THE BLOOD SEEDLING.
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IN a bit of green pasture that rose,
gradually narrowing, to the table-land
that ended in prairie, and widened
out descending to the wet and willowy
sands that border the Great River, a
broad-shouldered young man was planting
an apple tree one sunny spring
morning when Tyler was President.
The little valley was shut in on the
south and east by rocky hills, patched
with the immortal green of cedars and
gay with clambering columbines. In
front was the Mississippi, reposing from
its plunge over the rapids, and idling
down among the golden sandbars and
the low, moist islands, which were looking
their loveliest in their new spring
dresses of delicate green.
The young man was digging with a
certain vicious energy, forcing the spade
into the black crumbling loam with a
movement full of vigor and malice.
His straight black brows were knitted
till they formed one dark line over his
deep-set eyes. His beard was not yet
old enough to hide the massive outline
of his firm, square jaw. In the set
teeth, in the clouded face, in the half-articulate
exclamations that shot from
time to time from the compressed lips,
it was easy to see that the thoughts of
the young horticulturist were far from
his work.
A bright young girl came down the
path through the hazel thicket that
skirted the hillside, and putting a plump
brown hand on the topmost rail of the
fence vaulted lightly over, and lit on
the soft springy turf with a thud that
announced a wholesome and liberal
architecture. It is usually expected of
poets and lovers that they shall describe
the ladies of their love as so airy and
delicate in structure that the flowers
they tread on are greatly improved in
health and spirits by the visitation.
But not being a poet or in love, we
must admit that there was no resurrection
for the larkspurs and pansies upon
which the little boots of Miss Susie Barringer
landed. Yet she was not of the
coarse peasant type, though her cheeks
were so rosy as to cause her great heaviness
of heart on Sunday mornings, and
her blue lawn dress was as full as it
could afford from shoulders to waist.
She was a neat, hearty and very pretty
country girl, with a slightly freckled
face, and rippled brown hair, and astonished
blue eyes, but perfectly
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self-possessed, and graceful as a young
quail.
A young man's ears are quick to
catch the rustling of a woman's dress.
The flight of this plump bird in its fluttering
blue plumage over the rail-fence
caused our young man to look up from
his spading: the scowl was routed from
his brow by a sudden incursion of
blushes, and his mouth was attacked
by an awkward smile.
The young lady nodded, and was
hurrying past. The scowl came back
in force, and the smile was repulsed
from the bearded mouth with great loss:
“Miss Tudie, are you in a hurry?”
The lady thus addressed turned and
said, in a voice that was half pert and
half coaxing, “No particular hurry. Al,
I've told you a dozen times not to call
me that redicklis name.”
“Why, Tudie, I hain't never called
you nothing else sence you was a little
one so high. You ort to know yer own
name, and you give yerself that name
when you was a yearling. Howsomever,
ef you don't like it now, sence
you've been to Jacksonville, I reckon
I can call you Miss Susie—when I don't
disremember.”
The frank amende seemed to satisfy
Miss Susie, for she at once interrupted
in the kindest manner: “Never mind,
Al Golyer: you can call me what you
are a-mind to.” Then, as if conscious
of the feminine inconsistency, she
changed the subject by asking, “What
are you going to do with that great hole?—
big enough to bury a fellow.”
“I'm going to plant this here seedlin',
that growed up in Colonel Blood's
pastur', nobody knows how: belike
somebody was eatin' an apple and
throwed the core down-like. I'm going
to plant a little orchard here next
spring, but the colonel and me, we
reckoned this one 'ud be too old by that
time for moving, so I thought I'd stick
it in now, and see what come out'n
it. It's a powerful thrifty chunk of a
saplin'.”
“Yes. I speak for the first peck of
apples off'n it. Don't forget. Good-morning.”
“Hold on a minute, Miss Susan, twell
I git my coat. I'll walk down a piece
with you. I have got something to say
to you.”
Miss Susie turned a little red and a
little pale. These occasions were not
entirely unknown in her short experience
of life. When young men in the
country in that primitive period had
something to say, it was something very
serious and earnest. Allen Golyer was
a good-looking, stalwart young farmer,
well-to-do, honest, able to provide for a
family. There was nothing presumptuous
in his aspiring to the hand of
the prettiest girl on Chaney Creek. In
childhood he had trotted her to Banbury
Cross and back a hundred times,
beguiling the tedium of the journey
with kisses and the music of bells.
When the little girl was old enough to
go to school, the big boy carried her
books and gave her the rosiest apple
out of his dinner-basket. He fought all
her battles and wrote all her compositions;
which latter, by the way, never
gained her any great credit. When she
was fifteen and he twenty he had his
great reward in taking her twice a week
during one happy winter to singing-school.
This was the bloom of life—
nothing before or after could compare
with it. The blacking of shoes and
brushing of stiff, electric, bristling hair,
all on end with frost and hope, the
struggling into the plate-armor of his
starched shirt, the tying of the portentous
and uncontrollable cravat before
the glass, which was hopelessly dimmed
every moment by his eager breath,—
these trivial and vulgar details were
made beautiful and unreal by the magic
of youth and love. Then came the walk
through the crisp, dry snow to the Widow
Barringer's, the sheepish talk with
the old lady while Susie “got on her
things,” and the long, enchanting tramp
to the “deestrick school-house.”
There is not a country-bred man or
woman now living but will tell you that
life can offer nothing comparable with
the innocent zest of that old style of
courting that was done at singing-school
in the starlight and candlelight of the
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first half of our century. There are
few hearts so withered and old but they
beat quicker sometimes when they hear,
in old-fashioned churches, the wailing,
sobbing or exulting strains of “Bradstreet”
or “China” or “Coronation;”
and the mind floats down on the current
of these old melodies to that fresh
young day of hopes and illusions—of
voices that were sweet, no matter how
false they sang—of nights that were rosy
with dreams, no matter what Fahrenheit
said—of girls that blushed without cause,
and of lovers who talked for hours
about everything but love.
I know I shall excite the scorn of all
the ingenuous youth of my time when I
say that there was nothing that our superior
civilization would call love making
in those long walks through the
winter nights. The heart of Allen Golyer
swelled under his satin waistcoat
with love and joy and devotion as he
walked over the crunching roads with
his pretty enslaver. But he talked of
apples and pigs and the heathen and
the teacher's wig, and sometimes ventured
an illusion to other people's flirtations
in a jocose and distant way; but
as to the state of his own heart, his lips
were sealed. It would move a blasé
smile on the downy lips of juvenile
Lovelaces, who count their conquests
by their cotillons, and think nothing of
making a declaration in an avant-deux,
to be told of young people spending
several evenings of each week in the
year together, and speaking no word
of love until they were ready to name
their wedding-day. Yet such was the
sober habit of the place and time.
So there was no troth plighted between
Allen and Susie, though the youth loved
the maiden with all the energy of his
fresh, unused nature, and she knew it
very well. He never dreamed of marrying
any other woman than Susie Barringer,
and she sometimes tried a new
pen by writing and carefully erasing the
initials S. M. G., which, as she was
christened Susan Minerva, may be
taken as showing the direction of her
thoughts.
If Allen Golyer had been less bashful
or more enterprising, this history would
never have been written; for Susie
would probably have said Yes for want
of anything better to say, and when she
went to visit her aunt Abigail in Jacksonville
she would have gone engaged,
her finger bound with gold and her
maiden meditations fettered by promises.
But she went, as it was, fancy
free, and there is no tinder so inflammable
as the imagination of a pretty
country girl of sixteen.
One day she went out with her easy-going
aunt Abigail to buy ribbons, the
Chaney Creek invoices not supplying
the requirements of Jacksonville society.
As they traversed the court-house square
on their way to Deacon Pettybones'
place, Miss Susie's vagrant glances
rested on an iris of ribbons displayed
in an opposition window. “Let's go in
here,” she said with the impetuous decision
of her age and sex.
“We will go where you like, dear,”
said easy-going Aunt Abigail. “It makes
no difference.”
Aunt Abigail was wrong. It made
the greatest difference to several persons
whether Susie Barringer bought her ribbons
at Simmons' or Pettybones' that
day. If she had but known!
But, all unconscious of the Fate that
beckoned invisibly on the threshold,
Miss Susie tripped into “Simmons' Emporium”
and asked for ribbons. Two
young men stood at the long counter.
One was Mr. Simmons, proprietor of
the emporium, who advanced with his
most conscientious smile: “Ribbons,
ma'am? Yes, ma'am—all sorts, ma'am.
Cherry, ma'am? Certingly, ma'am.
Jest got a splendid lot from St. Louis
this morning, ma'am. This way,
ma'am.”
The ladies were soon lost in the delight
of the eyes. The voice of Mr.
Simmons accompanied the feast of
color, insinuating but unheeded.
The other young man approached:
“Here is what you want, miss—rich and
elegant. Just suits your style. Sets off
your hair and eyes beautiful.”
The ladies looked up. A more decided
voice than Mr. Simmons'; whiter
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hands than Mr. Simmons' handled the
silken bands; bolder eyes than the
weak, pink-bordered orbs of Mr. Simmons
looked unabashed admiration into
the pretty face of Susie Barringer.
“Look here, Simmons, old boy, introduce
a fellow.”
Mr. Simmons meekly obeyed: “Mrs.
Barringer, let me interduce you to Mr.
Leon of St. Louis, of the house of
Draper & Mercer.”
“Bertie Leon, at your service,” said
the brisk young fellow, seizing Miss
Susie's hand with energy. His hand
was so much softer and whiter than
hers that she felt quite hot and angry
about it.
When they had made their purchases,
Mr. Leon insisted on walking home with
them, and was very witty and agreeable
all the way. He had all the wit of the
newspapers, of the concert-rooms, of
the steamboat bars at his fingers' ends.
In his wandering life he had met all
kinds of people: he had sold ribbons
through a dozen States. He never had
a moment's doubt of himself. He never
hesitated to allow himself any indulgence
which would not interfere with
business. He had one ambition in life—
to marry Miss Mercer and get a share
in the house. Miss Mercer was as ugly
as a millionaire's tombstone. Mr. Bertie
Leon—who, when his moustache was
not dyed nor his hair greased, was really
quite a handsome fellow—considered
that the sacrifice he proposed to make
in the interests of trade must be made
good to him in some way. So, “by way
of getting even,” he made violent love
to all the pretty eyes he met in his commercial
travels—“to have something to
think about after he should have found
favor in the strabismic optics of Miss
Mercer,” he observed, disrespectfully.
Simple Susie, who had seen nothing
of young men besides the awkward and
blushing clodhoppers of Chaney Creek,
was somewhat dazzled by the free-and-easy
speech and manner of the hard-cheeked
bagman. Yet there was something
in his airy talk and point-blank
compliments that aroused a faint feeling
of resentment which she could scarcely
account for. Aunt Abigail was delighted
with him, and when he bowed his
adieux at the gate in the most recent
Planters'-House style, she cordially invited
him to call—“to drop in any time:
he must be lonesome so fur from home.”
He said he wouldn't neglect such a
chance, with another Planters'-House
bow.
“What a nice young man!” said Aunt
Abigail.
“Awful conceited and not overly polite,”
said Susie as she took off her bonnet
and went into a revel of bows and
trimmings.
The oftener Albert Leon came to Mrs.
Barringer's bowery cottage, the more the
old lady was pleased with him and the
more the young one criticised him, until
it was plain to be seen that Aunt Abigail
was growing tired of him and pretty
Susan dangerously interested. But just
at this point his inexorable carpet-bag
dragged him off to a neighboring town,
and Susie soon afterward went back to
Chaney Creek.
Her Jacksonville hat and ribbons
made her what her pretty eyes never
could have done—the belle of the neighborhood.
Non cuivis contingit adire
Lutetiam, but to a village where no one
has been at Paris the county-town is a
shrine of fashion. Allen Golyer felt a
vague sense of distrust chilling his heart
as he saw Mr. Simmons' ribbons decking
the pretty head in the village choir the
Sunday after her return, and, spurred
on by a nascent jealousy of the unknown,
resolved to learn his fate without
loss of time. But the little lady
received him with such cool and unconcerned
friendliness, talked so much
and so fast about her visit, that the honest
fellow was quite bewildered, and
had to go home to think the matter
over, and cudgel his dull wits to divine
whether she was pleasanter than ever,
or had drifted altogether out of his
reach.
Allen Golyer was, after all, a man of
nerve and decision. He wasted only a
day or two in doubts and fears, and one
Sunday afternoon, with a beating but
resolute heart, he left his Sunday-school
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class to walk down to Crystal Glen and
solve his questions and learn his doom.
When he came in sight of the widow's
modest house, he saw a buggy hitched
by the gate.
“Dow Padgett's chestnut sorrel, by
jing! What is Dow after out here?”
It is natural, if not logical, that young
men should regard the visits of all other
persons of their age and sex in certain
quarters as a serious impropriety.
But it was not his friend and crony
Dow Padgett, the liveryman, who came
out of the widow's door, leading by the
hand the blushing and bridling Susie.
It was a startling apparition of the South-western
dandy of the period—light hair
drenched with bear's oil, blue eyes and
jet-black moustache, an enormous paste
brooch in his bosom, a waistcoat and
trowsers that shrieked in discordant
tones, and very small and elegant varnished
boots. The gamblers and bagmen
of the Mississippi River are the
best-shod men in the world.
Golyer's heart sank within him as this
splendid being shone upon him. But
with his rustic directness he walked to
meet the laughing couple at the gate,
and said, “Tudie, I come to see you.
Shall I go in and talk to your mother
twell you come back?”
“No, that won't pay,” promptly replied
the brisk stranger. “We will be
gone the heft of the afternoon, I reckon.
This hoss is awful slow,” he added with
a wink of preternatural mystery to Miss
Susie.
“Mr. Golyer,” said the young lady,
“let me interduce you to my friend,
Mr. Leon.”
Golyer put out his hand mechanically,
after the cordial fashion of the West.
But Leon nodded and said, “I hope to
see you again.” He lifted Miss Susie
into the buggy, sprang lightly in, and
went off with laughter and the cracking
of his whip after Dow Padgett's chestnut
sorrel.
The young farmer walked home desolate,
comparing in his simple mind his
own plain exterior with his rival's gorgeous
toilet, his awkward address with
the other's easy audacity, till his heart
was full to the brim with that infernal
compound of love and hate which is
called jealousy, from which pray Heaven
to guard you.
It was the next morning that Miss
Susie vaulted over the fence where Allen
Golyer was digging the hole for
Colonel Blood's apple tree.
“Something middlin' particular,” continued
Golyer, resolutely.
“There is no use leaving your work,”
said Miss Barringer pluckily. “I will
stay and listen.”
Poor Allen began as badly as possible:
“Who was that feller with you
yesterday?”
“Thank you, Mr. Golyer—my friends
ain't fellers! What's that to you, who
he was?”
“Susie Barringer, we have been keeping
company now a matter of a year.
I have loved you well and true: I would
have give my life to save you any little
care or trouble. I never dreamed of
nobody but you—not that I was half
good enough for you, but because I did
not know any better man around here.
Ef it ain't too late, Susie, I ask you to
be my wife. I will love you and care
for you, good and true.”
Before this solemn little speech was
finished, Susie was crying and biting
her bonnet-strings in a most undignified
manner. “Hush, Al Golyer!” she
burst out. “You mustn't talk so. You
are too good for me. I am kind of
promised to that fellow. I 'most wish I
had never seen him.”
Allen sprang to her and took her in
his strong arms: she struggled free from
him. In a moment the vibration which
his passionate speech had produced in
her passed away. She dried her eyes
and said firmly enough, “It's no use, Al:
we wouldn't be happy together. Good-bye!
I shouldn't wonder if I went away
from Chaney Creek before long.”
She walked rapidly down to the river-road.
Allen stood fixed and motionless,
gazing at the light, graceful form
until the blue dress vanished behind the
hill, and leaned long on his spade, unconscious
of the lapse of time.
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When Susan reached her home she
found Leon at the gate.
“Ah, my little rosebud! I came near
missing you. I am going to Keokuk
this morning, to be gone a few days. I
stopped here a minute to give you something
to keep for me till I come back.”
“What is it?”
He took her chubby cheeks between
his hands and laid on her cherry-ripe
lips a keepsake which he never reclaimed.
She stood watching him from the gate
until, as a clump of willows snatched
him from her, she thought, “He will go
right by where Al is at work. It would
be jest like him to jump over the fence
and have a talk with him. I'd like to
hear it.”
An hour or so later, as she sat and
sewed in the airy little entry, a shadow
fell upon her work, and as she looked
up her startled eyes met the piercing
glance of her discarded lover. A momentary
ripple of remorse passed over
her cheerful heart as she saw Allen's
pale and agitated face. He was paler
than she had ever seen him, with that
ghastly pallor of weather-beaten faces.
His black hair, wet with perspiration,
clung clammily to his temples. He
looked beaten, discouraged, utterly fatigued
with the conflict of emotion.
But one who looked closely in his eyes
would have seen a curious stealthy,
half-shaded light in them, as of one
who, though working against hope, was
still not without resolute will.
Dame Barringer, who had seen him
coming up the walk, bustled in: “Good-morning,
Allen. How beat out you do
look! Now, I like a stiddy young man,
but don't you think you run this thing
of workin' into the ground?”
“Wall, maybe so,” said Golyer with
a weary smile — “leastways I've been
a-running this spade into the ground all
the morning, and—”
“You want buttermilk — that's your
idee: ain 't, it, now?”
“Well, Mizzes Barringer, I reckon
you know my failin's.”
The good woman trotted off to the
dairy, and Susie sewed demurely, wait
ing with some trepidation for what was
to come next.
“Susie Barringer,” said a low, husky
voice which she could scarcely recognize
as Golyer's, “I've come to ask pardon—
not for nothing I've done, for I
never did and never could do you wrong—
but for what I thought for a while
arter you left me this morning. It's all
over now, but I tell you the Bad Man
had his claws into my heart for a spell.
Now it's all over, and I wish you well.
I wish your husband well. If ever you
git into any trouble where I can help,
send for me: it's my right. It's the last
favor I ask of you.”
Susceptible Susie cried a little again.
Allen, watching her with his ambushed
eyes, said, “Don't take it to heart, Tudie.
Perhaps there is better days in
store for me yet.”
This did not appear to comfort Miss
Barringer in the least. She was greatly
grieved when she thought she had
broken a young man's heart: she was
still more dismal at the slightest intimation
that she had not. If any explanation
of this paradox is required, I would
observe, quoting a phrase much in vogue
among the witty writers of the present
age, that Miss Susie Barringer was “a
very female woman.”
So pretty Susan's rising sob subsided
into a coquettish pout by the time her
mother came in with the foaming pitcher
of subacidulous nectar, and plied young
Golyer with brimming beakers of it with
all the beneficent delight of a Lady
Bountiful.
“There, Mizzes Barringer! there's
about as much as I can tote. Temperance
in all things.”
“Very well, then, you work less and
play more. We never get a sight of
you lately. Come in neighborly and
play checkers with Tudie.”
It was the darling wish of Mother
Barringer's heart to see her daughter
married and settled with “a stiddy
young man that you knowed all about,
and his folks before him.” She had
observed with great disquietude the
brilliant avatar of Mr. Bertie Leon and
the evident pride of her daughter in the
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bright-plumaged captive she had
brought to Chaney Creek, the spoil of
her maiden snare. “I don't more'n
half like that little feller.” (It is a
Western habit to call a well-dressed
man a “little feller.” The epithet
would light on Hercules Farnese if he
should go to Illinois dressed as a Cocod
ès.) “No honest folks wears beard
onto their upper lips. I wouldn't be
surprised if he wasn't a gamboller.”
Allen Golyer, apparently unconscious
in his fatigue of the cap which Dame
Barringer was vicariously setting for
him, walked away with his spade on
his shoulder, and the good woman went
systematically to work in making Susie
miserable by sharp little country criticisms
of her heart's idol.
Day after day wore on, and, to Dame
Barringer's delight and Susie's dismay,
Mr. Leon did not come.
“He is such a business-man,” thought
trusting Susan, “he can't get away from
Keokuk. But he'll be sure to write.”
So Susie put on her sun-bonnet and
hurried up to the post-office: “Any letters
for me, Mr. Whaler?” The artful
and indefinite plural was not disguise
enough for Miss Susie, so she added,
“I was expecting a letter from my aunt.”
“No letters here from your aunt, nor
your uncle, nor none of the tribe,” said
old Whaler, who had gone over with
Tyler to keep his place, and so had no
further use for good manners.
“I think old Tommy Whaler is an
impident old wretch,” said Susie that
evening, “and I won't go near his old
post-office again.” But Susie forgot her
threat of vengeance the next day, and
she went again, lured by family affection,
to inquire for that letter which
Aunt Abbie must have written. The
third time she went, rummy old Whaler
roared very improperly, “Bother your
aunt! You've got a beau somewheres—
that's what's the matter.”
Poor Susan was so dazzled by this
flash of clairvoyance that she hurried
from that dreadful post-office, scarcely
hearing the terrible words that the old
gin-pig hurled after her: “And he's forgot
you!—that's what's the matter.”
Susie Barringer walked home along
the river-road, revolving many things
in her mind. She went to her room
and locked her door by sticking a penknife
over the latch, and sat down to
have a good cry. Her faculties being
thus cleared for action, she thought seriously
for an hour. If you can remember
when you were a school-girl, you
know a great deal of solid thinking can
be done in an hour. But we can tell
you in a moment what it footed up.
You can walk through the Louvre in a
minute, but you cannot see it in a week.
Susan Barringer (sola, loquitur):
“Three weeks yesterday. Yes, I s'pose
it's so. What a little fool I was! He
goes everywheres—says the same things
to everybody, like he was selling ribbons.
Mean little scamp! Mother seen
through him in a minute. I'm mighty
glad I didn't tell her nothing about it.”
[Fie, Susie! your principles are worse
than your grammar.] “He'll marry
some rich girl—I don't envy her, but I
hate her — and I am as good as she is.
Maybe he will come back — no, and I
hope he won't; — and I wish I was
dead!” (Pocket handkerchief.)
Yet in the midst of her grief there was
one comforting thought—nobody knew
of it. She had no confidante—she had
not even opened her heart to her mother:
these Western maidens have a fine
gift of reticence. A few of her countryside
friends and rivals had seen with
envy and admiration the pretty couple
on the day of Leon's arrival. But all
their poisonous little compliments and
questions had never elicited from the
prudent Susie more than the safe statement
that the handsome stranger was a
friend of Aunt Abbie's, whom she had
met at Jacksonville. They could not
laugh at her: they could not sneer at
gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels
when she went to the sewing-circle.
The bitterness of her tears was greatly
sweetened by the consideration that in
any case no one could pity her. She
took such consolation from this thought
that she faced her mother unflinchingly
at tea, and baffled the maternal inquest
on her “redness of eyes” by the
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school-girl's invaluable and ever-ready headache.
It was positively not until a week
later, when she met Allen Golyer at
choir-meeting, that she remembered
that this man knew the secret of her
baffled hopes. She blushed scarlet as
he approached her: “Have you got
company home, Miss Susie?”
“Yes—that is, Sally Withers and me
came together, and—”
“No, that's hardly fair to Tom Fleming:
three ain't the pleasantest company.
I will go home with you.”
Susie took the strong arm that was
held out to her, and leaned upon it with
a mingled feeling of confidence and
dread as they walked home through the
balmy night under the clear, starry
heaven of the early spring. The air
was full of the quickening breath of
May.
Susie Barringer waited in vain for
some signal of battle from Allen Golyer.
He talked more than usual, but
in a grave, quiet, protecting style,
very different from his former manner
of worshiping bashfulness. His tone
had in it an air of fatherly caressing
which was inexpressibly soothing to his
pretty companion, tired and lonely with
her silent struggle of the past month.
When they came to her gate and he
said good-night, she held his hand a
moment with a tremulous grasp, and
spoke impulsively: “Al, I once told you
something I never told anybody else.
I'll tell you something else now, because
I believe I can trust you.”
“Be sure of that, Susie Barringer.”
“Well, Al, my engagement is broken
off.”
“I am sorry for you, Susie, if you set
much store by him.”
Miss Susie answered with great and
unnecessary impetuosity, “I don't, and
I am glad of it!” and then ran into the
house and to bed, her cheeks all aflame
at the thought of her indiscretion, and
yet with a certain comfort in having a
friend from whom she had no secrets.
I protest there was no thought of coquetry
in the declaration which Susan
Barringer blurted out to her old lover
under the sympathetic starlight of the
May heaven. But Allen Golyer would
have been a dull boy not to have taken
heart and hope from it. He became,
as of old, a frequent and welcome visitor
at Crystal Glen. Before long the game
of chequers with Susie became so enthralling
a passion that it was only adjourned
from one evening to another.
Allen's white shirts grew fringy at the
edges with fatigue-duty, and his large
hands were furry at the fingers with
much soap. Susie's affectionate heart,
which had been swayed a moment from
its orbit by the irresistible attraction of
Bertie Leon's diamond breastpin and
city swagger, swung back to its ancient
course under the mild influence of time
and the weather and opportunity. So
that Dame Barringer was not in the
least surprised, on entering her little
parlor one soft afternoon in that very
May, to see the two young people economically
occupying one chair, and Susie
shouting the useless appeal, “Mother,
make him behave!”
“I never interfere in young folks'
matters, especially when they're going
all right,” said the motherly old soul,
kissing “her son Allen” and trotting
away to dry her happy tears.
I am almost ashamed to say how soon
they were married—so soon that when
Miss Susan went with her mother to
Keokuk to buy a wedding-garment, she
half expected to find, in every shop she
entered, the elegant figure of Mr. Leon
leaning over the counter. But the dress
was bought and made, and worn at
wedding and in-fair and in a round of
family visits among the Barringer and
Golyer kin, and carefully laid away in
lavender when the pair came back from
their modest holiday and settled down
to real life on Allen's prosperous farm;
and no word of Bertie Leon ever came
to Mrs. Golyer to trouble her joy. In
her calm and busy life the very name
faded from her tranquil mind. These
wholesome country hearts do not bleed
long. In that wide-awake country eyes
are too useful to be wasted in weeping.
My dear Lothario Urbanus, those
peaches are very sound and delicious,
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
but they will not keep for ever. If you
do not secure them to-day, they will go
to some one else, and in no case, as the
Autocrat hath said with authority, can
you stand there “mellering 'em with
your thumb.”
There was no happier home in the
county, and few finer farms. The good
sense and industry of Golyer and the
practical helpfulness of his wife found
their full exercise in the care of his
spreading fields and growing orchards.
The Warsaw merchants fought for his
wheat, and his apples were known in
St. Louis. Mrs. Golyer, with that spice
of romance which is hidden away in
every woman's heart, had taken a
special fancy to the seedling apple tree
at whose planting she had so intimately
assisted. Allen shared in this, as in all
her whims, and tended and nursed it
like a child. In time he gave up the
care of his orchard to other hands, but
he reserved this seedling for his own
especial coddling. He spaded and
mulched and pruned it, and guarded it
in the winter from rodent rabbits and
in summer from terebrant grubs. It
was not ungrateful. It grew a noble
tree, producing a rich and luscious fruit,
with a deep scarlet satin coat, and a
flesh tinged as delicately as a pink sea-shell.
The first peck of apples was
given to Susie with great ceremony,
and the next year the first bushel was
carried to Colonel Blood, the Congressman.
He was loud in his admiration,
as the autumn elections were coming
on: “Great Scott, Golyer! I'd rather
give my name to a horticultooral triumph
like that there than be Senator.”
“You've got your wish, then, colonel,”
said Golyer. “Me and my wife have
called that tree The Blood Seedling
sence the day it was transplanted from
your pastur'.”
It was the pride and envy of the
neighborhood. Several neighbors asked
for scions and grafts, but could do nothing
with them.
“Fact is,” said old Silas Withers,
“those folks that expects to raise good
fruit by begging graffs, and then layin'
abed and readin' newspapers, will have
a good time waitin'. Elbow-grease is
the secret of the Blood Seedlin', ain't it,
Al?”
“Well, I reckon, Squire Withers, a
man never gits anything wuth havin'
without a tussle for it; and as to secrets,
I don't believe in them, nohow.”
A square-browed, resolute, silent, middle-aged
man, who loved his home better
than any amusement, regular at church,
at the polls, something richer every
Christmas than he had been on the
New Year's preceding—a man whom
everybody liked and few loved much—
such had Allen Golyer grown to be.
If I have lingered too long over this
colorless and commonplace picture of
rural Western life, it is because I have
felt an instinctive reluctance to recount
the startling and most improbable incident
which fell one night upon this
quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt
out of blue sky. The story I must tell
will be flatly denied and easily refuted.
It is absurd and fantastic, but, unless
human evidence is to go for nothing
when it testifies of things unusual, the
story is true.
At the head of the rocky hollow
through which Chaney Creek ran to the
river, lived the family who gave the
brook its name. They were among the
early pioneers of the county. In the
squatty yellow stone house the present
Chaney occupied his grandfather had
stood a siege from Black Hawk all one
summer day and night, until relieved
by the garrison of Fort Edward. The
family had not grown with the growth
of the land. Like many others of the
pioneers, they had shown no talent for
keeping abreast of the civilization whose
guides and skirmishers they had been.
In the progress of a half century they
had sold, bit by bit, their section of land,
which kept intact would have proved a
fortune. They lived very quietly, working
enough to secure their own pork
and hominy, and regarding with a sort
of impatient scorn every scheme of
public or private enterprise that passed
under their eyes.
The elder Chaney had married, some
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
years before, at the Mormon town of
Nauvoo, the fair-haired daughter of a
Swedish mystic, who had come across
the sea beguiled by dreams of a perfect
theocracy, and who on arriving
at the city of the Latter-Day Saints
had died, broken-hearted from his lost
illusions.
The only dowry that Seraphita Neilsen
brought her husband, besides her
delicate beauty and her wide blue eyes,
was a full set of Swedenborg's later
writings in English. These became the
daily food of the solitary household.
Saul Chaney would read the exalted
rhapsodies of the Northern seer for
hours together, without the first glimmer
of their meaning crossing his brain.
But there was something in the majesty
of their language and the solemn roll
of their poetical development that irresistibly
impressed and attracted him.
Little Gershom, his only child, sitting
at his feet, would listen in childish wonder
to the strange things his silent, morose
and gloomy father found in the
well-worn volumes, until his tired eye-lids
would fall at last over his pale,
bulging eyes.
As he grew up his eyes bulged more
and more: his head seemed too large
for his rickety body. He pored over
the marvelous volumes until he knew
long passages by heart, and understood
less of them than his father—which was
unnecessary. He looked a little like
his mother, but while she in her youth
had something of the faint and flickering
beauty of the Boreal Lights, poor
Gershom never could have suggested
anything more heavenly than a foggy
moonlight. When he was fifteen he
went to the neighboring town of Warsaw
to school. He had rather heavy
weather among the well-knit, grubby-knuckled
urchins of the town, and
would have been thoroughly disheartened
but for one happy chance. At the
house where he boarded an amusement
called the “Sperrit Rappin's” was much
in vogue. A group of young folks, surcharged
with all sorts of animal magnetism,
with some capacity for belief
and much more for fun, used to gather
about a light pine table every evening,
and put it through a complicated course
of mystical gymnastics. It was a very
good-tempered table: it would dance,
hop or slam at the word of command,
or, if the exercises took a more intellectual
turn, it would answer any questions
addressed to it in a manner not
much below the average capacity of its
tormentors.
Gershom Chaney took all this in solemn
earnest. He was from the first moment
deeply impressed. He lay awake
whole nights, with his eyes fast closed,
in the wildest dreams. His school-hours
were passed in trancelike contemplation.
He cared no more for punishment
than the fakeer for his self-inflicted
tortures. He longed for the coming
of the day when he could commune in
solitude with the unfleshed and immortal.
This was the full flowering of those
seeds of fantasy that had fallen into his
infant mind as he lay baking his brains
by the wide fire in the old stone house
at the head of the hollow, while his father
read, haltingly, of the wonders of
the invisible world.
But, to his great mortification, he saw
nothing, heard nothing, experienced
nothing but in the company of others.
He must brave the ridicule of the profane
to taste the raptures which his soul
loved. His simple, trusting faith made
him inevitably the butt of the mischievous
circle. They were not slow in discovering
his extreme sensibility to external
influences. One muscular, blackhaired,
heavy-browed youth took especial
delight in practicing upon him.
The table, under Gershom's tremulous
hands, would skip like a lamb at the
command of this Thomas Fay.
One evening, Tom Fay had a great
triumph. They had been trying to get
the “medium” — for Gershom had
reached that dignity—to answer sealed
questions, and had met with indifferent
success. Fay suddenly approached the
table, scribbled a phrase, folded it and
tossed it, doubled up, before Gershom;
then leaned over the table, staring at
his pale, unwholesome face with all the
might of his black eyes.
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
Chaney seized the pencil convulsively
and wrote, “Balaam!”
Fay burst into a loud laugh and said,
`Read the question?”
It was, “Who rode on your grandfather's
back?”
This is a specimen of the cheap wit
and harmless malice by which poor
Gershom suffered as long as he stayed
at school. He was never offended, but
was often sorely perplexed, at the apparent
treachery of his unseen counselors.
He was dismissed at last from
the academy for utter and incorrigible
indolence. He accepted his disgrace as
a crown of martyrdom, and went proudly
home to his sympathizing parents.
Here, with less criticism and more
perfect faith, he renewed the exercise
of what he considered his mysterious
powers. His fastings and vigils, and
want of bodily movement and fresh air,
had so injured his health as to make
him tenfold more nervous and sensitive
than ever. But his faintings and hysterics
and epileptic paroxysms were
taken more and more as evidences of
his lofty mission. His father and mother
regarded him as an oracle, for the simple
reason that he always answered just
as they expected. A curious or superstitious
neighbor was added from time
to time to the circle, and their reports
heightened the half-uncanny interest
with which the Chaney house was regarded.
It was on a moist and steamy evening
of spring that Allen Golyer, standing
by his gate, saw Saul Chaney slouching
along in the twilight, and hailed
him: “What news from the sperrits,
Saul?”
“Nothing for you, Al Golyer,” said
Saul, gloomily. “The god of this world
takes care of the like o' you.”
Golyer smiled, as a prosperous man
always does when his poorer neighbors
abuse him for his luck, and rejoined:
“I ain't so fortunate as you think for,
Saul Chaney. I lost a Barksher pig
yesterday: I reckon I must come up
and ask Gershom what's come of it.”
“Come along, if you like. It's been
a long while sence you've crossed my
sill. But I'm gitting to be quite the
style. Young Lawyer Marshall is
a-coming up this evening to see my
Gershom.”
Before Mr. Golyer started he filled
a basket, “to make himself welcome
and pay for the show,” with the reddest
and finest fruit of his favorite apple tree.
His wife followed him to the gate and
kissed him—a rather unusual attention
among Western farmer-people. Her
face, still rosy and comely, was flushed
and smiling: “Al, do you know what
day o' the year it is?”
“Nineteenth of Aprile?”
“Yes; and twenty years ago to-day
you planted the Blood Seedlin' and I
give you the mitten!” She turned and
went into the house, laughing comfortably.
Allen walked slowly up the hollow to
the Chaney house, and gave the apples
to Seraphita and told her their story.
A little company was assembled — two
or three Chaney Creek people, small
market-gardeners, with eyes the color
of their gooseberries and hands the
color of their currants; Mr. Marshall,
a briefless young barrister from Warsaw,
with a tawny friend, who spoke
like a Spaniard.
“Take seats, friends, and form a circle
o' harmony,” said Saul Chaney.
“The me'jum is in fine condition: he
had two fits this arternoon.”
Gershom looked shockingly ill and
weak. He reclined in a great hickory
arm-chair, with his eyes half open, his
lips moving noiselessly. All the persons
present formed a circle and joined
hands.
The moment the circle was completed
by Saul and Seraphita, who were on
either side of their son, touching his
hands, an expression of pain and perplexity
passed over his pale face, and
he began to writhe and mutter.
“He's seein' visions,” said Saul.
“Yes, too many of 'em,” said Gershom,
querulously. “A boy in a boat,
a man on a shelf, and a man with a
spade—all at once: too many. Get me
a pencil. One at a time, I tell you—
one at a time!”
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
The circle broke up, and a table was
brought, with writing materials. Gershom
grasped a pencil, and said, with
imperious and feverish impatience,
“Come on, now, and don't waste the
time of the shining ones.”
An old woman took his right hand.
He wrote with his left very rapidly an
instant, and threw her the paper, always
with his eyes shut close.
Old Mrs. Scritcher read with difficulty,
“A boy in a boat—over he goes;” and
burst out in a piteous wail, “Oh, my
poor little Ephraim! I always knowed
it.”
“Silence, woman!” said the relentless
medium.
“Mr. Marshall,” said Saul, “would
you like a test?”
“No, thank you,” said the young
gentleman. “I brought my friend, Mr.
Baldassano, who, as a traveler, is interested
in these things.”
“Will you take the medium's hand,
Mr. What's-your-name?”
The young foreigner took the lean
and feverish hand of Gershom, and
again the pencil flew rapidly over the
paper. He pushed the manuscript from
him and snatched his hand away from
Baldassano. As the latter looked at
what was written, his tawny cheek grew
deadly pale. “Dios mio!” he exclaimed
to Marshall. “This is written in
Castilian!”
The two young men retired to the
other end of the room and read by the
tallow candle the notes scrawled on the
paper. Baldassano translated: “A man
on a shelf—table covered with bottles
beside him: man's face yellow as
gold: bottles tumble over without being
touched.”
“What nonsense is that?” said Marshall.
“My brother died of yellow fever at
sea last year.”
Both the young men became suddenly
very thoughtful, and observed with
great interest the result of Golyer's “test.”
He sat by Gershom, holding his hand
tightly, but gazing absently into the
dying blaze of the wide chimney. He
seemed to have forgotten where he was:
a train of serious thought appeared to
hold him completely under its control.
His brows were knit with an expression
of severe almost fierce determination.
At one moment his breathing was hard
and thick—a moment after hurried and
broken.
All this while the fingers of Gershom
were flying rapidly over the paper, independently
of his eyes, which were
sometimes closed, and sometimes rolling
as if in trouble.
A wind which had been gathering all
the evening now came moaning up the
hollow, rattling the window-blinds, and
twisting into dull complaint the boughs
of the leafless trees. Its voice came
chill and cheerless into the dusky room,
where the fire was now glimmering near
its death, and the only sounds were
those of Gershom's rushing pencil, the
whispering of Marshall and his friend,
and old Mother Scritcher feebly whimpering
in her corner. The scene was
sinister. Suddenly, a rushing gust blew
the door wide open.
Golyer started to his feet, trembling
in every limb, and looking furtively
over his shoulder out into the night.
Quickly recovering himself, he turned
to resume his place. But the moment
he dropped Gershom's hand, the medium
had dropped his pencil, and had
sunk back in his chair in a deep and
deathlike slumber. Golyer seized the
sheet of paper, and with the first line
that he read a strange and horrible
transformation was wrought in the
man. His eyes protruded, his teeth
chattered, he passed his hand over his
head mechanically, and his hair stood
up like the bristles on the back of a
swine in rage. His face was blotched
white and purple. He looked piteously
about him for a moment, then crumpling
the paper in his hand, cried out in
a hoarse, choking voice, “Yes, it's a
fact: I done it. It's no use denying
on't. Here it is, in black and white.
Everybody knows it: ghosts come
spooking around to tattle about it.
What's the use of lying? I done it.”
He paused, as if struck by a sudden
recollection, then burst into tears and
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
shook like a tree in a high wind. In
a moment he dropped on his knees,
and in that posture crawled over to
Marshall: “Here, Mr. Marshall—here's
the whole story. For God's sake, spare
my wife and children all you can. Fix
my little property all right for 'em, and
God bless you for it!” Even while he
was speaking, with a quick revulsion of
feeling he rose to his feet, with a certain
return of his natural dignity, and said,
“But they sha'n't take me! None of
my kin ever died that way: I've got
too much sand in my gizzard to be took
that way. Good-bye, friends all!”
He walked deliberately out into the
wild, windy night.
Marshall glanced hurriedly at the
fatal paper in his hand. It was full of
that capricious detail with which in
reverie we review scenes that are past.
But a line here and there clearly enough
told the story—how he went out to plant
the apple tree; how Susie came by and
rejected him; how he passed into the
power of the devil for the time; how
Bertie Leon came by and spoke to him,
and patted him on the shoulder, and
talked about city life; how he hated
him and his pretty face and his good
clothes; how they came to words and
blows, and he struck him with his spade,
and he fell into the trench, and he
buried him there at the roots of the
tree.
Marshall, following his first impulse,
thrust the paper into the dull red coals.
It flamed for an instant, and flew with
a sound like a sob up the chimney.
They hunted for Golyer all night, but
in the morning found him lying as if
asleep, with the peace of expiation on
his pale face, his pruning-knife in his
heart, and the red current of his life
tinging the turf with crimson around
the roots of the Blood Seedling.
John Hay.
Back matter
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Hay, John, 1838-1905 [1872], The blood seedling (J.B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf579T].
