The pride of Tellfair

Front matter

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS + MCMIII

Copyright, 1903, by Harper & Brothers

II

BERTHA slipped into her father's library that evening. She would have preferred, for certain reasons, to be alone; but catching Harvey Congreve out of his library was like catching a woodchuck out of its hole, and he now sat by his green-shaded lamp, reading. His wheeled chair stood near, to which he could transfer himself, if necessary, without help.

Neither Harvey's wife nor daughter read much, or placed any proper value upon his fine library, or upon the sacrifices he had made to get it. Mrs. Congreve was sure, though, that a great many dollars had gone for books, before Harvey's paralysis — which put an end to book-buying for him — that might better have gone for clothes. Possibly she was right.

As Bertha wandered vaguely from one case to another, her father, apparently absorbed in his book, watched her curiously. To see her skimming his titles gave him a pleasure akin, perhaps, to that which an old gardener feels when a humming-bird invades his fragrant kingdom and sips nectar from his flowers.

"What are you looking for, pet?" he asked, finally.

"Oh, just something to read," she answered, with forced carelessness.

"The fiction is over here, if you want that."

"I don't want a story. I want something, papa," she added, half -confidingly, "to improve my mind. I don't think I have been reading enough."

"Possibly not," said he, hiding a smile. His faith in her mental improvement may not have been strong, with the warm summer nights just coming on. " There are biography, history, travel, philosophy, a dash of theology, science — anything you want. Have you any preference?"

She glanced at him to see that he was not making fun.

"Have you a life of Lincoln?" she asked, after a moment. Davenport had mentioned such a book once.

Congreve had ten or twelve lives of Lincoln, but, without mentioning this fact, he directed her to a popular work in two small volumes of plain, readable type. Bertha took the books out into the sitting-room and cautiously opened one of them.

She was a graduate of the Tellfair High School, with a good record in history. It had been no trouble for her, before an examination, to stuff her head as full of dates and battles and kings as a sunflower is of seed; and there had been a time when she could name the Presidents of the United States, forward or backward, as rapidly as a good Lutheran repeats his catechism the day before confirmation.

But her historical facts, of course, meant nothing — had no continuity or organization. Now and then, in her scrappy reading, she came across a name which was vaguely familiar — the Missouri Compromise, Calhoun, Henry Clay, Nullification, Fugitive Slave Law. But in the fog of history they had no proper proportions or perspective, and touched shoulders with Patrick Henry, the Pilgrim Fathers, Battle of Lexington, General Braddock, and — Paul Revere's ride.

It is hardly an exaggeration, therefore, to say that an Australian Bushman, dropped into Broadway from the clouds, could hardly form hazier notions of the teeming

i3 life around him than Bertha held of the great moral and political movements preceding the Civil War, into which her biography now plunged her after a brief survey of Lincoln's rail-splitting days. But the girl had a streak of perseverance in her make-up, and she steadily turned page after page.

Her mother was cutting out a shirt - waist in the same room, moving about the table with the swift, springy step of a girl, whistling softly to herself, as happy and absorbed as a child with its first doll's dress. Time was when she hired her shirt - waists made; but Volley was not addicted to crying over spilled milk, and no thoughts of her prosperous past, before Harvey's paralysis, marred her serenity now.

"What does 'verisimilitude' mean, mamma?" asked Bertha, presently.

Volley broke off her whistle and critically eyed her pattern a moment before answering.

"You've got me, Bert. Ask Harvey. Do you remember whether those velvet straps on Mrs. Paddock's waist were straight or tapering?"

"Straight, I think," answered Bertha, closing her book and yielding for a moment to the seduction of dress-making.

"Mine are going to taper," said Volley, complacently. "Look!" Straightening herself and throwing out her splendid bosom, she held a strip of velvet against her front from waist to throat. "How's that?"

Bertha nodded her approval — she would have been more enthusiastic, but she was improving her mind — and then returned to her book. Volley, glad that Mrs. Paddock's straps were only straight, bent her tawny head over her work again.

Bertha, giving way to a rooted habit, began to dream over her book after a little. This self -improvement was not exactly a pleasing task; nor was this life of Lincoln the charming book Davenport's talk had made it out to be. Homely men had never interested her, anyhow. But the fault was with herself, she reflected severely, and she resolutely took another plunge into the political whirlpool of the later fifties. It was fifteen minutes before she came to the top again for breath.

" Did you ever see Lincoln, mamma?" she then asked.

Mrs. Congreve gave a merry little laugh — she was in prime spirits — and squinted along a chalk-line. The crouching posture brought out all her tigerish grace.

"A person might think I was Mother Eve from your talk, Bert," said she, sarcastically. "Why don't you ask me if I ever saw Julius Caesar?"

Bertha made a mental calculation — she was quick at figures, if nothing else.

"You are thirty-nine, and you were five years old when Lincoln was assassinated," she answered, soberly.

Volley may or may not have known, before this, in which half of the century Lincoln flourished; she did not say.

"At the age of five," she answered, coolly, instead, "I was a tow-headed tot in a checked frock, on the farm; and the greatest celebrity that I had ever seen was a Holstein bull of ours that took first premium at the county fair."

A prize Holstein bull was not a celebrity which Bertha would have carried in her memory for a third of a century; or, if she had, she certainly would not have mentioned the fact — least of all now, in the first flush of self - improvement. She had an idea that refined people never spoke of bulls and such animals. She believed her mother refined, of course, but knew that she was decidedly unconventional.

"Did you ever see Ford's Theatre, in Washington, when you were a government clerk there?" she asked.

IS

"Many a time — a squatty little building that looked like a meeting-house. What book is that you're reading, anyhow?" asked Volley, her curiosity aroused.

"The life of Lincoln," answered Bertha, staidly.

"What's struck you?" asked Volley, frolicsomely.

Bertha resented the manner; perhaps she was unduly sensitive on the subject.

"I don't know that anything has struck me," she answered, stiffly.

But Volley's was an irrepressible nature — a frisky, coltish, teasing nature at times; and now her full, red lips drooped mockingly as she paused in her work to look at her daughter for the first time.

"Morris been preaching?" she asked, tauntingly.

Bertha flushed, but answered, severely, "If I were you, mamma, I would not speak that way about any one who had been as kind to us as Morris Davenport has."

"My innocent youngling!" exclaimed Volley, with a laugh. "I think as much of Morris Davenport as ever you dared, and I'd call him a preacher to his face. He preaches to everybody, and knows it. He has a little sermon for me every time I meet him. I sometimes feel as though I ought to pay him quarterage, and tack D.D. on to his LL.D."

Bertha, mollified, smiled. It was quite true about Davenport's preaching, she reflected.

M

III

RS. CONGREVE was destined to sit under one of Davenport's sermons the next day. When he came down to the office in the morning from the Basley House, where he kept bachelor quarters, he found one of his farm tenants awaiting him. The man had evidently been dabbling in strong waters, and Davenport, considering the early hour and the farmer's usual sobriety, suspected trouble. Sure enough, between maudlin whimpers the story came out, of a burned barn and out-buildings the night before, followed by tearful regrets, assurances of the most scrupulous care, and protests of undying loyalty to his landlord.

"Did you lose any stock?" asked Davenport, cutting off the last.

"Only one cow — thank God for that!" answered the farmer, fervently.

"Any machinery?"

"Not a machinery — thank God for that!"

"Don't thank God so much," said Davenport, dryly. "He'd probably prefer your thanks less strongly flavored with popskull whiskey. I haven't time to go out to the farm this morning, but I'll notify the insurance agent and have the loss adjusted as soon as possible. I'll go out this afternoon and look the ruins over. We'll rebuild just as soon as the insurance people get through. Meanwhile, you had better go home and go to bed. I sha'n't need you." 2 17

After dinner he stepped over to Hayford's livery-stable for his horse. He also wanted to see Hayford himself. The latter held a mortgage on the Priestley homestead, the last year's interest on which had not been paid. With the return of the family this question of mortgage and interest would doubtless come up, and the lawyer wanted to know how Hayford felt.

He glanced through a sash-door into the boxlike enclosure labelled "Office." The walls were hung with harnesses and saddles, and decorated with lithographs and pictures from pink sporting - papers, representing full-length beauties, both equine and feminine, and pugilistic "stars." Mr. Hayford was not there, but the stable-boy — of thirty-five or so — thought he might be found at Congreve's, as he had just gone out to try his new sorrel mare.

Volley Congreve was passionately fond of horses, and Bradley Hayford, being at the same time a horseman and a cousin of hers, gave her an opportunity to indulge this passion in a way. A more faithful cousin than Bradley, in fact, would have been hard to find, although he was not especially attentive to his aged parents; and the stable-boy may have had some of this in mind when he grinned.

Davenport ignored the grin and critically eyed the beautiful animal which the man was rapidly buckling into the thills. He was a horse - fancier himself, and usually kept half a dozen blooded specimens in Hayford's stable. Two or three minutes later he drew up before a pleasant cottage just beyond the railroad tracks, in the older part of the village. Hayford's vehicle was not in sight, so he had probably come and gone. To make sure, though, Davenport tied his horse and rang the bell.

"Come in, Morris!"

The sepulchral sound apparently came from the earth, and might have startled one who had not previously noted the speaking-tube above the bell-handle. It was Harvey Congreve's voice, and Davenport entered and made his way to the study with a readiness which showed perfect familiarity with the house. The study was a large, well-lighted room, filled with books and plants. The invalid had wheeled his chair into an embowered bay-window, and was just filling his pipe. The simple act well illustrated his weak condition; his thin hands would scarcely do his bidding, and spilled a good deal of the tobacco in his lap. He smiled brightly at Davenport, however, and extended his hand as far as he could. His face wore the patient, chastened air which one associates more readily with a woman than with a man.

"How did you know who it was?" asked Davenport, for Harvey's windows did not command a view of the street.

"By your wheels. You always stop a horse as though you had thrown him against a stone wall. Hayford declares you rack a horse in a month."

"That's all in Hayford's eye. I train my horses to make a quick stop, and they do it just as easily ai if they took a quarter of a mile to it. Has he been here? I want to see him."

"He left here not five minutes ago — he and Volley. He took her out to her mother's. She hasn't been out there for some weeks."

The last had a tinge of extenuation or apology, and strengthened Davenport's belief that the invalid was not so blind to his wife's intimacy with her cousin as many people imagined. He answered carelessly, though :

"She couldn't have chosen a better day. The rain has laid the dust and hardened the roads. I'm going out towards Corning myself. The barn on my farm out there burned down last night."

Congreve expressed his regret ; they discussed the loss a moment, and then Davenport, who had not sat down, turned to go.

"Anything I can do for you, Harvey?"

"Well, yes. You might pump me a pail of fresh water, Morris, if you will, and bring me in some matches. She keeps them above the sink."

"I know where she keeps them."

Davenport, like most men, doubtless, preferred comfort to tidiness; and his office, before Bertha came, and his rooms at the Basley House yet, were chronically in a state which would have maddened a model housekeeper. But even his hardened eye was arrested by the scene of disorder which Volley's sitting-room presented as he passed through.

The floor was strewn with fashion-plates and scraps of dress -goods. On the table lay a hat and a pair of gloves. The beautiful Turkish cloth under them — a relic of the days when Harvey Congreve was a prosperous lawyer, with no thought of the horrid spectre which should come in the night and lay its withering hand upon him — was disfigured with a great circular stain of kerosene. A pair of woman's shoes huddled in a corner, just where the dainty feet had hurriedly kicked them off. Over a chair hung a pair of long, fiery -red stockings, undarned. In the parlor, where he also glanced, the afternoon sun was blazing through the window upon the polished surface of the piano. He stepped in and drew the curtain, and then went on through to the kitchen, to find the dinner dishes standing in the sink, unwashed.

"Harvey has the patience of a saint!" thought Davenport, hotly.

It was difficult to nurse even a just wrath against Volley for any length of time, she was such an irresponsible creature; but Davenport suspected that this neglect of home and husband had its roots in something graver than irresponsibility. The trouble, he feared, was a more than cousinly feeling of Volley's for Bradley Hayford.

He smiled pityingly at a crude, home-made framework of levers attached to the well -pump. It was a contrivance by means of which Harvey could get a fresh drink, on a pinch, in the absence of wife and daughter. It spoke eloquently of the invalid's lonely hours. So, also, did the speaking-tube at the front door.

Davenport's horse reeled off the eight miles to Corning township in just fifty minutes. He found a number of neighboring farmers strolling idly about the smoking foundations of the barn, with their hands in their pockets, speculating on the origin of the fire, and spitting tobacco-juice on the hot stones. Wilkinson, the tenant, had not gone to bed, as Davenport had suggested, but had evidently continued to suck comfort from his bottle. By this time he had reached a chronic state of tearfulness, and, blubbering and shaking his head despairingly, he poured a tale of woe about his lost cow into the ears of any one who would listen. The by-standers were either amused or disgusted, according to temperament; but when Davenport arrived they all dropped back a little, as people make way for the chief mourner at a funeral, and respectfully waited for him to speak.

"There's only one thing I really regret," said he, cheerfully, as he glanced over the blackened area — "for the buildings were fully insured, and I wanted to rebuild, anyhow — that's the burning of Wilkinson's cow."

"Oh, that poor, poor cow, Morris Davenport!" burst out Wilkinson, stimulated by his landlord's unexpected sympathy, and trying to fix his glassy eyes on Morris. "There's my wife a-settin' in that kitchen — that same summer kitchen right there before your eyes, Morris Davenport, that she cooked our dinner in yesterday — there she's a-settin' and a-cryin' her eyes out over that cow. That cow was the besh friend she ever had, Morris — Morris Davenport — the besh friend she ever had."

"I guess that's so, both before and after marriage," observed a sarcastic farmer.

"And now she's burned — burned to ashes," continued Wilkinson, tragically. " Morris Davenport, that cow — "

"Don't make a damned fool of yourself, Wilkinson," said a rough voice. "Go to bed and sober up."

"Morris Davenport, shall I go to bed and sober up? You know besh whether I ought to go to bed or not and sober up. You're my landlord, and the besh landlord any man ever had, if I do say it to your face. If you think I ought to go to bed and sober up, landlord—"

"By all means," said Davenport. "I told you that six hours ago. Take him in, somebody."

The weeping man was led off, none too gently, by one of his neighbors.

IV

AFTER taking some measurements, Davenport start- J-\ ed home. He drove back at a more leisurely pace. His acquaintance among the farmers was something remarkable. He waved his hand at them in barnyard and field; he touched his hat to their wives and daughters. Passing a district school -house during recess, he was saluted with a chorus of shouts from the children and a nod and smile from the teacher.

He seemed to know every man he met on the road, and generally addressed him by his Christian name. Every other man he either stopped or was stopped by. Every ailing horse or cow in the country-side, as well as every ailing wife or child, was apparently the object of his solicitude. Had a man a prize colt or calf, hog or ram, a new drill or seeder, a new wife or a new baby; had he recently tried a patent fertilizer, or sold a tract of land, or disposed of his hay, or bought a horse, Davenport knew of it.

Nor did he discuss these things in the perfunctory manner of a man currying favor with possible clients. Brought up on a farm himself, his knowledge of rural affairs was accurate and solid; his advice was sought and respected. He had, moreover, the priceless gift of sympathy. He not only appeared interested in these people's affairs — he was interested. Add to this his professional knowledge and the advantages of six years at the University of Illinois, and one may understand why the farmers for ten miles around Tellfair regarded Davenport's office as headquarters when they came to town, where they could leave their wives and babies, if need be, while they sold their hogs — or got a drink. It also explains how Davenport usually knew, weeks or months before anybody else, when a farm would be thrown upon the market, or where the likeliest colts were to be had cheap. That he made good use of this favored information his prosperity attested.

Two miles south he turned in at his father's farm. The automatic gate, gravelled driveway, big, freshly painted house, flower-beds, and the spacious Venetianred barns and out-buildings, all indicated an unusual prosperity for even that prosperous section of country. Roundabout lay five hundred acres of rich land, worth a hundred dollars an acre under the hammer. All this would some day descend to Morris, he being the only child.

A short, wiry, quiet man, with a red chin -whisker and blue eyes, leisurely appeared in the tool -house door at the splash of Davenport's wheels in the gravel. He stood with his hands in his pockets while Morris tied his horse, and finally advanced a few steps.

"Hello, father!" said the latter.

"Hello, boy!" answered the father.

He did not offer to shake hands, but, instead, looked his son's horse and wagon over with polite interest. Morris always had something new. In spite of his smallness, there was that about the senior Davenport which compelled respect. There was a game-cock sprightliness in his build and a subtle something in his mild eye which warned that he, while probably long-suffering, would be a bad man to rile.

After a brief exchange of words about the burned barn, Morris entered the house. He found his mother in the kitchen, baking, assisted by a girl. Her hair was gray, but rippled blithely from a low, square brow, and ended behind in a single short curl, which had the effect of being pinned on, like an ornament. In her laughing, brown eyes one saw Morris, with something feminine added. Her straight lips were also his, but they ended in a dimple which he could not claim.

She mischievously placed a floury hand on each of his cheeks and kissed him, tiptoeing a little. When she released him, he turned to a heap of crisp, goldenbrown dough-nuts and took half of one at a bite, with boyish voracity.

"Morris, we are so sorry about the barn," said his mother, sympathetically.

She then questioned him closely about the insurance, the condition of the foundations, and his plans for the new buildings. He answered her minutely, and it was clear that she was a woman of business, in whose judgment he had faith. It was not difficult, either, to trace a connection between those clear, intelligent eyes of hers and the prosperity strewn all about, though it is not intimated that Henry Davenport was in any ill sense made by his wife, or chiefly known to fame as her husband. He had a decided individuality of his own.

"We could see the fire so plainly from here," Mrs. Davenport continued. "I thought it must be either Drake's or Shoemaker's, and when your father came back and said it was your place, I could scarcely believe him. Fire is such a deceiving thing at night. It didn't seem over a mile away at the farthest; and at first I thought it might be even Hemingway's. I'm so glad, though, that no more stock was burned. How does Wilkinson feel about it?"

"He's not feeling much of anything at present. He's as drunk as an owl."

"Your father thought he was tipsy when he drove by here. I guess that's the first time for him since he took the farm. He has done pretty well; the farm never looked better; and it's excusable, I suppose, so far as such a thing can be. He was up all night, and excited and worried."

After some further talk, her son turned towards the door.

"Aren't you going to stay for supper? We'll have fried chicken," she added, temptingly.

"My mouth waters. But how could I kill time for the next two hours?" he asked, teasingly.

"Yes, how could you, with nobody but your old father and mother to talk to?" she retorted. "There's the wood -pile, and I dare say you need exercise." But she glanced fondly at his sturdy frame. The maid snickered.

"I'd love to stay, mother, but I can't do it. I'm too busy. But I'll come out Sunday for dinner, sure." And with this promise he kissed her and left.

The Woodruff stock - farm lay a mile south of the senior Davenport's place. The house, unlike its neighbors, was set back nearly half a mile from the highway, on an eminence. At the foot of this eminence lay the track on which the young horses' mettle was tested and developed.

Seeing two drivers at work, Davenport whimsically turned in. Anything in the shape of fine horseflesh possessed an irresistible fascination for him. Reaching the enclosure, he drove in onto the track through a gate. The two horses he had seen were just coming down the stretch, their legs working with the precision of a perfect piece of machinery. Being headed directly towards him, they concealed their drivers at first; but, as they came closer, Davenport emitted a low whistle.

The driver of the pole-horse was humped over the animal's haunches like a great frog, the beak of his jockey-cap aiding the resemblance. The gentleman was Mr. Bradley Hayford. The other driver was a woman. Her round hat, stuck with a single rakish feather, rested lightly upon a thick mass of tawny hair. Her earlocks streamed away from a face flushed with excitement and eyes glistening like polished agate. Her whip played rhythmically but very lightly upon her horse's shoulder. This was Mrs. Volley Congreve.

The horses were coming at a tremendous pace, and Volley, in the heat of battle, paid no more attention to Davenport, drawn off to one side, than if he had been a crow perched on a fence-post. Hayford, however, was an older hand on the track and kept a cooler head.

"Time us!" he bawled, in stentorian tones, as they thundered by almost abreast. Davenport instantly drew his stop-watch.

As the horses circled steadily on their course, like twin planets in one orbit, Davenport stood up in his wagon to watch. Both animals were reaching out in splendid style, but Hayford's superior driving was beginning to tell, and he was slowly drawing ahead of his fair rival. At the three-quarter post, however, his mare broke; and though she instantly caught her feet, under her driver's skilled hand, it was not before Volley was alongside again.

It was now anybody's race, and Davenport sprang onto his seat so as not to miss a step. Both horses came down the stretch at a beautiful pace, eager as their drivers to win, with heads thrust straight out before them, like arrows from the bow, and their quivering nostrils distended until they showed bloodred within.

Hayford was again drawing ahead, when suddenly Mrs. Congreve lifted her whip high in the air. For an instant it quivered there threateningly; then it fell upon the horse's wet, taut hide with a crack like a pistol-shot. A novice would have seen no gain in speed, for the noble animal seemed already to be doing its utmost. But again and again the gloved hand lifted, the red lips set sternly, even cruelly, and the blows fell like a pitiless hail, until she shot past Davenport half a length ahead of the other horse.

Hayford was the first to stop and turn his horse and get back to the impromptu judge's stand. His round, heavy face, with its big eyes, was spread in a grin.

"What time?" he asked.

"One eight for the half," said Davenport.

"Better than two sixteen for the mile. That ain't bad for three-year-olds." He swung down — lightly, for so heavy a man — unchecked his panting, dripping horse, and threw a blanket over it. Then he turned to the lawyer with a chuckle.

"Say, did you ever see anything to beat that finish of Volley's? That hoss wouldn't have stood another ounce of pressure, and wouldn't have won with an ounce less. I've drove in more races, I suppose, than that colt there has hairs; but, I'll swear, I never saw the beat of that finish. You don't want the winner for five hundred, do you?"

Pushing his cap to the back of his round, closely cropped head, and resting his knuckles on his hips, he turned and gazed admiringly at the approaching horse, which Volley had had some difficulty in stopping. When it came up, he unchecked and blanketed it, as he had his own, and fondly patted its nose. Then, and not till then, he helped the fair driver to the ground.

"Finer than silk, Volley," said he, approvingly.

Her face was still flushed with pleasure and excitement. As she glanced at Davenport her eyes twinkled and the corners of her pretty but slightly sensual mouth dimpled. Yet it was quite apparent that Davenport had caught her in an act which she would have much preferred to keep from him.

"Now I'd like to try them other colts," said Hayford, briskly, "but I'm thinking, Volley, you'd better be gettin' back to town." He glanced at her, knowingly. " Morris will take you back, I guess."

She readily assented to this, and was helped into Davenport's runabout. He had said little, and as they spun noiselessly down the dirt road to the highway, Volley scanned his face curiously and a little uneasily.

" Been out to your mother's?" he asked, finally. The sarcastic tone did not escape her.

"I have," she answered, firmly.

"Find her well?"

"I did."

"Have a pleasant visit?"

"Morris, you needn't try to twit me. You are provoked because I stopped at Woodruff's with Bradley."

"It's nothing to me."

"You think I did wrong."

"You think so yourself."

"I do not. If I had, I shouldn't have done it. We went out to mother's, where Bradley was going to leave me for a couple of hours, while he exercised his horses. I found a bevy of old ladies at home. I knew I couldn't stand their twaddle for two hours, so I told Bradley to wait. After about twenty minutes I came out and went down with him to Woodruff's to see his horses. Almost before I knew it — I told him not to do it — he had two of them hooked into sulkies, and said I had to race. Morris, you couldn't have resisted it yourself, with that beautiful horse."