The Sherrods

by George Barr McCutcheon

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 passed 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 passed 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 cafés 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 harassed 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 Godfrey, 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.