly distorted," she told herself. "If I think ofher and women like her I'll grow afraid of marriage, and I want to bemarried as soon as I can find the right man. It's the only thing I cando. What else is there a woman can do?"

  As Clara and Kate walked about in the evening, they talked continuallyof the new position Kate believed women were on the point of achievingin the world. The woman who was so essentially a man wanted to talkof marriage and to condemn it, but continually fought the impulse inherself. She knew that were she to let herself go she would say manythings that, while they might be true enough as regards herself, wouldnot necessarily be true of Clara. "Because I do not want to live with aman 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 herthan of any one else I've ever met. How can I think straight about hermarrying some man and becoming dulled to the things that mean most tome?" she asked herself. One evening, when the women were walking fromKate's apartment to the Woodburn house, they were accosted by two menwho wanted to walk with them. There was a small park nearby and Kate ledthe men to it. "Come," she said, "we won't walk with you, but you maysit with us here on a bench." The men sat down beside them and theolder one, a man with a small black mustache, made some remark about thefineness of the night. The younger man who sat beside Clara looked ather and laughed. Kate at once got down to business. "Well, you wanted towalk with us: what for?" she asked sharply. She explained what they hadbeen doing. "We were walking and talking of women and what they were todo with their lives," she explained. "We were expressing opinions, yousee. 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 eachother. Now what have you to say to us? You interrupted our talk andwanted to walk with us: what for? You wanted to be in our company: nowtell us what you've got to contribute. You can't just come and walk withus like dumb things. What have you got to offer that you think will makeit worth while for us to break up our conversation with each other andspend the time talking with you?"

  The older man, he of the mustache, turned to look at Kate, then got upfrom the bench. He walked a little away and then turned and made a signwith his hand to his companion. "Come on," he said, "let's get out ofhere. We're wasting our time. It's a cold trail. They're a couple ofhighbrows. Come on, let's be on our way."

  The two women again walked along the street. Kate could not help feelingsomewhat proud of the way in which she had disposed of the men. Shetalked of it until they got to the door of the Woodburn house, and, asshe went away along the street Clara thought she swaggered a little.She stood by the door and watched her friend until she had disappearedaround a corner. A flash of doubt of the infallibility of Kate's methodwith men crossed her mind. She remembered suddenly the soft brown eyesof the younger of the two men in the park and wondered what was back ofthe eyes. Perhaps after all, had she been alone with him, the man mighthave had something to say quite as much to the point as the things sheand Kate had been saying to each other. "Kate made the men look likefools, but after all she wasn't very fair," she thought as she went intothe house.

  * * * * *

  Clara was in Bidwell for a month before she realized what a change hadtaken place in the life of her home town. On the farm things went onvery much as always, except that her father was very seldom there.He had gone deeply into the project of manufacturing and sellingcorn-cutting machines with Steve Hunter, and attended to much of theselling of the output of the factory. Almost every month he went ontrips to cities of the West. Even when he was in Bidwell, he had gotinto the habit of staying at the town hotel for the night. "It's toomuch trouble to be always running back and forth," he explained to JimPriest, whom he had put in charge of the farm work. He swaggered beforethe old man who for so many years had been almost like a partner in hissmaller activities. "Well, I wouldn't like to have anything said, but Ithink 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 bigaffairs, he and I. I don't say he would try to get the best of me; I'mjust telling you that in the future I'll have to be in town most ofthe 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 isany 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 fullflush of its summer beauty. In the little patches of level land betweenthe hills grain was ripening in the fields. Along the streets of thetiny towns and on dusty country roads farmers in overalls stood up intheir wagons and scolded at the horses, rearing and prancing in halfpretended fright of the passing train. In the forests on the hillsidesthe open places among the trees looked cool and enticing. Clara puther cheek against the car window and imagined herself wandering in coolforests with a lover. She forgot the words of Kate Chanceller in regardto the independent future of women. It was, she thought vaguely, a thingto be thought about only after some more immediate problem was so
lved.Just what the problem was she didn't definitely know, but she did knowthat it concerned some close warm contact with life that she had as yetbeen unable to make. When she closed her eyes, strong warm hands seemedto come out of nothingness and touch her flushed cheeks. The fingers ofthe hands were strong like the branches of trees. They touched with thefirmness and gentleness of the branches of trees nodding in a summerbreeze.

  Clara sat up stiffly in her seat and when the train stopped at Bidwellgot off and went to her waiting father with a firm, business-likeair. Coming out of the land of dreams, she took on something of thedetermined air of Kate Chanceller. She stared at her father and anonlooker might have thought them two strangers, meeting for the purposeof discussing some business arrangement. A flavor of something likesuspicion hung over them. They got into Tom's buggy, and as Main Streetwas torn up for the purpose of laying a brick pavement and digging a newsewer, they drove by a roundabout way through residence streets untilthey got into Medina Road. Clara looked at her father and felt suddenlyvery alert and on her guard. It seemed to her that she was far removedfrom the green, unsophisticated girl who had so often walked inBidwell's streets; that her mind and spirit had expanded tremendously inthe three years she had been away; and she wondered if her father wouldrealize the change in her. Either one of two reactions on his partmight, she felt, make her happy. The man might turn suddenly and takingher hand receive her into fellowship, or he might receive her as a womanand his daughter by kissing her.

  He did neither. They drove in silence through the town and passed overa small bridge and into the road that led to the farm. Tom was curiousabout his daughter and a little uncomfortable. Ever since the eveningon the porch of the farmhouse, when he had accused her of some unnamedrelationship with John May, he had felt guilty in her presence but hadsucceeded in transferring the notion of guilt to her. While she was awayat school he had been comfortable. Sometimes he did not think of herfor a month at a time. Now she had written that she did not intend to goback. She had not asked his advice, but had said positively that she wascoming home to stay. He wondered what was up. Had she got into anotheraffair with a man? He wanted to ask, had intended to ask, but in herpresence found that the words he had intended to say would not come tohis lips. After a long silence Clara began to ask questions about thefarm, the men who worked there, her aunt's health, the usual home-comingquestions. 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 Tomstopped the horse and pointing with the whip talked of the town. He wasrelieved to have the silence broken, and decided not to say anythingabout 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 abovethe trees that grew beside the river. "That's a new factory we'rebuilding. We're going to make corn-cutting machines there. The oldfactory's already too small. We've sold it to a new company that's goingto manufacture bicycles. Steve Hunter and I sold it. We got twice whatwe paid for it. When the bicycle factory's started, he and I'll own thecontrol 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 lookedsharply at him and then looked quickly away. He was annoyed by theaction and a flush of anger came to his cheeks. A side of his characterhis daughter had never seen before came to the surface. When he was asimple farmer he had been too shrewd to attempt to play the aristocratwith his farm hands, but often, as he went about the barns and as hedrove along country roads and saw men at work in his fields, he hadfelt like a prince in the presence of his vassals. Now he talked likea prince. It was that that had startled Clara. There was about him anindefinable air of princely prosperity. When she turned to look at himshe noticed for the first time how much his person had also changed.Like Steve Hunter he was beginning to grow fat. The lean hardness ofhis cheeks had gone, his jaws seemed heavier, even his hands had changedtheir color. He wore a diamond ring on the left hand and it glistened inthe sunlight. "Things have changed," he declared, still pointing at thetown. "Do you want to know who changed it? Well, I had more to do withit than any one else. Steve thinks he did it all, but he didn't. I'mthe man who has done the most. He put through the plant-setting machinecompany, but that was a failure. When you come right down to it, thingswould have gone to pieces again if I hadn't gone to John Clark andtalked and bluffed him into giving us money when we wanted it. I hadmost to do with finding the big market for our corn-cutters, too. Stevelied to me and said he had 'em all sold for a year. He didn't have anysold 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 Iwas when you went away," he declared. "You might as well know it, I'mthe big man in this town. It comes pretty near being my town when youcome right down to it. I'm going to take care of every one in Bidwelland give every one a chance to make money, but it's my town now prettynear 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 youwent to school and fitted yourself to be a lady," he began. "I want youshould marry pretty soon now. I don't know whether you met any one atschool there or not. If you did and he's all right, it's all right withme. I don't want you should marry an ordinary man, but a smart one, aneducated man, a gentleman. We Butterworths are going to be bigger andbigger people here. If you get married to a good man, a smart one, I'llbuild a house for you; not just a little house but a big place, thebiggest place Bidwell ever seen." They came to the farm and Tom stoppedthe buggy in the road. He shouted to a man in the barnyard who camerunning for her bags. When she had got out of the buggy he immediatelyturned the horse about and drove rapidly away. Her aunt, a large, moistwoman, met her on the steps leading to the front door, and embracedher warmly. The words her father had just spoken ran a riotous coursethrough Clara's brain. She realized that for a year she had beenthinking of marriage, had been wanting some man to approach and talk ofmarriage, but she had not thought of the matter in the way her fatherhad put it. The man had spoken of her as though she were a possessionof his that must be disposed of. He had a personal interest in hermarriage. 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 marriageto strengthen what he called his position in the community, to help himbe some vague thing he called a big man. She wondered if he had some onein mind and could not avoid being a little curious as to who it couldbe. It had never occurred to her that her marriage could mean anythingto her father beyond the natural desire of the parent that his childmake a happy marriage. She began to grow angry at the thought of the wayin which her father had approached the subject, but was still curious toknow whether he had gone so far as to have some one in mind for the roleof husband, and thought she would try to find out from her aunt. Thestrange farm hand came into the house with her bags and she followed himupstairs to what had always been her own room. Her aunt came puffing ather heels. The farm hand went away and she began to unpack, while theolder woman, her face very red, sat on the edge of the bed. "You ain'tbeen getting engaged to a man down there where you been to school, haveyou, Clara?" she asked.

  Clara looked at her aunt and blushed; then became suddenly and furiouslyangry. Dropping the bag she had opened to the floor, she ran out of theroom. At the door she stopped and turned on the surprised and startledwoman. "No, I haven't," she declared furiously. "It's nobody's businesswhether I have or not. I went to school for an education. I didn't go toget 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 allof the barns, but there were no men about. Even the strange farm handwho had carried her bags into the house had disappeared, and the stallsin the horse and cattle barns were empty. Then she went
into the orchardand climbing a fence went through a meadow and into the wood to whichshe had always fled, when as a girl on the farm she was troubled orangry. For a long time she sat on a log beneath a tree and tried tothink her way through the new idea of marriage she had got from herfather's words. She was still angry and told herself that she wouldleave home, would go to some city and get work. She thought of KateChanceller who intended to be a doctor, and tried to picture herselfattempting something of the kind. It would take money for study. Shetried to imagine herself talking to her father about the matter and thethought made her smile. Again she wondered if he had any definite personin mind as her husband, and who it could be. She tried to check off herfather's acquaintances among the young men of Bidwell. "It must be somenew man who has come here, some one having something to do with one ofthe factories," she thought.

  After sitting on the log for a long time, Clara got up and walked underthe trees. The imaginary man, suggested to her mind by her father'swords, became every moment more and more a reality. Before her eyesdanced the laughing eyes of the young man who for a moment had lingeredbeside her while Kate Chanceller talked to his companion that eveningwhen they had been challenged on the streets of Columbus. She rememberedthe young school teacher, who had held her in his arms through a longSunday afternoon, and the day when, as an awakening maiden, she hadheard Jim Priest talking to the laborers in the barn about the sap thatran up the tree. The afternoon slipped away and the shadows of the treeslengthened. On such a day and alone there in the quiet wood, it wasimpossible for her to remain in the angry mood in which she had leftthe house. Over her father's farm brooded the passionate fulfillmentof 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 thetrees; at her back among the trees a squirrel chattered; and two calvescame along a woodland path and stood for a long time staring at her withtheir large gentle eyes. She arose and went out of the wood, crossed afalling meadow and came to a rail fence surrounding a corn field. JimPriest was cultivating corn and when he saw her left his horses and cameto 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. "LordA'mighty, I'm glad to see you." The old farm hand pulled a long bladeof grass out of the ground beneath the fence and leaning against thetop rail began to chew it. He asked Clara the same question her aunt hadasked, 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 toschool. 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 theyoung corn they could see down the hillside into the distant town. Clarawondered if the man she was to marry was there. The idea of a marriagewith her had perhaps been suggested to his mind also. Her father, shedecided, was capable of that. He was evidently ready to go to any lengthto see her safely married. She wondered why. When Jim Priest began totalk, striving to explain his question, his words fitted oddly into thethoughts she was having in regard to herself. "Now about marriage," hebegan, "you see now, I never done it. I didn't get married at all. Idon'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 sorryyou didn't."

  Jim went back to his team, and Clara stood by the fence and watched himgo down the long field and turn to come back along another of the pathsbetween the corn rows. When the horses came to where she stood, hestopped again and looked at her. "I guess you'll get married pretty soonnow," he said. The horses started on again and he held the cultivatingmachine with one hand and looked back over his shoulder at her. "You'reone of the marrying kind," he called. "You ain't like me. You don'tjust think about things. You do 'em. You'll be getting yourself marriedbefore very long. You are one of the kind that does."