The Sherrods Part 11

"I hope you can, Jud, but--but, I am afraid----"

"Afraid? Don't you believe in me?"

"Don't say that, please. I am afraid you won't be ready to have me up there as a--a----"

"A what, sweetheart?"

"A very heavy burden."

"Burden! Justine, you will lift the greatest burden I will have to carry--my spirits. I need you, and I'll have you if I starve myself."

"When you are ready, Jud, I'll go with you. You can tell when the time comes. I'll starve with you, if needs be."

That night they received callers in the fire-lit front room. The whole community knew that he was at home, and everybody came to sate legitimate curiosity. Some talked, others joked, a few stared; until at length the township was satisfied and hurried home to bed. For days the people talked of the change they had observed in Jud--not so much in respect to his clothes as to his advanced ideas. "Aleck" Cranby was authority for the statement that Sherrod was engaged in "drawin'

picters fer a dictionary. Thet's how he knows so all-fired much."

The young artist's brief stay at home was the most blissful period in his life and in hers. They were separated only for moments. When the time came for him to go away he went with a cheerier heart and he left a happier one behind. In their last kiss there was the promise that he would return in a month, and there was, back of all, the conviction that she would go with him to Chicago within six months. On the train, however, he allowed gloomy thoughts to drive away the optimism that contact with Justine had inspired. He realized that every dollar he possessed in the world was in his pocket, and he had just six dollars and thirty cents. At such a rate, how much could he acc.u.mulate in six short months?

Back on the little farm there was a level-headed thinker who was counting on a year instead of six months, and who was racking her brains for means with which to help him in the struggle. One good crop would be a G.o.dsend.

For several weeks Jud observed the strictest economy. When next he went to the farm for a visit it was with sixty dollars. Most of this he gave to Justine, who hid it in a bureau drawer. Winter was on in full blast now, and he did not forget to purchase a warm coat for her, besides heavy dress-goods, underwear, and many little necessities.

Thanksgiving saw her dressed in better clothes than she had known since those almost forgotten days of affluence before the mining swindle.

Jud, himself, was not too warmly clad. He refused to buy clothes for himself until he had supplied Justine with all she needed. His suit was old but neat, his shoes were new, his hat was pa.s.sable, but his overcoat was pitiful in its old age.

The night after his return from the farm, he had a few good friends in his room to eat the apples, cakes, and nuts which his wife had given him at home. It was a novel feast for the Chicago boys. Ned Draper, a dramatic critic, had money in the new suit of clothes which graced his person, and he sent out for wine, beer and cigars. The crowd made merry until two o'clock, but not one drop of liquor pa.s.sed Jud's lips.

"Sherrod, where did you get that overcoat I saw you wearing to-day?"

asked Draper, in friendly banter. Jud flushed, but answered steadily: "In Glenville."

"The glorious metropolis of Clay township--the city of our youth,"

laughed Hennessy, the police reporter.

"You ought to pension it and give it a pair of crutches," went on Draper. "It has seen service enough and it's certainly infirm. I'll swear, I don't see how it manages to hang alone."

"It's the best I can afford," cried the owner, resentfully.

"Aw, what are you givin' us? You're getting twenty a week and you're to have thirty by Christmas--if you're good, you know,--and I would blow myself for some clothes. Hang it, old man, I mean it for your own good. People will think more of you if you spruce up and make a showing. Those clothes of yours don't fit and they're worn out. You don't know what a difference it will make in your game if you make a flash with yourself. It gets people thinking you're a peach, when you may be a regular stiff. Go blow yourself for some clothes, and the next time you chase down to Glenville to see that girl she'll break her neck to marry you before you can get out of town. On the level, now, old man, I'm giving it to you straight. Tog up a bit. It doesn't cost a mint and it does help. I'll leave it to the crowd."

"The crowd" supported Draper, and Jud could but see the wisdom in their advice, although his pride rebelled against their method of giving it.

The sight of the other men in the office dressing well, if not expensively, while he remained as ever the wearer of the rankest "hand-me-downs," had not been pleasing. For weeks he had been tempted to purchase a cheap suit of clothes at one of the big department stores, but the thought of economy prevented.

"You haven't any special expense," said Colton, the third guest.

"n.o.body depends on your salary but yourself, so why don't you cut loose? Your parents are dead, just as mine are, and you are as free as air. I can put you next to one of the best tailors in Chicago and he'll fix you out to look like a dream without skinning you to death."

Jud smiled grimly when Colton said that no one but himself depended on his salary. These fellows did not know he was married. An unaccountable fear that they might ridicule him if he posed as a married man who could not support his wife had caused him to keep silent concerning his domestic affairs. Besides, he had heard these and other men speak of certain wives, often in the presence of their husbands, in a manner which shocked him. No one had asked him if he were married and he did not volunteer the information. It amused him hugely when his new acquaintances teased him about "his girl down in old Clay." Some day he would surprise them by introducing them to Justine, calmly, in a matter-of-fact way, and then he would laugh at their incredulity.

"I can't afford clothes like you fellows wear," he said in response to Colton's offer.

"Of course, you can--just as well as I can," said Colton.

"Or any one of us," added Draper. "Clothes won't break anybody."

"You're a good-looking chap, Sherrod, and if you dressed up a bit you'd crack every girl's heart in Chicago. 'Gad, I can see the splinters flying now," cried Hennessy, admiringly.

"It's no joke," added Colton. "I could tog you out till you'd----"

"But I haven't the money, consarn it," cried the victim, a country boy all over again. They laughed at his verdancy, and it all ended by Colton agreeing to vouch for him at the tailor's, securing for him the privilege of paying so much a month until the account was settled.

Jud lay awake nights trying to decide the matter. He knew that he needed the clothes and that it was time to cast aside the shabby curiosities from Glenville. He saw that he was to become an object of ridicule if he persisted in wearing them. Pride demanded good clothes, that he might not be ashamed to be seen with well-dressed men; something else told him that he should save every penny for a day that was to come as soon as he could bring it about. At last he went to Colton and asked him what he thought the clothes would cost, first convincing himself that tailor-made garments were the only kind to be considered.

Colton hurried him off to the tailor, and within an hour he was on the street again, dazed and aware that he had made a debt of one hundred and thirty dollars. He was to have two suits of clothes, business and dress, and an overcoat. For a week he was miserable, and a dozen times he was tempted to run in and countermand the order. How could he ever pay it? What would Justine think? At length the garments were completed and he found them at his hall door. Attached was a statement for $130, with the information that he was to pay $10 a month, "a very gracious concession as a favor to our esteemed friend, Mr. Colton,"

said the accompanying note. In a fever of excitement he tried them on.

The fit was perfect; he looked like other men. Still, his heart was heavy. That night, taking up his old cast-off suit, he mourned over the greasy things that he and Justine had selected at Dave Green's store the week before they were married. They were his wedding clothes.

"I'll keep them forever," he half sobbed, and he hung them away carefully. The time came for his next visit to the little farm. In his letters he had said nothing about the new clothes, but he had admitted that unexpected expenses had come upon him. He could not bring himself to tell her of that extravagance. He believed that she would have approved, but he shrank from the confession.

When he boarded the train for the trip home, he was dressed in the clothes he had first worn to Chicago, the greasy wedding garments. He never forgot how guilty he felt when she told him the next evening, as they sat before the old fireplace, that he should buy a new overcoat and a heavy suit of clothes. And after he went away on Monday she wondered why he had been so quiet and preoccupied during his visit.

CHAPTER XI.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

For weeks he hated the new clothes, handsome though they were, and yet he realized the difference they made at the office, where tolerance was turning to respect. He could but appreciate the impression he now made in places where he had had no standing whatever up to the time when he had donned the guilty garments.

Not a day pa.s.sed during his residence in the city that did not find him on the look-out for a certain graceful figure and glorious face. He never gave up the hope of some day meeting the vivacious Miss Wood.

When first he had come to Chicago there had been no doubt in his mind that he would presently see her in the street, but that hope had been dissipated in a very short time. He did not fear that he would fail to recognize her, but he ceased to believe that she would remember in him the simple boy of Proctor's Falls. He was also conscious of the fact that she could be friendly with the country lad, but might not so much as give greeting to the new Jud Sherrod. In one of his conversations with the chief artist he innocently asked if he knew Miss Wood. The artist said that he did not, but that as there were probably a million and a half of people in the city who were strangers to him, he did not consider it odd. Jud looked in a directory. He found 283 persons whose surname was Wood. Not knowing his friend's Christian name, he was unable to select her from the list.

He did not know that the names of unmarried girls living with their parents were not to be found in the directory. In the society columns of the newspapers he frequently saw a name that struck his fancy, and he decided that if it did not belong to her she had been imperfectly christened. He began to think of her as Celeste Wood. A Celeste Wood lived in the fashionable part of the north side, and he had not been there a month before he found the house and had gazed in awe upon its splendor--from a distance. Several times he pa.s.sed the place, but in no instance did his eye behold the girl of Proctor's Falls.

He told Justine of his search for the beautiful stranger, and she was as much interested as he. She, too, came to call her Celeste and to inquire as to his progress in every letter. They exchanged merry notes in which the mysterious Celeste was the chief topic.

Christmas came and he spent it with Justine. It was a white Christmas and a glad one for everyone except Jud. He cursed the cowardice that forced him to sneak down to Glenville in that tattered suit of clothes, for he still shrank from the confession of what seemed extravagance and vanity. In spite of all he could do to prevent it, the cost of living in the city increased and he could save but little. Paying for those hated garments was a hard task each month; it seemed to take the very ten dollars he had intended to save. The clothes he wore home were now bordering on the disreputable, and at Christmas time he vowed he would wear them no more. Justine had said that she hated to accept the present he brought when she saw how much he needed clothing.

Not once did he swerve in his fidelity to her. He was the only man in Chicago, it seemed to him, who refused to drink liquor. He dined with the fellows, accompanied them on various rounds of pleasure, but he never broke the promise he made to Justine: to drink no liquor. The gay crowd into which he was tossed--artists, writers and good fellows--introduced him here and there, to nice people, to gay people and to questionable people. In the cafes he met wine-tippling ladies who smiled on him; in the theatre he met gaily dressed women who smiled on him; in the street he met stylish creatures who smiled on him. He met the wives and sisters of his friends, and was simple, gentle, and gallant; he met the actresses and the gay ones of the midnight hour and was the same; he met the capricious, alluring women of the fashionable world, and was still the abashed, clean-hearted lover of one good girl.

She was the only woman. Three objects he had to strive for: to succeed in his work, to make a home for Justine, and to find Celeste. One sin hara.s.sed him--the purchase of two suits of clothes and an overcoat.

Winter struggled on and matters grew worse with Justine. She did not tell Jud of the privations on the farm; to him she turned a cheerful face. Nothing depressive that might happen down there on the over-tilled little farm should come to him; he should be handicapped in no way by the worries which beset her. The fall crop had been poor throughout the entire state. There had been little wheat in the summer, and the corn-huskers of September found but half a crop. The farm was run on half rations after the holidays, simply because the granary was none too full. She had sold but little grain, being obliged to retain most of it for feeding purposes. What little money Jud sent to her soon disappeared, despite her frugality. She and old Mrs. Crane lived alone in the cottage, and together they fought the wolf from the kitchen door and from the barnyard. How Justine wished that she might again teach the little school down the lane! She had given it up that fall because the time could not be spared from the farm.

She cared for the horses, cows and pigs--few in number, but pigs after all--while Mrs. Crane looked after the chickens. That winter was the coldest the country had known in thirty years, according to Uncle Sammy G.o.dfrey, who said he had "kep' tab on the therometer fer fifty-three year, an' danged ef he didn't b'lieve this'n wuz the coldest spell in all that time, 'nless it wuz that snap in sixty-two. That wuz the year it fruz the crick so solid 'at it didn't thaw out tell 'long 'bout the Fourth of July."

January was bitter cold. There were blizzards and snowstorms, and people, as well as stock, suffered intensely. Horses were frozen to death and whole flocks of sheep perished. Justine, young, strong and humane, worked night and day to keep her small lot of stock comfortable. The barn, the cowshed and the hogpens were protected in every way possible from the blasts, and often she came to the house, half-frozen, her hands numb, her face stinging. But that bravery never knew a faltering moment. She faced the storms, the frosts and the dangers with the hardihood of a man, and she did a man's work.

With an ax she chopped wood in the grove back of the pasture until the heavy snows came. She would not ask neighbors to help her; indeed, she refused several kindly offers. There was not a man in the neighborhood who would not have gladly found time to perform some of her more difficult tasks.

One morning, cold almost beyond endurance, she awoke to find that in some mysterious manner a large pile of chopped wood lay in her dooryard. How it came there she did not know, nor would she use it until she found by the sled tracks in the snow that it had been hauled from her own piece of timber land. Again, in the night time, someone rebuilt a section of fence that had been torn down by the wind. She was grateful to the good neighbors, but there was a feeling of resentment growing out of the knowledge that people were pitying her.