Robert Herrick

JASONVILLE, INDIANA

The Harringtons—The village magnate—A young hoodlum—On the road to school—The first woman—Disgrace, and a girl's will—An unfortunate coincidence—In trouble again—May loses faith—The end of Jasonville—Discharged—A loan—Charity—The positive young lady hopes I shall start right—The lake front once more—I preach myself a good sermon

The Harringtons were pretty well known in Greene County, Indiana. Father moved to Jasonville just after the war, when the place was not much more than a cross-roads with a prospect of a railroad sometime. Ours was the first brick house, built after the kind he and mother used to know back in York State. And he set up the largest general store in that district and made money. Then he lost most of it when the oil boom first came.

Mother and he set great store by education,—if father hadn't gone to the war he wouldn't have been keeping a country store,—and they helped start the first township high school in our part of the state. And he sent Will, my older brother, and me to the Methodist school at Eureka, which was the best he could do for us. There wasn't much learning to be had in Eureka "College," however; the two or three old preachers and women who composed the faculty were too busy trying to keep the boys from playing cards and smoking or chewing to teach us much.

Perhaps I was a bit of a hoodlum as a boy, anyway. The trouble started with the judge—Judge Sorrell. He was a local light, who held a mortgage on 'most everything in town (including our store—after father went into oil). We boys had always heard at home how hard and mean the judge was, and dishonest, too; for in some of the oil deals he had tricked folks out of their property. It wasn't so strange, then, that we youngsters took liberties with the judge's belongings that the older folks did not dare to. The judge's fine stock used to come in from the field done up, raced to death, and the orchard by the creek just out of town (which had belonged to us once) rarely brought a good crop to maturity. We made ourselves believe that the judge didn't really own it, and treated him as a trespasser. So one night, when the judge made a hasty visit to our house after one of the "raids," my father found me in bed with a wet suit of clothes on, which I had been forced to sacrifice in the creek. The end of that lark was that father had to pay a good sum for my private interpretation of the laws of property, and I spent the rest of the summer on a farm doing a man's work.

Perhaps if it hadn't been for that ducking in the river and what followed, I might have come out just a plain thief. While I was sweating on that farm I saw the folly of running against common notions about property. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted what my neighbor considered to be his, I must get the law to do the business for me. For the first time it dawned on me how wonderful is that system which shuts up one man in jail for taking a few dollars' worth of truck that doesn't belong to him, and honors the man who steals his millions—if he robs in the legal way! Yes, the old judge knocked some good worldly sense into me.

(Nevertheless, old Sorrell needn't have hounded me after I came back to Jasonville, and carried his malice to the point of keeping me from getting a job when I was hoping to make a fair start so that I could ask May Rudge to marry me. But all that was some time later.)

May was one of that handful of young women who in those days stood being sneered at for wanting to go to college with their brothers. We were in the same classes at Eureka two years before I noticed her much. She was little and pale and delicate—with serious, cold gray eyes, and a mouth that was always laughing at you. I can see to-day the very spot where she stood when I first spoke to her. Good weather I used to drive over from father's to Eureka, and one spring morning I happened to drive by the Rudge farm on my way to school instead of taking the pike, which was shorter. There was a long level stretch of road straightaway between two pieces of green meadow, and there, ahead of me, I saw the girl, walking steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I slowed up with the idea that she might give me a nod or a word; but she kept her pace as though she were thinking of things too far off to notice a horse and buggy on the road. Somehow I wanted to make her speak. Pretty soon I said:—

"Won't you ride to school with me, Miss May?"

Then she turned her head, not the least flustered like other girls, and looked me square in the eye for a minute. I knew she was wondering what made me speak to her then, for the boys at school never took notice of the college girls. But she got into the buggy and sat prim and solemn by my side. We jogged along between the meadows, which were bright with flowers and the soft, green grass of spring. The big timber along the roadside and between the pasture lands had just leaved out, and the long branches hung daintily in the misty morning air. All of a sudden I felt mighty happy to be there with her. I think her first words were,—"Do you come this way often?"

"Perhaps I shall be coming this way oftener now," I made bold to answer.

Her lips trembled in a little ironical smile, and the least bit of red sprang into her white face. I said, "It isn't as short as the pike, but it is a prettier road."

The smile deepened, and I had it on my tongue to add, "I shall be coming this way every morning if you will ride with me." But I was afraid of that smiling mouth.

(Of course I didn't tell his Honor all this, but I add it now, together with other matters that concern me and belong here. It will help to explain what happened later.)

So that fine spring morning, when I was seventeen, I first took note of what a woman is. The rest of that year I used to drive the prim little girl back and forth between her father's farm and school. I was no scholar like her, and she never went about with the other girls to parties. She wasn't in the least free and easy with the boys. In those days most girls didn't think much of a fellow who wouldn't take his chances to kiss them when he could. Evenings, when we called, we used to pull the parlor door to and sit holding hands with the young woman of our admiration. And no harm ever came of it that I know: most of those girls made good wives when the time came, for all they were easy and tender and ready to make love in the days of their youth.

But once, when I tried to put my arm about May Rudge, as we were driving along the lonely road, she turned and looked at me out of those cold gray eyes. Her mouth rippled in that little ironical way, as if she were laughing down in her mind. She never said a word or pulled away from me, but I didn't care to go on.

May gave me ambition, and she made me want to be steady and good, though she never said anything about it. But now and then I would break away and get myself into some fool scrape. Such was the time when I came back from a Terre Haute party pretty light-headed, and went with some others to wake up the old Methodist president of the college. I don't remember what happened then, but the next morning at chapel the old boy let loose on "wine and wantoning," and called me by name. I knew that I had done for myself at Eureka, and I was pretty mad to be singled out for reprobation from all the offenders. I got up from my seat and walked out while the school stared. As I was getting my horse from the place where I kept it, May Rudge came into the yard.

"You aren't going this way?" she demanded quickly.

"I don't see as there's much use waiting for bouquets."

"You aren't going without apologizing!" she flashed out.

To tell the truth, that had never occurred to me. It seemed she cared less for the disgrace than for the way I took it. So in the end, before I left town, I drove up to the president's house, apologized, and got my dismissal in due form, and was told I should go to hell unless I was converted straightway. Then May drove down the street with me in face of the whole school, who contrived to be there to see my departure.

I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then.

"I guess this ends my education, and being a lawyer, and all that," I said gloomily, as we drew near the Rudge farm. "Dad will never forgive this. He thinks rum is the best road to hell, the same as the old preacher. He won't sell a glass of cider in the store."

"There are other kinds of work," she answered. "You can show them just the same you know what's right."

"But you'll never marry a man who isn't educated," I said boldly.

"I'll never marry a man who hasn't principles—and religion," she replied without a blush.

"So I must be good and pious, as well as educated?"

"You must be a man"—and her lips curved ironically—"and now you are just a boy."

But I held her hand when I helped her from the buggy, and I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then.

Father and mother took my expulsion from school very hard, as I expected. Father especially—who had begun to brag somewhat at the store about my being a lawyer and beating the judge out—was so bitter that I told him if he would give me fifty dollars I would go off somewhere and never trouble him again.

"You ask me to give you fifty dollars to go to hell with!" he shouted out.

"Put me in the store, then, and let me earn it. Give me the same money you give Will."

But father didn't want me around the store for folks to see. So I had to go out to a farm once more, to a place that father was working on shares with a Swede. I spent the better part of two years on that farm, living with the old Swede, and earning mighty little but my keep. For father gave me a dollar now and then, but no regular wages. I could get sight of May only on a Sunday. She was teaching her first school in another county. Father and mother Rudge had never liked me: they looked higher for May than to marry a poor farm-hand, who had a bad name in the town. My brother Will, who was a quiet, church-going fellow, had learned his way to the Rudge place by this time, and the old people favored him.

After a while I heard of a chance in a surveyor's office at Terre Haute, but old Sorrell, who had more business than any ten men in that part of the country, met the surveyor on the train, and when I reached the office there wasn't any job for me. That night, when I got back from Terre Haute, I told my folks that I was going to Chicago. The next day I asked my father again for some money. Mother answered for him:—

"Will don't ask us for money. It won't be fair to him."

"So he's to have the store and my girl too," I said bitterly.

"May Rudge isn't the girl to marry a young man who's wild."

"I'll find that out for myself!"

Always having had a pretty fair opinion of myself, I found it hard to be patient and earn good-will by my own deserts. So I said rather foolishly to father:—

"Will you give me a few dollars to start me with? I have earned it all right, and I am asking you for the last time."

It was a kind of threat, and I am sorry enough for it now. I suspect he hadn't the money, for things were going badly with him. He answered pretty warmly that I should wait a long time before he gave me another dollar to throw away. I turned on my heel without a word to him or mother, and went out of the house with the resolve not to return.

But before I left Jasonville to make my plunge into the world I would see May Rudge. I wanted to say to her: "Which will you have? Choose now!" So I turned about and started for the Rudge farm, which was about a mile from the town, beyond the old place on the creek that used to belong to us. Judge Sorrell had put up a large new barn on the place, where he kept some fine blooded stock that he had been at considerable expense to import. I had never been inside the barn, and as I passed it that afternoon, it came into my mind, for no particular reason, to turn in at the judge's farm and go by the new building. Maybe I thought the old judge would be around somewhere, and I should have the chance before I left Jasonville to tell him what I thought of his dirty, sneaking ways.

But there was no one in the big barn, apparently, or anywhere on the place, and after looking about for a little I went on to May's. I came up to the Rudge farm from the back, having taken a cut across the fields.

As I drew near the house I saw Will and May sitting under an apple tree talking. I walked on slowly, my anger somehow rising against them both. There was nothing wrong in their being there—nothing at all; but I was ready to fire at the first sign. By the looks of it, mother was right: they were already sweethearts. Will seemed to have something very earnest to say to May. He took hold of one of her hands, and she didn't draw it away at once.... There wasn't anything more to keep me in Jasonville.

I kept right on up the country road, without much notion of where I was going to, too hot and angry to think about anything but those two under the apple tree. I had not gone far before I heard behind me a great rushing noise, like the sudden sweep of a tornado, and then a following roar. I looked up across the fields, and there was the judge's fine new barn one mass of red flame and black smoke. It was roaring so that I could hear it plainly a quarter of a mile away. Naturally, I started to run for the fire, and ran hard all the way across the fields. By the time I got there some men from town had arrived and were rushing around crazily. But they hadn't got out the live stock, and there was no chance now to save a hen. The judge drove up presently, and we all stood around and stared at the fire. After a time I began to think it was time for me to move on if I was to get to any place that night. I slipped off and started up the road once more. I hadn't gone far, however, before I was overtaken by a buggy in which was one of the men who had been at the fire.

"Where be yer goin', Van?" he asked peremptorily.

"I don't know as I am called on to tell you, Sam," I answered back.

"Yes, you be," he said more kindly. "I guess you'll have to jump right in here, anyways, and ride back with me. The judge wants to ask you a few questions about this here fire."

"I don't answer any of the judge's questions!" I replied sharply enough, not yet seeing what the man was after. But he told me bluntly enough that I was suspected of setting fire to the barn, and drove me back to the town, where I stayed in the sheriff's custody until my uncle came late that night and bailed me out. Will was with him. Father didn't want me to come home, so Will let me understand. Neither he nor my uncle thought I was innocent, but they hoped that there might not be enough evidence to convict me. Some one on the creek road had seen me going past the barn a little time before the fire was discovered, and that was the only ground for suspecting me.

The next morning I got my uncle (who wouldn't trust me out of his sight) to drive me over to the Rudge place. He sat in the team while I went up to the house and knocked. I was feeling pretty desperate in my mind, but if May would only believe my story, I shouldn't care about the others. She would understand quick enough why I never appeared at the farm the day before. Old man Rudge came to the door, and when he saw me, he drew back and asked me what my business was.

"I want to see May," I said.

"I guess she don't want much to see you."

"I must see her."

The sound of our voices brought Mrs. Rudge from the kitchen.

"Mother," old Rudge said, "Van wants to see May."

"Well, Cyrus, it won't do any harm, I guess."

When May came to the door she waited for me to speak.

"I want to tell you, May," I said slowly, "that I didn't have any hand in burning the judge's barn."

"I don't want to believe you did," she said.

"But you do all the same!" I cried sharply.

"Every one says you did, Van," she answered doubtfully.

"So you think I could do a mean, sneaky thing like that?" I replied hotly, and added bitterly: "And then not have sense enough to get out of the way! Well, I know what this means: you and Will have put your heads together. You're welcome to him!"

"You've no reason to say such things, Van!" she exclaimed.

"There ain't no use in you talking with my girl, Harrington," put in Rudge, who had come back to the door. "And I don't want you coming here any more."

"How about that, May?" I asked. "Do you tell me to go?"

Her lips trembled, and she looked at me more kindly. Perhaps in another moment she would have answered and not failed me. But hot and heady as I was by nature, and smarting from all that had happened, I wanted a ready answer: I would not plead for myself.

"So you won't take my word for it?" I said, turning away.

"The word of a drunkard and a good-for-nothing!" the old man fired after me.

"Oh, father! don't," I heard May say. Then perhaps she called my name. But I was at the gate, and too proud to turn back.

I was discharged the next week. Although there was nothing against me except the fact that I had been seen about the barn previous to the fire, and the well-known enmity between me and the judge, it would have gone hard with me had it not been for the fact that in the ruins of the burned barn they found the remains of an old farm-hand, who had probably wandered in there while drunk and set the place on fire with his pipe.

When I was released my uncle said the folks were ready to have me back home; but without a word I started north on the county road in the direction of the great city.

"So," said his Honor, when I had finished my story in the dingy chamber of the police court, "you want me to believe that you really had no hand in firing that barn any more than you took this lady's purse?"

But he smiled to himself, at his own penetration, I suppose, and when we were back in the court room that dreaded sentence fell from his lips like a shot,—"Officer, the prisoner is discharged."

"I knew he was innocent!" the young lady exclaimed the next instant.

"But, Judge, where is the purse and my friend Worden's fur coat?" the old gentleman protested.

"You don't see them about him, do you, Doctor?" the judge inquired blandly. Then he turned to me: "Edward, I think that you have told me an honest story. I hope so."

He took a coin from his pocket.

"Here's a dollar, my boy. Buy a ticket for as far as this will take you, and walk the rest of the way home."

"I guess I have come to Chicago to stay," I answered. "They aren't breaking their hearts over losing me down home."

"Well, my son, as you think best. In this glorious Republic it is every man's first privilege to take his own road to hell. But, at any rate, get a good dinner to start on. We don't serve first-class meals here."

"I'll return this as soon as I can," I said, picking up the coin.

"The sooner the better; and the less we see of each other in the future, the better, eh?"

I grinned, and started for the door through which I had been brought into court, but an officer pointed to another door that led to the street. As I made for it I passed near the young lady. She called to me:—

"Mister, mister, what will you do now?"

"Get something to eat first, and then look for another purse, perhaps," I replied.

She blushed very prettily.

"I am sorry I accused you, but you were looking at me so hard just then—I thought.... I want you to take this!"

She tried to give me a bill rolled up in a little wad.

"No, thanks," I said, moving off.

"But you may need it. Every one says it's so hard to find work."

"Well, I don't take money from a woman."

"Oh!" She blushed again.

Then she ran to the old gentleman, who was talking to the judge, and got from him a little black memorandum-book.

"You see, my cards were all in the purse. But there!" she said, writing down her name and address on the first page. "You will know now where to come in case you need help or advice."

"Thank you," I replied, taking the book.

"I do so want to help you to start right and become a good man," she said timidly. "Won't you try to show your friends that they were mistaken in you?"

She turned her eyes up at me appealingly as if she were asking it as a favor to her. I felt foolish and began to laugh, but stopped, for she looked hurt.

"I guess, miss, it don't work quite that way. Of course, I mean to start fresh—but I shan't do it even for your sake. All the same, when you see me next it won't be in a police station."

"That's right!" she exclaimed, beaming at me with her round blue eyes. "I should like to feel that I hadn't hurt you—made you worse."

"Oh, you needn't worry about that, miss. I guess I'm not much worse off for a night in the police station."

She held out her hand and I took it.

"Sarah! Sarah!" the old gentleman called as we were shaking hands. He seemed rather shocked, but the judge looked up at us and smiled quizzically.

Outside it was a warm, pleasant day; the wind was blowing merrily through the dirty street toward the blue lake. For the moment I did not worry over what was to come next. The first thing I did was to get a good meal.

After that refreshment I sauntered forth in the direction of the lake front—the most homelike place I could think of. The roar of the city ran through my head like the clatter of a mill. I seemed to be just a feeble atom of waste in the great stream of life flowing around me.

When I reached the desolate strip of weeds and sand between the avenue and the railroad, the first relay of bums was beginning to round up for the night. The sight of their tough faces filled me with a new disgust; I turned back to the busy avenue, where men and women were driving to and fro with plenty to do and think, and then and there I turned on myself and gave myself a good cussing. Here I was more than twenty, and just a plain fool, and had been ever since I could remember. When I had rid myself of several layers of conceit it began to dawn on me that this was a world where one had to step lively if he wasn't to join the ranks of the bums back there in the sand. That was the most valuable lot of thinking I ever did in my life. It took the sorehead feeling of wronged genius out of me for good and all. Pretty soon I straightened my back and started for the city to find somewhere a bite of food and a roof to cover my head.

And afterward there would be time to think of conquering the world!