Part 8

Samuel grinned. He wagged his head back and forth until his wig shook in sympathetic anticipation. Years and years seemed to fall from him, until with his small, thick-set figure and his sparkling, youthful eyes he looked like a boy getting ready to steal apples. With short, firm, quicksteps he entered the dining-room. No one would have thought him a victim of lumbago from his gait now. Then of a sudden, Miss Jessica, no longer able to contain herself, went into her private room, where he had consulted with the ten, and danced around with glee.

“Miss Ellie, you darling!” she whispered to herself. “I know you’ll do it!”

Miss Ellie, in a prim, dainty blue gingham dress, with a great bib apron enveloping her slender figure, sat at the south kitchen window hulling berries, the basket of red fruit on the table beside her, a yellow earthen bowl in her lap. Her silver-gold hair caught sunbeam lights from the window until each single thread danced and twinkled. Little curls of silver gold nestled against the nape of her slender neck. Her face was that of an April lady’s—first the clouds chased across it, clouds of contempt, of anger and of regret; and then it took on a soft blaze of tenderness and of passionate longing.

She did not want Mr. Samuel Jessup or any other man. She scorned the woman who might take him today for his home and that little sum of money; but why—why had she with all her power of loving and of attracting love, all the unspent passion of motherhood that had been her ruling passion since the doll-baby age—why had she come to see sixty-one without finding Mr. Right? Lovers in moderate numbers she had had in the days of long ago, and old people do not forget the loves of the springtime, but all the while—all through the spring and the summer and this swiftly passing autumn—or was it really winter-time?—there had never come to her one whom she would rejoice to call her mate! Him she did not regret so much nowadays, or she regretted him with a vague, indistinct feeling. He might have liked strong drink and smoked a strong pipe indoors. But the children! Ah, the children that had never come!

She had outlived all her people. There were no nieces, no nephews, no one in all the world whom she could call her own, and there had never been and never could be a little grandchild to pull at her skirts.

“Dran-ma! I love oo, dran-ma!” Only yesterday she had heard a little child lisp this into the ears of Mrs. Young.

“Dran-ma, I love oo, dran-ma!” whispered Ellie, bending far over the berries with the hot gushing of tears coming into her eyes.

Both the ache of motherhood and the ache of grandmotherhood were upon her. Never to have felt the touch of her own babe at her breast! And, now that old age had withered the breast, never to hear the prattle of grandchildren in her ears! And her ears were still so finely attuned, unlike the average grandmother! Miss Ellie looked up from her berries at the window. Her eyes were too dim to see, and wiping the tears away she looked out of the window again, down the garden. So, young girls stare wistfully as if they would look to the very end of the world and discover what, in the very end, may come to them.

The dining-room door opened. Miss Ellie turned back to her task. She scorned to look up and ask her fellow inmate of the Home who had won Samuel Jessup. It was probably Mrs. Homan coming to help with the supper. Steps came across the kitchen. Ellie bent far over the yellow bowl and went on with her berry hulling. It needed a great many berries to supply that supper table. The sunbeam darted down from the top of Ellie’s head to seek out with its twinkling, gold-shod feet the silver-gold curls in Ellie’s neck. The steps paused close beside Ellie. Suddenly the spinster realized that they were not Mrs. Homan’s steps and she looked up. Scorn, indignation, amazement, and then something more subtle, something which one sees in faces everywhere all over the world, and something which makes the world more beautiful, crossed her face. There stood Samuel Jessup with the huge market basket in one hand. He held out the basket to Miss Ellie. He looked at her eagerly, almost with piteous appeal, as if to say:

“They would have none of it, but—_you_! _You?_”

The red table cover had been thrown off the basket. There lay the contents before Miss Ellie’s eyes. A big white pillow and resting upon it, a baby—a real, live, pink-and-white, wide-awake baby. More than this, a baby who at first sight of Miss Ellie holding poised in her hand a huge, red strawberry, struggled up into a sitting position, held out his two pudgy, dimpled little hands and cried with the softest, most ecstatic little cry imaginable: “Dranny!”

The baby’s grandmother had died last week, but neither Miss Ellie nor the baby knew that, and Samuel Jessup kept a wise silence.

Trembling, agitated, scarcely able to see or hear for the moment following the baby’s cry, Miss Ellie put down the red berry, placed the bowl on the table, and then turned to take the baby. She asked no questions. She simply took him. She knew that he was hers. Even now again—would her heart burst with joy and her ears lose their power of hearing!—even now again he was murmuring and mumbling: “Dranny! Dranny!” Now she knew that she would hear the prattle of one she called grandchild in her ears and guide with her shriveled old hands the unsteady movements of these little feet. Samuel Jessup counted not at all just then; but if he had attempted to take away that baby, she would have fought him like a mother-tigress.

Samuel had meant to say much. He said nothing, but simply put his hand against his throat and looked at her. He saw her devour with eyes and lips the tender little form—saw her seek out the baby wrinkles in the fat little dimpled neck—saw her munch hungrily at the baby’s yellow curls—saw her feel every bone of the little body through the stiff starchy white dress as if she loved each one more than the other. And then at length he watched her unfasten the shoes, pull off the tiny white socks and then adore with the pent-up passion of the lonely years the adorable little rosy heel of his baby.

Samuel cleared his throat with a loud noise and walked across the room. He noticed a red calico curtain at the cupboard door and wondered whether Miss Ellie had made it. In his mind’s eye, he saw another kitchen, smaller than this, cosier, but still with red calico curtains at the cupboard door and crisp white swiss ones—as crisp as the baby’s dress—at the windows. He knew that Miss Ellie would not want to get those curtains stained up with tobacco smoke—she looked so dainty—so he would volunteer to do his smoking on the back porch. If she left the window open, he could look through and talk to her and the little one. He came beside Miss Ellie’s chair and stood looking down at her lovely head and the baby’s cheek pressed against her own. The baby, quieted with happiness against that breast, was profoundly still.

Through the open door came a wonderful fragrance—as the fragrance of youthful love—blown in from the syringa bush beside the kitchen door. They must plant a syringa beside the kitchen door-step in the new home, thought Samuel. Out of the stillness, he spoke, his voice very husky.

“You be a woman arter my own heart—I knowed it when I see you a-settin’ here a-hullin’ berries. It’s more than I ’spected. I never dreamed it could be: I was that old. But, Miss Ellie, you be—you be—” He lost his voice entirely for a space and fearfully, reverently, he lifted in his trembling fingers one of the silver-gold curls that lay on her neck, lifted it and immediately let it fall in place again. “You be,” he whispered, “a woman arter my own heart. I never found sech a one when I was young. I know it now, fer ef I had, I wouldn’t ’a’ been afeared of no bad luck fer neither her ner me. I’d a took her an’—” another pause and then with brave, masculine assurance, “she’d ’a’ took me.”

Miss Ellie did not move, she did not speak. She felt that his voice was very far away, away off back in her youth where she had dreamed of the mate who was yet to come. Closer she pressed her cheek to the baby’s and so assured herself that baby and the man who had brought her the baby were real and belonged to today.

Samuel was speaking again, his hand now on the back of her chair, so that it brushed against the ruffle that ran across the shoulders of her apron.

“I allers wanted children, an’ when I got too old to have the hope o’ ever a-marryin’, I used ter say ter myself: ‘Oh, ef they was only leetle grand-younguns now!’ Then the fortune come. Says I fust thing: ‘I’ll have a baby. I’ll be a granddaddy yit.’ Thar wa’n’t much mean about me. I be sixty-nine, but I wanted my own home, an’ my own wife, an’ my own baby. But I wanted the baby most of all. So the fust thing I done when the money come was ter go to that thar Margaret Jane Orphan Asylum an git this here baby. He hadn’t been there but a week. Jest lost his grandma an’ his grandpa—didn’t yer, yer pore leetle cuss, yer? He’s legally adopted. His name is Samuel Biggs Jessup, Jr. Ain’t he a wallopin’ fine feller!”

Samuel exploded at the last. His bashfulness, his self-depreciation, his afraidness, were all gone. He bent over, his hands on his knees, and looked into the baby’s face. The baby’s face was very close to Ellie’s. The baby’s face was dimpled and smiling, while over Ellie’s face there was a flush of joyous young motherhood together with the proud, all-wondering delight of grandmotherhood, and blending with both, a sweet shame and shrinking such as no one but a virgin can wear. Oh, exquisite, young-old Miss Ellie! Your eyes swimming in unshed tears were so beautiful then with the inner light that Samuel blinked to see them.

“Miss Ellie,” he whispered. Very still was the kitchen. The syringa outside the door shook out its perfume just for these two. The wind murmured through the fragrant flowers—it murmured:

“Again and again and again! Even for the old, this same old story!”

“Ellie,” whispered Samuel. “I want you even more than I want the baby. Will you marry me?”

Again the silence fell, and after a long while, the voice of Ellie’s dream-swept, ideal-keeping youth came from within the curves of the baby’s cheek where her lips were hiding:

“Samuel, you been a long time comin’.” Her voice faltered and then gathering a girlish tremor went on, “But, even ef you hadn’t brought the baby, I should say you was wuth all the waitin’.”

_Control or Ownership?_

BY CHARLES Q. DE FRANCE

Few men who have studied the question, and who are free to make a frank statement of their views, see much hope for a “square deal” in railroad rates under private ownership. Most of those who really want a square deal, however, are giving the President their moral support, not because they expect him to solve the problem with his formula of “control,” but because they feel that the agitation he has caused and is fomenting will inure to the benefit of the public ownership and operation idea. His opponents charge as much—and they are correct. Many of their arguments against control are valid, too, if we grant that private ownership in this age of our civilization is best. Of course, we do not grant that.

It seems certain at this writing (March 4) that the Hepburn-Dolliver bill will become a law—one of those dead letters, so many of which already encumber our Federal and State statute books. That it cannot and will not be enforced, except in a few spectacular instances to fool the multitude, is as certain as anything in human affairs. The roads will continue to take all that the traffic will bear, to give rebates, and to water stock in the good old way. If any doubt this, let them read the intensely interesting letters in various newspapers sent out each week from Washington by Lincoln Steffens. Mr. Steffens has, after most thorough investigation, reached the conclusion that our people are suffering not so much because of bribery and corruption as from having abdicated in favor of the railroads and other big corporations. It is not necessary now for a railroad corporation to bribe a congressman or senator—because most of these supposed people’s representatives are actually the railroad representatives, and many of them heavy stockholders.

Mr. Steffens can lay no claim to a patent on this information by right of original discovery, for Populists said the same thing (only not so aptly, perhaps), twelve to fifteen years ago. But he is reaching an audience that the Populists did not and possibly never could reach. And he tells the story so well that we must accord him the highest meed of praise. I cannot refrain from quoting a paragraph concerning the spectacle he sees in Washington (New York _World_, March 4):

“We, the people of the United States, are the petitioners. (For railroad rate legislation). We are coming here asking through the President that that bill (Hepburn-Dolliver) be passed so as to relieve us from certain abuses practised everywhere by our chartered common carriers, the railroads. And the representatives of those railroads and their allied corporations sit here enthroned; and they decide upon our case. They may decide in our favor but—the intolerable fact of it all is—they decide. They rule; they may be good rulers; but they rule.”

That is the deliberate statement of a man who has gained an enviable reputation for thorough-going investigation. He is not a demagogue or a writer of penny-dreadfuls. He is on the ground and supports every one of his general statements with concrete examples.

Mr. Steffens blames the people for the present state of affairs. I heartily agree with him. But I believe we should try to reason out where the first big mistake was made and arrive at a conclusion as to the best way out of the difficulty, unless, perchance, our people really like the rule of railroad oligarchy. I believe it is a useless task to chide the people for lack of civic righteousness, for indifference, for supineness, for failure to go to the primaries, etc., unless we point out clearly how complete sovereignty may be secured. It is useless to scold a man for not filling his lungs with oxygen, if you advise him to stay in a room overcharged with carbonic acid gas.

The present state of affairs is due primarily to two great causes, or really to one cause operating through two different channels:

(_a_) The private ownership of railroads.

(_b_) The private control of the issue and circulation of money.

The latter cause, in my judgment, is immeasurably greater than the former; but public opinion is now directed toward the former, so that a discussion of it is sure of a careful hearing. I do not insist that permitting the private ownership of railroads was an irremediable mistake; in fact, there is much good argument in favor of the contention that under private ownership the roads were developed faster and better than they, in all likelihood, would have been under public ownership. And we may admit, without at all prejudicing our case, that in the evolution of railroading, private ownership was best at the start. This is not capable of demonstration—but we need not quarrel over it.

A railroad is a highway; and a highway is one of the attributes of sovereignty. Whoever owns and controls the road is to that extent a sovereign. And under our aggravated system of _laissez faire_, ownership and control always go together, except with the slightest modifications. Hence, with private ownership of railroads, it was inevitable that we should reach just such a state of affairs as Mr. Steffens pictures. Why shouldn’t “representatives of those railroads and their allied corporations” sit here enthroned?

The owners of those roads are absolute sovereigns over the principal avenue for the distribution of commodities; and under our highly developed methods of production, with extreme division of labor, a great distribution of commodities is absolutely essential. With power to tax at will all users of highways, their owners can control, in a great measure, all productive industry.

I am not a believer in total depravity. I can see no necessity or reason for calling railroad magnates hard names, or accusing them of unpatriotic scheming for power—except, possibly, for the purpose of arousing a lethargic people to a sense of their own wrongs. Being an actual sovereign, because owning the highways—the real, vital highways—and possessing the power to tax, I can understand how the railroads were, in a great measure, compelled to unite _de jure_ and _de facto_ sovereignty. With non-railroad or anti-railroad men in the legislative, administrative and judicial bodies, “sand-bagging” and hold-ups were common. In self-defense (for no man ever lived who likes to be deprived of power), the railroads bribed and corrupted. They were by no means the sole culprits. The taker of a bribe is just as despicable as the giver. But gradually the system evolved to its present state—the union of all sovereign powers. The Government persisted in its refusal to go into the railroad business—so the railroads quite naturally went into the governing business.

We cannot undo what has been done. We cannot turn back the wheels of time and begin all over again with public ownership of railroads; but we can, and I think we will, in not many years hence, take over the railroads and make them public property, operating them by Government officials. The union of sovereign powers is now complete: the owners of highways and “their allied corporations,” by their representatives, are now enthroned as the actual Government. This is as it should be, except that the ownership is too limited. _It should be made to include the whole people._

“Don’t think that I ain’t willin’ for you to have the home-place like pa wanted you to, Indie,” said the thin, tired voice that was fast wearing into silence, “’cause I am. It’s no more ’n right after all you’ve done for me ’n pa. The t’others has all got homes o’ their own an’ you ain’t got nobody to fall back on. But, Indie, promise me you won’t close the door agin poor Tom if he should come back. Give him shelter an’ welcome for my sake, won’t you?”

Indie promised solemnly. Her thoughts went back to one still, tranquil night years before, when the doors of that same home had been closed against the wayward son by the father who vowed never to look upon his boy’s face again. The mother—a frail, submissive, toil-worn woman—had mourned in secret, but her prayers had been unanswered.

“You’ve been dreadful good to us,” the dying voice murmured; “I hope the Lord will make it up to you somehow, Indie. Do you reckon the girls will git here ’fore I die?”

“Yes, Aunt Viney, I really b’lieve they will. But you go to sleep if you can. I’ll wake you as soon as they git here.”

By and by the sick woman fell into a gentle doze that deepened into the sleep that knows no earthly waking. The married daughters came too late, but if they were greatly grieved over their mother’s death they made little outward sign. They stayed at the home place for two days, during which the will was read. It deeded all that remained of the Pasely farm, that had been divided and subdivided to supply marriage portions for four, to Indie, in consideration of her faithful services for the old folks.

“Maybe you can ketch Lem Powers with this bait,” was Louise’s spiteful comment, after the reading was over. “Everyone knows you always wanted him bad enough.”

Mary, the eldest cousin, laughed dryly. “Indie can’t complain of the way our folks treated her,” she said with ill-concealed bitterness. “This farm is worth a thousand dollars above the mortgage money. It ain’t many poor relations that has property like this left to ’em.”

“I guess Indie knows that she didn’t come by it plum honest,” the third cousin remarked. “She knowed how to work around the old folks so’s to git ’em to leave her what they had. Well, we ain’t the kind to make trouble even if we _have_ been wronged.”

When they had gone, Indie abandoned herself to a passion of helpless, piteous grief. She recalled one cruel hour long ago when her cousin Louise had accused her of caring, unasked, for friendly, pleasant Lem Powers, whose off-hand calls on the family stood out in Indie’s memory as the brightest events of her lonely, toilful life. Indie was twenty-three and plain, for the flower-like prettiness of her early childhood had long since succumbed to the triple blight of care and drudgery and loneliness. It had been known among her neighbors and acquaintances that Indie, at the age of eighteen, had never been “spoke for,” wherefore she had meekly accepted the stigma of spinsterhood that comes very early to the Southern country girl and had withdrawn from the mild frivolities of youth to become a household drudge in her uncle’s family in order that her cousins might have more leisure and freedom. After the death of her hard-working uncle, she had stayed with her ailing aunt while the girls married and left her.

“I wisht I’d died instid of Aunt Viney,” Indie sobbed in utter loneliness.

For two years Indie lived quietly and comfortably in the old home, paying her simple expenses by raising garden truck for the town hotel. Then a letter came from Tom’s widow imploring his people to send her enough money to defray Tom’s funeral expenses to avert his threatened burial in the potter’s field. It was a pathetic appeal, involving the brief story of Tom’s struggles, how he had worked his way with his little family from Texas to the old home state, where he had obtained employment in a factory. He had met his death through a boiler explosion the day before the letter was written. Tom had always hoped for a reconciliation in spite of his father’s unyielding hardness, the widow wrote. In conclusion, she begged his people not to allow his body to be consigned to a nameless grave.

Indie went straight to Mr. Griggs, the real estate agent, who held the four-hundred-dollar mortgage on her farm, and asked him to lend her a hundred dollars. He refused gently but firmly.

“Why, Indie, by the time you sell that farm it may not be worth five hundred dollars in all,” he said. “The interest on the mortgage is about due now and here you are wanting to borrow more!”

“It’s for a particular purpose that can’t wait a day,” Indie told him anxiously, trembling in every nerve with the fear of disappointment.

“I can’t help that. Business is business you know, and every man must look out for his own interests. There is only one way to get that money and that is to sell the place as it stands before the debts eat it up completely. I know a party that would buy, probably.”

“Oh, I couldn’t sell the only home I’ve got,” Indie said piteously.

“It’ll come to that in the end, anyhow,” Griggs answered indifferently. “My advice is to get rid of it now, while there is a few dollars in it for you. Anyway, you can’t raise that hundred you want any other way. If I was in your place I’d sell and go down to Birmingham and get work in the factory, where you’ll make something besides a mere living.”

Indie’s heart almost stopped beating at the very thought of leaving the old familiar haunts for a strange city. Yet, Tom must have a decent burial at any cost to herself.

“What could you get for the farm?” Indie asked huskily.

“Eight or nine hundred I reckon.”