Riddles (Bacheller)/Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The Wealthy Mill-Owner Learns how a Farm becomes a Leech and a Pestilent Source of Enervation and Moral Decay in a Countryside. He applies to the situation a Dose of Honest Frankness.
RIDDLES was shown to a little room over the wood-shed. Its furniture included a chair, a strip of carpet, a bed, a wash-stand with bowl, pitcher, soap and towel and a battered chiffonier, but the room and the furniture were clean, the bed fairly comfortable. Riddles, being weary, had a night of unbroken sleep. He missed his tub in the morning, but made out very well with a sort of bird bath at the rim of the basin of cold water. He had been told to see Mr. Cawkins. the superintendent, at six a.m. and so at that hour Riddles was down-stairs and wandering over the silent and deserted grounds. There were large lawns and gardens and great elms and many handsome shrubs and a big, rambling villa, yellow with white trimmings, set in a broad, fertile valley. Across a level stretch of meadows, half a mile or so from the house, was a range of high hills. It was a pretty bit of country. The house and grounds showed signs of neglect; both had the appearance of being a trifle down at the heel. A blind was loose on the front of the main structure, its veranda columns needed varnish, its eave gutters were eaten out with rust, the shrubs and trees had not been trimmed that summer. No feet were stirring on the place save those of the late Mr. Riddles. After some twenty minutes of looking around he met a tall, lank, middle-aged man in blue overalls coming out of the barn, and asked:
“Is your name Cawkins?”
THE man looked at Riddles and rubbed his long nose with a red handkerchief. Then he brushed aside his bristling, dark mustache, while his keen gray eyes surveyed the figure of the new man.
“Yes, sir—that sounds like my name,” he answered.
“I was told to see you at six o'clock, but you were not in sight at that hour,” said Riddles. “You may call me Reuben Smith.”
“Say, that six o'clock business is like everything else here—a joke,” Cawkins declared in a low tone. “The breakfast hour is supposed to be six-thirty. It's that now and not a girl out o' bed. Be you another patient?”
“What do you mean?” Riddles asked.
“Why, this is the darnedest place ye ever see in yer life,” Cawkins explained in confidential tone. “It ain't a farm, it's a kind of a health resort. Plenty of amusement an' lots of sleep an' good pay. The patients give me ten per cent. of their wages, an' I kind o' look after 'em—do what I can for their comfort. We all go off to a dance or a movie show every night an', of course, we make sleep while the sun shines—stacks of it. Ain't that a cinch?”
“Movie shows! Where do you find 'em?” Riddles asked.
“Out to the village—four miles from here. That's nothing when you have some Maggie toters an' the right to use 'em.”
“What do you do for exercise?” Riddles asked.
“Everything but work. How are you goin' to work for anybody that don't know what work is?”
“I suppose it would be possible to show 'em what it is like an' git 'em gradually used to it,” Riddles answered.
“But what's the sense in spoilin' a good thing?” said Cawkins. “She's satisfied. She's even talkin' o' puttin' in a pool-table an' a tennis-court for the help.”
“Well, ye know if I wanted to be a fool, I wouldn't need any hired men to help me,” said Riddles.
Again Cawkins laughed. “Say, she's a soft-hearted, lady agriculturist, born in a marble palace in the full o' the moon. She's the leading sleeper in this valley. Off somewhere every night. Has her breakfast in bed an' sleeps till one o'clock every day. Never discharges anybody. When I first came here I tried to work. I was goin' to discharge the loafers and get some good help. She wouldn't stand for it. Too soft-hearted. She's spoilt all the servants in the neighborhood. Everybody's help is about like ours. They rest through the day and work most o' the night.”
“It's a new kind of a school,” said Riddles. “I suppose Mrs. Martin can afford it.”
“That's just what worries us—we're afraid she can't,” Cawkins went on. “We haven't yet got our pay for the last month. We're all ready to quit.”
“So am I,” said Riddles. “I ain't anxious to git into a nut house, but maybe I belong here. We'll see.”
Cawkins went to the men's quarters above the garage and awoke them and was greeted with rude remarks. At seven-thirty Riddles went in to breakfast with the superintendent and four husky farm hands.
“My gosh!” the cook exclaimed as she looked at Riddles. “Haven't I got jays enough to cook for now?”
“Go easy, Maggie,” said Cawkins in a soothing voice. “It's only for the hayin' time. He'll be takin' you to a dance one o' these nights.”
“That hayseed! Gosh!” Maggie answered while she stood by the door wiping tears from her eyes, as the kitchen-maid threw a dipper into the sink with great violence, Cawkins introduced Mr. Reuben Smith.
“You'll find me willin' an' obligin', Maggie,” said Riddles with a smile. “I'm a ray o' sunshine in the kitchen—handy with the scuttle an' know the way to the wood-pile. I always draw the biggest piece o' pie.”
Maggie was visibly pleased.
After breakfast Riddles went out into the hayfield with the men. When Cawkins asked him what he would like to do, he expressed a preference for the mowing machine—the part of the haying which he had liked best in his youth. Cawkins was an obliging man. and so the machine, with the late Mr. Riddles in its iron seat, was soon clanging over a great meadow flat, half a mile or so from the house. For him it was a delight to see the grass falling back of the cut-bar and to smell again the dewy morning breath of the meadows. Only one of the men who had come with him was at work—mowing the fence corners with a scythe; the others, Cawkins among them, were lying under the edge of a piece of woods.
THE superintendent and his men had a well-planned system for beating the game. In the back meadow two, and sometimes three, of them were always lying in the bushes or on a swath of hay while the others were at work. They slept by turns, one calling the other when his time was up and taking his place on the flowery bed of ease. These conditions were new to Mr. Riddles. They excited his interest. The haymakers of his boyhood had worked with a mighty zest. These were different. All save Cawkins were foreign born. He learned that day that three of these farm-hands had been in the army in France. They had grown accustomed to long periods of idleness, and had not recorded normal habits of work.
Riddles went with the servants that evening in one of the Ford cars, kept for their use, to the village of Coulterville. It was a village of some three thousand inhabitants. He did not care to go to the movie show and the dance which was to follow it in the Town Hall, so he did a little shopping. After which he went with Cawkins to the big meat and grocery market. There the superintendent introduced him to Sam Bullwether, the chief clerk. Riddles sat down in a comfortable chair with his pipe after Cawkins had left to go to the movie show. For nearly an hour he read the New York paper which he had bought at a bookstore. Before he had finished his reading the market was deserted save by Sam Bullwether, who seemed to be getting ready to close the doors and go home.
“Have a cigar—straight from a rich guy?” Riddles asked.
“You bet I will,” the clerk answered as he took the long corona which Riddles drew from his pocket. “I never saw one like that before—Porto Rico, I guess. Wait till I lock the doors an' we'll set down an' have a smoke before I go home.”
WHEN the clerk returned, Riddles remarked: “I suppose there are a good many rich guys around here.”
“They've come here an' grabbed the hills an' valleys an' shoved a lot o' roofs into the air,” the clerk answered as he lighted his cigar. “We git all their trade.”
“An' purty good prices,” Riddles suggested.
“Anything we want to ask—the sky is the limit. They don't spend money; they just shovel it out—like unloadin' a ton o' coal. It's done by hired men—there's so much of it to handle.”
“Kind o' heavy work.”
“Well, ye see, they don't bother with the marketin'—haven't time. Generally it's the cook or the butler or the housekeeper or the superintendent, an' the bigger the bill the better they like it.”
“Of course, they get a rake-off.”
“Most of 'em! They git theirs, in cash, too, accordin' to the amount o' the bill an' sometimes we have to wait a year for our money an' plenty often we git beat out of it. The swell guys hate to give up. Sometimes, when they pay, you can hear their shrieks for a mile.”
Riddles laughed.
“I don't know as I blame 'em,” the clerk went on. “They've been bled an' they know it—the poor suckers! They've got to be bled. We have to get ours while the goin' is good. Everybody bleeds us, the wholesaler, the tailor, the drygoods merchant, the carpenter, the plumber. I guess the rich guy does his share o' bleedin' the other feller. We're all in it.”
“I wonder how long it will be before we are a bloodless nation,” Riddles said as he filled his pipe again.
“It's hard on the poor devils, like me, that's workin' for a salary—clerks an' schoolma'ams an' town officers. The plumber soaked me plenty for a job he done up at the house. The rich guys will pay him anything he asks an' I have to pay the same.”
“How is the rich guy to help himself?” Riddles asked. “You fellers decide how much profit you want to make an' fix yer price an' he has to pay it. Why don't you take guns an' go out on the road an' be honest, straightforward robbers? It's a sneakin' kind of a business you do. You pretend to be honest men an' hold up the whole community. You make the rich man holler, but you break the backs o' the poor.”
“The rich are so foolish—they pay more'n they need to,” the clerk went on. “Now you take that woman you're workin' for. She's a real nice woman. It's a pleasure to wait on her, but she don't come in here more'n twice in a summer. If she did her own buyin' and used judgment about it, she'd save a lot. The girl comes in every week or so. Say, she's a peach! The best looker in the whole bunch an' talks just like a human bein' an' funny—say, I'd rather talk with her ten minutes than see Charley Chaplin!”
“I wonder why she don't get married,” said Riddles.
“Well, sir, I guess she's hard to please. That girl ought to have a real man an' they're all at work these days, all except ol' Waters' boy, Percy. He's just foolin' around here in the country, but he ain't got no show with her.”
“Why?”
“Little tin god! Knows it all an' then some more! Kind of a Kaiser William runnin' a one-man world! Nobody likes him. Killed a cow with his big racin' car the other night an' slammed himself into a ditch an' busted a front wheel. Had a woman with a starched face in with him—a kind of a high stepper from New York, whose husband is in the army an' hasn't got home yet. Hank Thompson picked 'em up and brought 'em to Brown's drugstore. They said Percy was half drunk. Only had a few scratches; but she had to go to the hospital. His father paid for the cow and gave Hank twenty dollars to keep his tongue still. That young feller ain't no match for Harriet Martin, I can tell ye that. If she marries him, it'll be because she has to.”
“Why should she have to?” Riddles asked.
“WELL, I'll tell ye, ol' Waters has money to burn. Percy is the only child an' I shouldn't wonder if the widow Martin was a little hard up. That farm as it's run now would break anybody—give it time enough. Waters may get control of 'em. He owns this store an' the First National Bank an' the hardware store an' The Farmer's Supply Company an' the Lakeside Hotel. High prices don't hurt his feelin's a bit. Over at the Lakeside you have to put up two dollars and fifty cents for a beefsteak.”
“Is there any good reason for that?” Riddles asked.
The clerk smiled and said with a knowing look: “Well, I believe the beef trust owns four hundred thousand dollars' worth of the stock of the hotel company. I hear that they've got the same kind of a cinch on most of the big hotels in America.”
“That means that the beef trust cuts out competition in selling meat to big hotels and can help fix the price on the bill of fare,” Riddles mused.
“They handle meat, poultry, eggs, fish an' groceries,” Bullwether answered.
“They've got the world by the gizzard,” said Riddles. “Still an honest store could do a lot for the poor gizzards of Coultervizlle.”
“Wait 'til I start mine,” the clerk answered.
The town clock struck eleven. Riddles rose from his chair.
“I'm due at the post-office door," he remarked. “We've had a good talk.”
“Don't say a word of what I've told ye,” said the clerk as he let Riddles out of the front door.
“Not a word,” Riddles answered.
He waited in front of the post-office for nearly half an hour before the two Ford cars arrived with their party of industrious fun seekers.
Next evening he found old David Galt sitting by the stove with Sam Bullwether. Galt was a big, stout man with a white mustache and chin lock. He had a large, ruddy face and gray eyes. He whittled a piece of pine as he talked. He was dressed in black with a low-cut vest, a broad expanse of white shirt-front adorned with a diamond stud, and a long frock coat. His old-fashion low collar held a white string tie.
“I'VE lived seventy years in this country,” he was saying, “and we have found no trouble in maintaining law and order until these radical foreigners came among us. The meanest thing that has happened here in years is the killing at Connors.”
“That criminal ought to be punished,” said Sam.
“Yes sir; we should make an example of him. But where is he? He's disappeared like magic. We have offered a reward of five hundred dollars for his apprehension, but nothing has come of it.”
His talk was interrupt by the entrance of a rugged-looking man dressed in coarse gray clothes under a gray felt hat. His full, sandy beard was streaked with gray. His gray eyes were deep-set under shaggy gray brows. He was an undersized man who walked as if he had been accustomed to heavy burdens.
“Hello, Silas!” said David Galt in a cheerful tone, as he slashed a stout sliver from the pine stick. “I hope you're going to give us something toward the new community house.”
“Not a cent!” snapped the newcomer. “We're taxed to death now.”
“But think of what we get for it,” said Galt.
“What—I'd like to know?”
“Better health, more comfort, good roads, good government.”
“I don't call it good government when a man can kill another an' git away without bein' punished. As to yer roads, they're nothin' but a thoroughfare for fools who waste their time on 'em. I've swore that I'll never set a foot on them roads. If I did, I wouldn't expect to git off 'em alive. As to health an' comfort, there's less of it than there ever was in this community with the automobiles racin' an' tootin' an' killin' folks.”
The speaker had gathered his beard in his hand and was hanging on to it as if it were the tether of his disposition. Turning to Sam Bullwether with a look of injury, the newcomer said:
“I want a pound o' crackers an' a half a pound o' cheese.”
“Robbery!” he growled as he paid for the packages. He retired from the store without speaking again. Mr. Galt followed him with a smile and a wink.
“That was old Silas Gaylor,” said Sam. “He's a queer one. Worth at least a quarter of a million dollars. Used to run a sawmill. Growls every time he gives up a cent. Had a quarrel with his brother Bill twenty years ago over the ownership of an old umbrella and hasn't spoken to him since. They pass each other on the street every day.”
Just then Ab Risley, the village drunkard, came into the store and sat down.
“What you been doin' to old Sile Gaylor?” he asked of Sam Bullwether.
“BEEN chargin' him twenty cents for some crackers and cheese.”
“The way he's growlin' an' hangin' on to his whiskers is something awful,” said Risley. “I'm glad we've got high prices. I like to hear these old dubs holler. It's got 'em all on a cracker an' cheese diet. Maybe it'll kill 'em off. He looks kind o' scrawny. One night when I was broke an' settin' in the park I fell asleep an' dreamed that Sile Gaylor came along an' give me five cents. It scairt me so I rolled off the bench an' skinned my forehead on the side of a tree. It was one o' the meanest things that Sile ever did. Ol' Black Mary found me there with blood on my face. She wet her handkerchief in the fountain an' cleaned me up an' took me over to the dog wagon an' fed me. She ain't got much money, but I think she's worth more than any other person in this village, not exceptin' Sile Gaylor. It does me good to hear the skinflints holler. I tell ye, me an' Rat Waters have done a lot for this place.”
Mr. Risley referred to Erastus Waters, the wealthy merchant and inn-keeper. It was a habit of his to speak of “me an' Rat Waters.”
“How so?” Mr. Bullwether asked.
“We give folks somethin' to talk about. Now, I've got an idea that ought to be a help. It beats the League o' Nations all holler. It'll put a stop to war absolutely.”
“What's your idea?” the clerk inquired.
“Make a law that nobody under forty can fight in a war. That'll kill off the old duffers that have lived long enough. Then every year we'll have an Expectoration Day, when we can all go an' spit on their graves.”
“Well, Ab, you better go home an' sleep it off,” said Bullwether as he made ready to close the store.
“Oh, idees ain't like whisky,” said Ab as he started for the door. “When ye git drunk on idees it's permanent. Ye never draw another sober breath.”
To the end of that week Riddles went on with his work in the hay-field while the other men devoted their days to recuperation. Every evening he went down to Coulterville in one of the Maggie toters and had a smoke and a talk with Sam Bullwether. Henry Bradshaw, the young school superintendent, had sat with them one evening for an hour or so and had had a part in their talk.
“There are a good many farms around here,” said Riddles. “What becomes of their product?”
“It is millionaired,” said Bradshaw.
“What do you mean?”
“That it's mostly wasted,” Bradshaw went on. “The rich folks don't want to be bothered by raising stuff for market. It would be bad form. So when they get a farm they play with it. They put it out of business. It becomes just a big strip of scenery—a site for saddle trails, an arena in which man and master devote themselves to killing time. Even the land becomes an idler. It does nothing to relieve the pressure of scarcity and high prices. You work on Mrs. Martin's farm—one of the best in the countryside. What do you suppose has become of its products in the last two or three years?”
“I guess there ain't been any,” said Riddles.
“You're about right,” Bradshaw went on. “Instead of contributing a share of the necessaries of life, it has become a consumer devouring the substance of its owner and breaking down the habit of industry and right thinking in its employees.”
When Bradshaw went out of the store Riddles followed him. They walked together through the village park.
“Do you like Sam Bullwether?” Riddles asked.
“Everybody likes Sam” the teacher answered. “Talks too much, but he's an honest, hard-working man.”
“Would you care to take another school at double the salary you've been getting?”
“I would,” said Bradshaw. “I can't live on the salary I've been getting and have refused to sign for another year.”
“I've been sizing you up, and I've decided that you're a man that can be trusted and that you ought to have a bigger job. If you will promise to respect my confidence, I will lay my plan before you.”
“I promise,” said Bradshaw.
They sat down on a bench in the park and had a long talk which was interrupted by a woman well past middle age who was neatly dressed in black.
“God bless you, gentlemen,” she said in a pleasant voice. “Would you give me something for the poor?”
They gave and she passed on.
“Who is that,” Riddles asked.
“SHE is called Black Mary—a woman with an unfortunate past. Some say that she is not quite sound mentally. She has a good heart and really helps a lot of poor people, including herself, with the money she begs.”
The clock struck eleven.
“I must look up the Maggie toters,” said Riddles as he rose from the bench. “I'll meet you here to-morrow evening at eight-thirty.”
He had been planning a revolution, and next morning, bright and early, he got it under way.
It was a still, clear Saturday morning. Cawkins was twenty minutes late in getting out of his room.
“There's a lot of hay down and we ought to get it under cover before Sunday,” said Riddles to him.
“Don't let that worry you,” Cawkins answered gruffly.
The other men who had just come down from their quarters stood near him.
“I've got somethin' that belongs to you,” said Riddles with a look at Cawkins.
“What's that?” the latter asked.
“A piece of information,” Riddles went on in a kindly voice. “It ought to be worth a lot to you, but I ain't goin' to charge ye a cent for it. Everybody knows it but you. Looks as if folks had been tryin' to keep it from ye. There's been a death in your family.”
“What!” Cawkins exclaimed. “Who's dead?”
“Your soul,” Riddles.answered calmly.
“What do ye mean?” Cawkins demanded.
Riddles answered very gently as he whittled with his jack-knife.
“I mean that you're a crook—a dirty, disreputable, damn crook. It wouldn't matter so much, but you are makin' crooks o' these men. If they were in the army they would be led out and shot for desertion in the face of the enemy and for sleepin' at their posts. They would deserve it. You are turning them into criminals. It's just as bad to steal this woman's time as to steal her money.”
For half a moment Cawkins was dumb with astonishment. Riddles's masterly self-possession had floored him. There was no room for argument as to the facts stated. If Riddles's manner had been loud and quarrelsome Cawkins would, in some fashion, have had it out with him on the spot. But the new man had made him feel like clay in the hands of the potter.
“WHAT are ye goin' to do about it?” he demanded under his breath.
“Goin' to be very nice to ye,” said Riddles in the same gentle tone. “Goin' to give ye a chance to reform an' live honest an' put in a day's work for a day's pay. If you refuse to do that, I'll have a talk with the madam.”
“You can go plumb to hell!” said Cawkins angrily.
“Now don't keep pointin' the wrong way—like a misplaced sign-board,” Riddles answered.
Suddenly Miss Harriet Martin stepped out of the wood-shed and confronted the group of men. She was dressed for the saddle. Riddles enjoys telling his friends of the freshness and beauty of her face, of the erectness of her figure and of the indignation in her dark eyes as she stood before them.
“I was drawing on my boots in the shed where Mary had polished them,” said the young lady. “I couldn't help hearing your talk.” She turned to Riddles and added: “Reuben Smith, I thank you and shall always be grateful to you. We have known of the shameless conduct of these men. But we have not known what to do about it. I shall ask my mother to put you in charge of them.”
“If you believe that liar, we will walk out today—the whole force—women an' men,” Cawkins threatened.
“Miss Martin, if I was you I would say, 'Walk!'” said Riddles.
The young lady turned to Cawkins and said, “Walk!” in the same quiet tone that Riddles had used.
The whole force left that morning. Only Mrs. Martin's maid remained. The chauffeur took them to Coulterville. Riddles hired a neighbor, whose haying was finished, to clean up the meadow flat.