Part 19

The subject of conversation was changed by an irruption of farmers and citizens, who wished to talk more about the new railroad, and who rightly thought that the place where the engineer could be found was the most likely source of information. The questions were almost innumerable, and Truett, who was quite as excited as any of them, told all he knew about what certain specified spur roads had done for farming and wooded districts no more promising than Claybanks; so the informal meeting became even more enthusiastic than the gathering at the court-house had been, for the farmers' wives added fuel to the flame. The spectacle impressed Grace deeply, well though she knew the people; for from most of the faces was banished, for the time being, the weary, resigned expression peculiar to a large portion of the farming population of the newer states. Caleb, too, long though he had known all the men and women in the throng, had his heart so entirely in his face that Grace whispered to Mary:--

"Do look at your husband! Did you ever see him look so handsome, until to-day?"

A strong, warm, nervous hand-clasp was the only reply for a moment; then Mary whispered:--

"All the men here are fine-looking!--their faces are so expressive! I've not noticed it until to-day. Where did Claybanks get such people?"

"Say all that to your husband, if you wish to fill his heart to overflowing," said Grace, "and then, to please me, repeat it to Doctor Taggess, or tell both of them at once." To share in the enjoyment, she succeeded in getting Caleb and the Doctor close to her and Mary, and quoted to them:--

"'Listen, my children, and you shall hear'--now, Mary!"

"I don't wonder that you're impressed," the Doctor replied, when Mary's outburst concluded. His own eyes were gleaming, and Mary said afterward that his face was her ideal of a hero at the moment of victory.

"Now, Mrs. Somerton, can you again wonder, as you've wondered aloud to my wife and me, that I, whom you've kindly called a man of high quality, have been content to pass my adult years among these backwoods people? Do see their hearts and souls come into their faces! I know they are not always so, but we never heard of any one remaining all the while on the Mount of Transfiguration. It isn't the railway alone that they're thinking of, but of what it will mean to themselves and their hard-working wives, and to their children,--closer touch with the great world of which they've read and wondered, better prices for their yield, which means more creature comforts at home, better educational facilities for their children, and less temptation for the children to escape from the farm to the city. They know that all this must be the work of time, but they've never before seen the beginning of it, so now they're building air-castles as rapidly as a lot of magicians in dream-land. I can't blame them, for I'm doing it myself, old and cautious though I am. They can wait for the end, so can I; for all of us, out here, have had long training in the art of waiting. At present the beginning is joy enough, for I can't imagine how any one about us could look happier."

The formal survey of the railway route began that afternoon, for the people would listen to no suggestions of delay. It was completed quickly, and that the company was not yet organized according to law did not prevent the immediate offer and acceptance of a large working force of men, boys, horses, etc., from the village itself. The young engineer was his own entire staff, and also temporary secretary and accountant of the enterprise; but as it was his first great job, he enjoyed the irregularity of everything. From that time forward, for several months, the village stores ceased to be lounging places. Any villager or farmer with time to spare made his way to the line of the new road, and feasted his eyes, apparently never to fulness, on the promise of what was to be.

As the work progressed farther from the town, the farmers of the vicinity, with their families, would saunter toward the line on Sunday afternoons and linger for hours, talking of the good times that were coming, and some of them actually moved their houses as near to the track as possible, so that the inmates might be able to have the best possible view of the trains when they began to run. When the road-bed was made and the ties were placed, and the laying of the rails began, entire families picnicked for a day at a time beside the track, although the weather had become cold, merely to see a shabby locomotive push backward some platform cars loaded with rails, and to see the rails unloaded, and listen to the musical clamor of track-laying; for did not each detail of the work bring nearer to them the hope of Claybanks for a third of a century,--a completed railway?

Truett had been better than his word. He had promised to finish the work by Christmas, but the formal opening ceremonies took place on Thanksgiving Day; and more than half the people of the county took part in it. With an eye to business the principal stockholders--the Claybanks merchants--hired a passenger train for the day, and gave the natives free rides to and from the nearest station that had a siding and switch by which the train could be sent back. The station had not a great town to support it,--merely five thousand people,--but as the Claybankers roamed through the place and saw many houses finer than any house in Claybanks, several streets that were paved with wooden blocks and many that had sidewalks, saw the telegraph and telephone wires, and a bank, and a fire-engine house, and horse-troughs into which fresh water flowed steadily from pipes which were part of a general service, their hearts were filled with the conviction that all these comforts and conveniences had come through the possession of a railway. Claybanks was in a fair way to become like unto that town, and they made haste, each after his kind, to rejoice. Then all of them who were farmers began to lay out, on their mental tablets, the appearance of their own farms as they would be when divided into building lots, and also to count the pleasing sums of money that would be paid by the purchasers of the lots, and also the many creature comforts which the money would buy.

The first freight car that left Claybanks for business purposes was loaded with yellowish brown brick for New York, and all Claybanks was present to wave hats, handkerchiefs, hands, and aprons, as it moved slowly off. Claybanks wheat had gone East in times past, so had Claybanks pork, and undoubtedly these products had entered into the physical constitution of New York to some extent, but they could not afterward be identified. Claybanks bricks, however, were very different. They would be seen by every one, and they would make Claybanks literally a part of the metropolis itself.

The meaning of all this was felt by the people of all classes; even Pastor Grateway was so impressed by it that he preached a sermon from the text, "They shall speak with the enemy in the gates," and that there should be no doubt as to who "they" were, a brown brick was at each side of the pulpit for the sides of the open Bible to rest upon. The pastor, being a man of spiritual insight, did not neglect to enlarge upon the fact that the bricks themselves were originally clay--mere earth--that had been trampled underfoot for years, seemingly useless, until it had been conformed in shape and quality to the uses for which it had been designed from the foundation of the world, and that each brick was a reminder that the most insensate lump of human clay had in it the possibilities for which it had been created.

Nevertheless, the majority of the hearers only carried home with them the conviction that the Claybanks brick-yard must become one of the great things of the world--otherwise, why did the minister preach about it?

XXVII--CONCLUSION

"CALEB," said Philip one evening, as the partners and their wives sat in the parlor of the Somerton home and enjoyed the leisure hour that came between store-closing and bed-time, "so much important business has been crowded into the past few months that some smaller ventures have almost escaped my mind. What ever came of that car-load of walnut stumps that I sent East last summer?"

"I couldn't have told you much about it if you'd asked me a day earlier," Caleb replied. "I turned it over to a man in the fine-woods business--a Grand Army comrade that I met at my old chum Jim's post. He said at the time that the stumps would undoubtedly pay expenses of diggin' and shipment, an' maybe a lot more, but 'twould depend entirely on the stumps themselves. He'd have each of 'em sawed lengthwise an' a surface section dressed, to show the markings of the grain o' the wood. It seems that they were so water-soaked that 'twas months after sawin' before the wood of any of 'em was dry enough to dress, but he got at some of 'em a few weeks ago, an' though most of 'em wa'n't above the ordinary, there were two or three that made the furniture an' decoration men bid against each other at a lively rate. One of 'em panned out over sixty dollars."

"What? One walnut stump? Sixty dollars?"

"Oh, that's nothing. To work me up, he told me of one, picked up in the country a few years ago, that brought more than a thousand dollars to the buyer. The markings were so fine that it was sawn into thin veneers that were sold for more than their weight in silver. Still, to come to the point, your entire lot brought about two hundred and seventy dollars net, an' I've got the check in my pocket to prove it."

"And the land from which they were taken cost me only two hundred dollars in goods! And there are still hundreds of stumps in it! And I felt so ashamed and babyish when I learned that I'd been tricked into buying cleared land, that I almost resolved to recall you by wire, so that I should be kept from being tricked again in some similar manner! I shall have to drive out to old Weefer's farm, tell him the story, and ask him if he has any more walnut clearings for sale."

"Hadn't you better keep quiet about it? Where's the use in killin' the goose that lays the golden egg? Pick up all the walnut clearin's that are for sale, an' make what you can out of 'em, before you go to talkin'; but if you feel that you must say somethin' on the subject to somebody, an' jubilate a little, go tell Doc Taggess, who owns the lot you thought you were buyin'. If anybody deserves to make money in the boom that's comin', Doc does, an' if he could clear his land, now that he can railroad the logs to market, an' then get out his stumps, he might get cash enough ahead to pick up a lot of real estate, or take stock in millin' enterprises, when the water-power ditch is made, an' so lay up somethin' to keep him out of the poor-house in old age; for as long as he can practise, he'll give to the poor all that he can collect from patients that are better off. The chap that handled the stumps for you asked me a lot of questions about the kind an' quantity of standin' timber out here, and said he didn't see why we didn't start mills to turn out furniture lumber an' dimension-stuff, like some that have made fortunes for men in the backwoods of Indiana and Michigan an' some other states."

"Let's try it, if our cash and credit aren't already used as far as they should be. By the way, how is Claybanks corn-flour, Somerton's brand, going in England?"

"Fairly. We've sent, in all, about four hundred barrels; that's an average of a hundred a month, with a net profit to us of about thirty per cent, which is better, I reckon, than any of the big flour shippers ever dreamed o' makin'. I've been hopin' that the good tidin's of good food-stuff at about half the price o' bad would work its way into other parts of London an' out into the country, too; but English people don't seem to move about an' swap stories an' prices, like us Americans. I reckon I came home too soon, for the good o' that deal, for I had a lot o' things in mind to do in London to make corn-meal popular. It seems to be the English way to let things alone until some of the upper classes take to 'em, so I was goin' to try the meal on some o' the swells; but the more I thought of it, the more it seemed that they too belonged to the follow-my-leader class. So I made up my mind to begin way up at the tip-top, an' so I wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, sayin' I'd come all the way from America to make the English people practically acquainted with the cheapest and most nutritious food known in the temperate zone, an' that I was catchin' on fairly, but the common people seemed to think it was common stuff, which it wasn't, as I would be glad to prove to her. Besides, I knew of Americans richer than any nobleman in England who had it on their tables every day. I said I could make six kinds o' bread an' three kinds o' puddin' out o' corn-meal, an' I'd like a chance to do it some day for her own table; if she'd let me do it in the palace kitchen, I'd bring my own pans an' things, so's not to put the help to any trouble,--an' I'd--"

"You--wrote--to--the Queen--of England," Philip exclaimed, "offering to make corn-bread and meal-pudding for the royal table!"

"That's what I did, an' I took pains to specify that 'twould be made of Claybanks corn-flour, Somerton's brand, too--not the common meal that again an' again has let down American corn in foreign minds to the level of the hog-trough. But it didn't work. Though I put in an addressed postal card for reply, the good lady never answered my letter. Too busy, I s'pose."

Philip stared at Grace, who pressed one hand closely to her lips, while Mary looked at her husband as if wondering in what entirely original and unexpected manner, and where, he might next break out. Then Philip said gravely:--

"How strange! Besides, I doubt whether any other man was ever so thoughtful as to enclose a reply-card to her Majesty."

"Well, after waitin' a spell I made up my mind that that particular cake was all dough. One day when I was in the shop, turnin' sample cakes an' bread out o' the pans, up drove a carriage, an' a couple o' well-dressed men, one of 'em short an' stout, an' the other kind o' tallish, came in an' looked about, kind o' cur'us. 'Try some samples, gentlemen?' said I, thinkin' they looked as if they was used enough to good feedin' to know it when they saw it. They nodded, stiffish-like, an' I set 'em down to a little table with a white cloth on it, an' I set before 'em dodgers, an' muffins, an' cracklin' bread, an' pan-cakes, all as hot as red pepper, an' some A 1 English butter to try 'em with--an' they do know how to make butter over in England!

"Well, they sampled 'em all, takin' two or three mouthfuls of each, an' exchanged opinions, which seemed to be favorable, with their eyes an' heads. While they were eatin', the shop began to get dark, an' when I looked around to see if a fog had come up all of a-sudden, as it sometimes does over there, I saw that the street was packed with people, an' they were jammed up to the doors an' windows. 'It's plain that gentlemen are not often on exhibition in this part of the town,' said I to myself. Suddenly the two got up, an' both said 'Thanks,' an' went out, an' when their carriage started, the crowd set up a cheer. 'Who are they?' I said to a man at the door. He looked at me as if I had tried to run a counterfeit on him, an' he said, 'Ah, me eye!' but another chap said:--

"'It's the Prince, an' the Duke o' Somethinorother.'"

"H'm! Yet you never got a reply on that postal card!"

"Never. I meant to try again, an' register the letter, so as to be sure that it got into the right hands, but somethin' kept tellin' me 'twas time to get back home. But if you'll let me make a trip again next fall, at my own expense, I'll try for better luck. Anyway, I'll work the corn-meal plan on Liverpool an' other cities, an' if it takes as well as it's done in London, 'twon't be long before a good many thousan's of bushels of Claybanks corn'll be saved from the distilleries, in the course of a year."

"Phil," Grace remarked, "Caleb's wish to go abroad in the fall reminds me that I want you to take me East for a few weeks in the spring, and we ought to begin our preparations at once. As 'tis near Christmas, Mary and I have been talking of presents, and particularly of one which you and Caleb can join in giving us and at the same time secure to yourselves more of the business and social companionship of your wives. We want a housekeeper."

"Sensible women!" Philip replied. "As to your husbands, they will be delighted--eh, Caleb? If it weren't that servants can't be had in this part of the country, and help, after the Claybanks manner, would have banished all sense of privacy, I should think myself a villain of deepest dye for having allowed the wife of the principal merchant of Claybanks to cook my meals and do all the remaining work of the house, and I don't doubt that Caleb feels similarly about Mary."

"Well," said Caleb, "work that wa'n't degradin' to my dear mother oughtn't to seem too mean for my wife; but, on the other hand, my mother shouldn't have done it if I could have helped it, 'specially if she'd have tried also to do a full day's clerk-work in a store once in ev'ry twenty-four hours."

"That explains our position," Grace added. "You two men are so full of new business of various kinds that Mary and I should be in the store all the while. Soon that dreadful pork-house must open for the season, and then we shall see less of you than ever. A good housekeeper will cost no more than a good clerk, and we must have one or the other. We don't want a clerk, if we can avoid it; at present we have the business entirely in our own hands, and when there are no customers in the store, we have as much privacy and freedom as if we were in the house. Mary knows a good woman in New York who will be glad to come here as maid-of-all-work, if she may be called housekeeper instead of servant; she has a grown son who wishes to be a farmer and to begin where land is cheaper and richer than it is in the vicinity of New York. With such a woman to care for the house we can spend most of our time in the store, hold the trade of such womenfolk as deal with us, and try to get the remainder; for where women and their daughters buy, the husband and brothers will also go."

"That's as sure as shootin'," said Caleb. "Do you know that in spite of the cyclone the store has done twice as much business since you came as it ever did before in the same months? I'd be downright sorry for the other merchants in town if I didn't believe that we're soon goin' to have a big increase of population, and there'll be business enough for all. Philip deserves credit for a lot of the new business, an' his wife for more, which isn't Philip's fault, but his fortune in havin' married just that sort of woman. If nobody else'll say it, I s'pose it won't be presumin' for me to say that a small percentage of the increase o' the last two or three months has come through a young woman whose name used to be Mary Truett."

"Small percentage, indeed!" Grace exclaimed. "Mary has secured more new business than I did in the same number of weeks, and she has done it so easily, too. She never seems to be thinking of business when she's talking to a customer, yet she instinctively knows what each woman wants, and places the proper goods before her, while I, very likely, would be thinking more of the woman than of the business."

"That's merely a result of experience," said Mary. "I'm nearly thirty, with a business experience of ten years; you were a mere chit of twenty-three when you married. Still, I don't believe any hired clerk, of no matter how many years' experience, could do half as well as either of us."

"For the very good reason," said Philip, "that both of you are practically owners of the business. No clerk can be as useful in any business as one of the proprietors."

"That remark would 'a' hurt my feelin's, a year ago," said Caleb; "but since my name went on that sign over the door, I've been lookin' backward at my old self a lot, an' lookin' down on my old self, too. Perhaps the difference has come o' gettin' rid o' malaria, perhaps o' takin' a wife; but I'm goin' to make b'lieve, after makin' full allowance for ev'rythin' else, that nobody can bring out the best that's in him until he begins to work for himself."

"No other person would dare criticise your old self in my presence, Caleb," said Philip, "but you've certainly acquired a new manner in business, and it's extremely fetching in more senses than one. One of the best things about it is that the natives notice it, and talk of it to one another, and are pleased by it, for you're one of them, you know. I'm a mere outsider."

"Do they really notice it?" asked Caleb, with a suggestion of the old-time pathos in his face and voice, "an' are they really pleased? Because, as you say, I'm really one of 'em, an' I'm proud of it. I've gone through pretty much ev'rythin' they have--'specially the malaria, an' now that their good times are comin', I'm glad I'm with 'em. But to think--" here he walked deliberately to a mirror and studied his own face for a moment--"to think that only so little time ago as when you came here I felt like an old, used-up man, an' I'd put my house in order, so to speak, against the time when I should have my last tussle with malaria, an' go under, with the hope o' goin' upward."

"That was before you met Mary," Grace suggested.

"Yes; that's so."

"And he must get rid of Mary before he can ever have an opportunity to feel that way again," said the lady referred to, as she looked proudly at her husband. "Old! Used up! The most spirited, active, hopeful, cheerful man I ever met! But, really, you were different, Caleb, when I first saw you; it doesn't seem possible that you're the same man. From what I've seen of the people here, I believe it is one of the ways of the West for men to try to look older than they are; you must use your influence--and example--to make them stop it. In New York a man seldom looks old until he is very near the grave; the most active and fine-looking business men are beyond threescore, as a rule--about twenty years older than you, Caleb."

"Ye--es, but they weren't brought up on malaria, pork, plough-handles, an' saleratus biscuit," said Caleb. "There's hope for a change here, though. Doc Taggess says there's nothin' like as much malaria in town as there was before the swamps were drained, and the good times comin', because o' the railroad, 'll make some more changes for the better, for all of us."

For a few moments each member of the quartet seemed to have dropped into revery. The silence was broken by Philip, who said:--

"Caleb, a year ago even you would not have dared to prophesy the changes that have been made, and those which are within sight, yet to you belongs the credit for all of them."

"To me? Well, I've heard and seen so many amazin' calculations in the past three months that I'm prepared to stand up under almost anythin', but I'd like to know how you figure it out that I've done anythin' in particular."

"'Tis easily told. If you hadn't fallen in love with Miss Truett, and she with you, her brother wouldn't have come out here, and the malaria wouldn't have been drained from the swamps, and the railway wouldn't have been projected, and the farmers wouldn't have become owners of guaranteed stocks, which has put new life into many of them, and there'd have been no inducement for manufacturers to use our water-power and our hard woods, and no bank would have been possible, nor any of the public improvements,--paving, water service, and others that will soon be under way. Don't you see?"