Tiberius Smith/Chapter 2
II
THE TOWN THAT LOST ITSELF
"IT'S a long shout from Arcate to Vermont, the first State to free its slaves; but after Tiberius and I had scuttled up to 'Frisco, with our jeans filled with dross, we only lasted six months. Tib was a wise wizard in the open and could coax the average hyena to eat from his palm. But a 'Frisco theatre-sharp hypnotized us into backing an extravaganza, and in about the same month the sweet girlish grads are buying pink sashes and discovering Italy beyond the Alps we were on the waiting-list of the 'Down-and-Out Club.'
"Then, to polish the climax, the manager bolted with the winter's receipts, ditto the leading skirt, and we were left high and dry with only roses to eat.
"‘He's gone like an idle dream,' sighed Tib, meaning the manager. 'I hope all the box-office change is foney and that the squaw sues him successfully for breach of promise. There's but one thing left, besides our honor, and that's to take a vacation. When you've got a half-Nelson on prosperity it doesn't pay to quit. But now that we must loaf, let's do it orderly.'
"Naturally I fell on his neck and swore I'd never desert him, providing he would square the railroads. And as he conned passes to Vermont, where he use to be born, he decided it would be cheaper and more instructive to go home. I call Vermont my home, you know, as I never had a home and because Tib always swore I was a Green Mountain Boy by adoption. Dear! dear! how loyal he was to that State! Always hankering to be there, and always threatening to quit being a busy bee to inaugurate an 'old home week.' No mountains were so green, you know, as the home mountains; no lakes were so clear as the home lakes; and no people were so kindly as the home people.
"Well, I'd been fed on that kind of dope so long that I expected trusty agrarians to crush each other under hoof in an effort to reach us when we stepped from the train and embarrass us with gifts. It's not surprising that I should fail to appreciate that Tib had seen less of this State than any other in the Union. Nor did I realize that up on the edge of Essex County was a small settlement, utterly isolated from all railroads and highways. But it does please me to-night, as I pause and allow the phantoms of those times and scenes to troop by, to remember that that very village is now revelling in and pondering over a wealth of newly acquired information, all due to the careless coming of my master.
"Perhaps in all our little journeys my benefactor never met with a more grotesque and fanciful environment than awaited us there. Possibly the opera-bouffe effects had remained dormant largely because the community, known as Home Valley, was off the line of any travel and was a neighbor only to a few struggling French hamlets, where the poorer and more illiterate Canadians grub a living from the rocky clearings. But one fact was soon to be evidenced: those inland Crusoes had never possessed the incentive to pry into the world beyond the rim of the rugged Dozen Hills.
"Now any other man in visiting the stagnated hollow would have left it as he found it. You would have done so, and so would have I. But nature, I reckon, in mapping out the rotund form and indomitable spirit of my patron, evidently intended him for a missionary, and his slipping into the life of a showman was merely an abortion.
"But the remembrance of it all makes me smile tolerantly as I loll back and listen to the wise guys dwell upon the quiet spots they have found asleep. For this place is not down on the map and you'd never find it except by accident. The burglar and the tax-collector, I say, are unknown, as it has shut itself off from the outside world for more than forty years. Moreover, it's stood at a standstill during that period. Why, it wouldn't know a post-office or a telephone if it met them in the street, while a lightning-rod agent would be received with childish enthusiasm. I'll wager it doesn't know to this day whether it's in Canada or the United States. And it was there that Tiberius and I discovered what we called the stay-at-home germ.
"To revert to the southern boundary of the State for three seconds. When we detrained I could see Tib was disappointed because the citizens didn't meet us at the station and weep on his last clean shirt and have the school-children there to wave flags and sing 'Welcome Home.'
"To be chemically correct, I couldn't see as he knew any one in the State. Finally he confessed that his parents had moved from Bellows Falls when he was three years old, yet he remained positive that if we went North and tarried in the older centres of civilization we'd find hosts of people who would quit their means of earning a livelihood to bask in the sunshine of his society. So we passed from one joint to another, discovering many Smiths, but not his Smiths, until nothing would do but we must drill over the hills, towards Canada, where the black flies and grasshoppers have a life easement on the horizon.
"I objected, for it was daily becoming harder to feed the army. But Tib laid in a stock of tinned stuff at the last cross-roads store, and, crying 'Excelsior,' we hiked on until we came to a range of knobs that aren't down on the map. Tib thought it was the boundary, and insisted that we surmount the barrier and squint our orbs at the Lady of the Snows. It was a tough climb, but at sundown we reached the top, where we pitched a small shelter-tent and camped for the night.
"In the morning we beheld a small settlement of rudely constructed houses, sleeping in a cup-like depression.
"‘It isn't on the time-tables,' murmured Tib; 'and yet human beings dwell therein. We'll go down.'
"Utterly fagged out, we struck the burgh late in the afternoon and found it to be a lost town, the habitat of the stay-at-home germ. I doubt if the United States can furnish similar conditions, ransack its borders as you will.
"The fact that French and half-breed farmers had settled down in several communities within a radius of twenty miles did not detract from these people's isolation, for they were of our blood and had never assimilated with their neighbors. The very air seemed ancient and somnolent, as we looked on the houses, built largely of logs, and observed that the inhabitants who came out to meet us were garbed in the styles of half a century back.
"‘I should say we are two scampish Rip Van Winkles and that this is a dress-rehearsal,' observed Tib, as he gravely bowed to an ancient master-piece whose face was covered with a luxuriant growth of breakfast-food.
"The white-whiskered tease eyed us in surprise, and at last asked:
"‘Not French? You must have wandered far from your course to get here.'
"Tib told him how we'd been fishing, and were strangers to the country; how we were tired of the world and would like to rest a bit.
"‘If you stay you'll go back and tell what you've seen, and a crowd of curious folks will be tramping up here to look us over,' objected a younger man.
"‘Silence, Reuben; let me talk to the strangers,' commanded grandpa, sternly, and the other slunk back abashed.
"I was surprised. The respect for gray hairs, I've noticed, is not as strong to-day as it was in the Rollo books.
"Then the old man drew Tib aside—I reckon he considered my striped shirt to be too frivolous—and conversed earnestly with him for some time. Tib then jolted his hat over his right ear, and I knew by that old familiar sign that he had agreed to do something unusual.
"‘Let me hold discourse with my friend,' I heard him say. Then to me he whispered, 'If we can be mean enough to deal a few pictures from the bottom of the deck, we can make up what the manager appropriated, I believe. List! This town is bedridden. Hasn't seen any one but French and half-breeds since the tristful days of '61. They'll use us well if we agree to stay through the summer.'
"‘But why stay?' I mumbled, utterly at loss to comprehend any advantage in so doing.
"‘To earn a livelihood,' explained Tib. 'Yon antique migrated here when the Civil War broke out. Did it to escape the draft. He and a bunch of companions with their women folks settled down in this well, believing they were in Canada. He's the only original forebear alive. They've never written a letter or received a letter or a newspaper since coming here. Hence the newer generation is in plumb darkness as to the events of the last forty-two years. You see, the first batch of settlers was so opposed to being discovered and drafted that they never left the valley.
"‘They call the surrounding heights the Dozen Hills, as that's their number. The prenatal influence got to work, and all the children are permeated with the stay-at-home germ. Why, according to Old Timers testimony, they abhor the outside world and hope to live indefinitely without being intruded upon.'
"‘But what's that to us?' I gasped, much perplexed at the situation.
"‘Well,' murmured Tib, 'it seems curiosity still remains. The mother in 'em, I guess. The French and half-breeds they meet know nothing of what's gone on, or is going on, in the States; and consequently they are hard up for news, about a half a century behind. When they came here, one of their number brought a small hand-press, and they obtained paper through the French in Canada. But the original printer died long ago, and no one can run it, so they've had no news for forty years. The Dim Past there opines that we, fresh from the outer world, might supply the want and get out a paper. Think of it, my boy; think of it!'
"‘But a paper won't pay here,' I blurted.
"‘Not pay?' Tib replied, pityingly. 'Why, the original immigrants brought about twenty thousand dollars in gold with them; distrusted paper-money, you know. It's all here. Hardly a dollar has rolled over the hills. They can't use it; it's no good to 'em. Their medium of exchange is corn and beans. They'll think we're a godsend if we'll resurrect the old press and toss off the news once a week. I'll hire you now as associate editor.'
"‘But news!' I cried. 'Good Heavens! how can we get news?'
"‘To think,' he apostrophized the horizon, 'that he should lead that card after living with me all these years. Child'—and his voice took on the old histrionic ring—'we have forty-two years of history to drag on. They don't even know the Civil War is over. The old man is cloudy in his attic, and the present generation doesn't even know how long their people have been here. It is as if they had slumbered for half a century.
"‘Their neighbors can't read or write, never heard of the great conflict, and so have told them nothing. It's true they've heard in a vague way of the Spanish-American war, but they think it's a continuation of the Civil War. The battle of Gettysburg occurred yesterday; the name is new to 'em. Jeff Davis is fleeing towards Texas, and Sheridan is only twenty miles away.'
"The sublimity of it all dazed me. 'Will they nibble?' I whispered.
"‘Nibble!' He laughed. 'Why, they'll climb into the boat for the bait. This is a virgin field, a lost town. It will be like selling yesterday's extras in the moon. I can set type, or use to when a maiden, and you can brush up your history. I shall issue once a week.' The last very firmly.
"And it's the blessed truth that those Alexander Selkirks had been cast away with dim memories of the Civil War for nearly fifty years: the curtain had rung down for them when the North talked of drafting soldiers. The children and grandchildren had been taught to read from old hymnals and Webster's spelling-book. Their literature consisted of a few ragged volumes of the vintage of the first half of the nineteenth century. They feared the outside world. Every child had been marked with an abnormal dread of the menace that crouched beyond the narrow horizon. And yet they hungered for news!
"Well, Tib told old Deacon Durgin—that was the aged's name—that we were annexed, and would abide the summer in their midst and furnish real news. In private life Tiberius was a most exact and honorable man, but when it came to business he carefully locked up the Golden Rule and never allowed his vocal chords to vibrate harshly at the rough touch of truth.
"Finally we were shown to a house of logs in the centre of the settlement where the old hand-press and some rolls of paper were stored. The owner had left his property in fair condition, and the paper, some of it quite fresh, some yellow with age, would still take ink. We found a large quantity of the latter that Tib said he could use by doctoring it up.
"‘I suppose they'll be willing for us to visit the outside once in a while,' I said to Tib, 'so that we can get the news.'
"‘No,' he explained, 'we can't do that. They are willing to give us fifty dollars a week apiece for one hundred copies of my paper, containing what we can remember of recent events. They reckon that before the useless twenty thousand dollars are eaten up they will have become satiated with new-laid information. They reckon on our being filled to the brim with fresh recollections, and they only ask that we jolt out a few facts once a week. Now for issue Number One of the Tiberian Weekly!"
"And what do you suppose Tib insisted I should feed out to them? The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac. Yes, sir; and where my memory played me false I worked the daffy corner of my brain to the limit. Bless you, if you could have read Tib's editorial, comparing the merits of the two boats, and wandering off into a dissertation of the mechanism of a ninety-horse-power racing-motor-car, and then my descriptive article of the fight itself, you would feel proud for us. Talk about your red-hot lines from the shot-riddled battle-field! I gave it in rounds and wrote as if it were but yesterday. Why, it simply staggered 'em, sir.
"You see, they'd lost all idea of time. From observing them I can now dimly appreciate the all-absorbing interest the Civil War excited. Those people simply hung around from one day to another, waiting for the paper to leave the dinky, squeaking press. It was a mere leaflet, all reading-matter. Old Deacon Durgin, with hickory staff clutched in his withered hand, loafed in our office from morning until night. Tib and I had to stand out in the middle of the grass-grown lane when we wished to cook up some warm, sassy ones.
"‘What shall we give 'em next?' I inquired.
"‘Capture of Fort Donelson,' suggested Tib.
"‘That was before the naval engagement, I believe,' I objected.
"‘We are defying time,' reminded my leader. 'But if you are squeamish and desire to observe a strict sequence of events, give 'em the Peninsular Campaign.'
"I didn't recall much about this campaign, but I foozled up some names, gave a list of twenty killed, and let it go. It took like hot cakes. They didn't mind paying over the gold; it was the least valuable of their possessions. If we'd asked for potatoes they would have coppered us to lose, I reckon.
"One physical trait I noticed they all had in common. Where the bump of observation should be, there were hollows. Yes, sir, their brows had a scooped-out effect and their foreheads were ingrowing. The men worked all day in the fields, and the women spun and knit. They had sheep and cows and plenty to eat in a rough-and-ready sort of a way. Their government was patriarchal, I reckon, as Deacon Durgin seemed to be the boss Injun. We boarded with him.
"The head of each family was responsible for his children's education, and all could read and write. Although they looked down on their neighbors as an inferior race, their brains panned out far below the average. They had stagnated and intermarried so long that to deceive 'em was as easy as stealing things off a Christmas-tree. Tib greatly relished creating sensations, and one week he sprung an extra in which incredible feats of valor were accorded to both armies. The North and South were clinched, hitting with one arm free.
"His description of the battle-field was the fiercest thing I ever saw outside a gilded ten-cent novel. He invented names of men and even States, and at the wind-up proclaimed in circus type that England was about to declare war against the North.
"‘My boy,' he explained, with enthusiasm, 'what we want is a universal war. It pleases 'em to think every one is fighting and that this is the only quiet spot on earth. Each battle redoubles their sense of security and isolation. It's our duty to make 'em happy. Besides, the more characters in the play, the more scope you have. Nothing hampers a man so as facts. Get above sordid facts and make history. Now, if I were you, I'd ring in an army of Chinese assailing Jersey City. That will dovetail in with my chapter. Make the Chinks and English allies.'
"As it was Tib's game, and as they seemed ready to swallow anything from an egg up to a family Bible, I dished up the next item in lurid style. I remember it was a 'Very Special War Extra,' and I figured out about forty thousand dead on the field of battle when sable night spread her dusky wings o'er the plain. That last phrase was Tib's, and he admitted he had read it in a novel, but he maintained it was the best line ever in the paper.
"It would have done your heart good could you have seen Tiberius bustling out in front of our log house, paste-pot in hand, to stick up some bulletins on a tree. He really believed, I reckon, he was running a big paper, and I got so I took my work seriously. When he would announce that we were to issue an extra, I would fight my watch as if I only had five minutes to catch the press, and Tib would stand over me bawling, 'Copy! Copy! Look alive, Billy! You've only two minutes!'
"Then he'd turn to the clutter of women folks and declare, 'Mrs. Whitten, you must remove your offspring from the press-room. Children are out of place in a great newspaper office.' And it all seemed real, too. It didn't strike me as funny. I was sincerely provoked because the kids were swarming over the shop.
"I shall always remember the style of him when he'd dash out with his bulletins. Frowning heavily, eyes glittering with energy, he'd slap up a wireless to the effect that General Longstreet was dead. Then he'd walk pertly back to the editorial room, look over my shoulder, and read in my description that General Longstreet was beating a masterly retreat. Out he'd dash again and correct the first bulletin to read 'General Longstreet Is Not Dead.' And all the while he'd be humming some catchy lilt from a last season's chorus.
"Whenever we issued an extra we had the youngsters run about the Hollow shouting, 'Extry! Extry! North 'n' South in a death grapple! All about th' big battle. Seventeen hundred kilt!' And Tib would stand beaming in the doorway and murmur, 'Ah, but it's heartsome. If we only had some embalmed beef and a rip-snorting scandal! But it 'll come. Patience, my boy, until we run out of embalmed history. Billy, see if we have another can of those preserved cavalry charges in the pantry. I guess we'd better feed 'em a little hoof-work next.'
"Say, after working under that man you'd never want to return to humdrum again. Why, I got so I was afraid some one would spring my fairy news items ahead of me, and the joy of knowing I was first in the lane with an extra was never surpassed in Park Row. We became so keen in the game that on several occasions we got out night extras. Yes, sir, we aroused those poor oblivious bipeds at three o'clock in the morning, and they got up and read the latest intelligence by candle-light. Of course, the night extras were only when the news was terrific and wouldn't keep until morning.
"Only once did Deacon Durgin interfere with our policy. That was when Tib wrote an editorial knocking free silver and declaring for a gold standard. The Deacon insisted that when it came to the currency question. Home Hollow wanted only a bean basis. He had no use for money, but a government established on beans would outlast the very hills, he said. We made that the issue of the Presidential campaign, and it hit 'em keenly, sir. An unlimited currency of beans was their slogan, and we supplied statistics to prove it was the only possible solution of the monetary problem.
"Shortly after that, Tib came to me and said:
"'That last edition touched 'em, and touched 'em deeply, sir. Now, to thoroughly interest 'em, we must bring the danger nearer, and then, by dispelling it, we'll earn their everlasting thanks. Home Hollow must be threatened by an invasion.'
"Well, I got out a 'Very Special War Extra' at midnight, telling the fearful news. Hang me if it didn't brush 'em off their feet. The women wept and hid their children, while the men scuttled off to the thick woods whispering 'draft' to each other. I had made the army a combination of Chinks and Turks, with a sprinkling of horrible Indian allies. It was a tough proposition for a band of innocents to stub up against. But, do you know, that extra was the beginning of the end for us.
"So strangely does fear operate that the most arrant coward in the Hollow stole off to mount the granite wall to penetrate the valley beyond. No man in Home Hollow had ever done this before, but the spy was irresistibly drawn to know the worst. I saw him set off, and at once decided to fade through the bushes in silent pursuit. Tib was absent in some other part of the village, so my going was unknown to any one.
"Well, the man crept up the rugged, peacefully slope as if he were trying to sneak by a party of Indians on the war-path. I kept him in sight until he reached the top. Then I saw him throw up his hands and sink to the ground. It scared me, I'll admit it. I had been writing yellow stuff so long that I was quite hysterical. I guess it wouldn't have surprised me much if a gang of heathens had appeared on the summit with back hair down and scalping-knives up. At last I made a détour and crawled up to him. Hang me if he wasn't reading a portion of a newspaper that Tib had discarded from the sweat-band of his hat when we first sighted the burgh. As he read I could hear grunts of surprise and exclamations of anger. I recognized him as Reuben, the young man who had originally objected to our tarrying in the Hollow.
"‘The bearers were veterans of the North an' South. The men who'd fought under him an' agin him bared their heads in mutual sorrer an' respect,' he slowly spelled out, and I realized he had hit upon a description of some military funeral. 'The strife an' anger of '61 was no more,' he continued. 'The last few survivors of the Blue an' the Gray hobbled slowly along an' were brothers.'
"Then it sunk into my brain that he had discovered our hoax and knew that the Civil War had ended.
"With great stealth I made a bee-line for the settlement, where I found Tib explaining the general situation to his amazed whiskers, the Deacon. Clutching his arm, I tore him away, saying to the old man it was important war news. Once aside, I whispered in my editor's ear that the game was up, and that freedom beckoned down the line.
"Tib quickly secured our small stock of gold, and, stealing out among the bushes, we made for the mountain. Soon we heard a great crackling of underbrush ahead of us. Drawing aside, we had the pleasure of seeing the scout making for the village, waving the fragment of the newspaper and crying loudly as he went.
"‘It's farewell to the Tiberian Weekly,' sighed Tib.
"‘It's us to the misty highlands,' I added, and on we went.
"Back of us we could hear a great outcry, but as we neared the top of the rocks it died away. It was now nightfall, and Tib paused and pointed back, where the dusk was chasing itself about the lowlands, and groaned, 'Look! They burn their only monument to liberty. They squelch the freedom of the press!'
"A bright blaze told where the office of the Tiberian Weekly was being sacrificed on the altar of an outraged people.
"And so we left 'em. Tib always said he was going back to square himself, but he never did. And little we recked it would be a long, long time before we gazed on the Green Mountains again.
So I do not know whether they yet live secluded and unknown in Home Hollow, or whether they have braved a fringe of the world. But I do know that somewhere up there on the top edge of Essex County is a community that waited nearly half a century for Tiberius Smith to inform 'em that the Civil War is a closed incident.