"It's outrageous," the Reverend cried. "We hardly dare show our heads on the street; to greet old friends for fear we are going to be ridiculed and abused for what we have done."

"It's certainly an ungrateful world, that's all," agreed Ethel.

CHAPTER X

"UNTIL THEN"

IT DID NOT rain the night Jean Baptiste went to Winner to meet the wife who failed to come, but the protracted drought continued on into July. For three weeks into this month it burned everything in its path. From Canada to Kansas, the crops were almost burned to a crisp, while in the country of our story proper, only the winter wheat, and rye, and some of the oats matured. And this was confined principally to the county where Jean Baptiste had homesteaded. Here a part of a crop of small grain was raised, but everything else was a failure.

His flaxseed crop in Tripp County which had given some promise if rain should come in time, had now fallen along with all else, and when he saw it next, after his trip to Winner, it was a scattered mass of sickly stems, with army worms everywhere cutting the stems off at the ground. The whole country as a result, was facing a financial panic. Interest would be hard to raise—and this, in view of the fact that the year before had seen less than half a crop produced, was not a cheerful prospect. With Baptiste, and others who had gone in heavily, disaster became a possibility; and, unless a radical change intervened, disaster appeared as an immediate probability.

During these days there was little to do. He had harvested what little crop he had raised, and having no hauling or anything, to engage him he found going fishing his only diversion. And it was at about this time that he received a letter. It bore the postmark of the town where he had met his wife in the beginning, and read:

"My dear Jean:

"I thought I would be bold this once and write you, since it is a fact that you are on my mind a great deal. You will, of course, remember me when I mention that it was in my home that you met your wife. Rather, the woman you married, whom, I suppose, from what I hear, has not proven very faithful. I daresay that your trip to my home that day was the beginning of this episode. But it is of him, the Reverend, her father, of whom I wish to speak.

"He used to speak of you. You see this town is in his itinerary, and I therefore, see him quite often. In fact, he is quite well known to me, and visits my home, and has been here recently. He was here just a week ago yesterday before going into Chicago, and I asked about you. He ups with his head when I did so, and I estimated that the trouble that is supposed to be between you and Orlean, is possibly between him and yourself.

"Well, you see, it is like this. After you married Orlean, we could hear nothing from him but you. You were the most wonderful, the most vigorous, the wealthiest—in fact you were everything according to his point of view. He preached of you in the pulpit; he set you up as the standard and model for other young men to follow. Therefore, you must imagine our surprise when almost over night you had changed so perceptibly. From everything a man should be—or try to be, as a young man, you became the embodiment of all a man should not be. Now it is rather singular. Apparently the Elder must have been possessed with very poor judgment to begin with, or you must have become in a few weeks an awfully bad man.

"Well, I don't know what to say; but in as much as I have known you some little time—before you met Orlean in the house where I write this, I cannot conceive or realize how you could change so quickly. But what is more to the point—I have known the august Elder even longer than I have you—know him since I have been large enough to[Pg 341] know anybody, and I have known him always to be as he is yet. One wonders how such men can have the conscience to preach and tell people to live right, to do right, so they may be prepared to die right. But somehow we take the Elder's subtle conduct down this way as a matter of course. We think no more—I daresay not as much—of what he does in that way than we would the most common man in town. But it is too bad that his daughter must suffer for his evil. Orlean is a good girl, but she has been raised to regard that old father as a criterion of righteousness, regardless of the life he does, and always has lived. But withal, honestly, I do feel so sorry for you. I am aware that this letter and the nature of its contents is unsolicited, but it is and has been in my heart to say it. I really feel that it is no more than honest to protest against in some manner, the wrong that man is practicing. But to the point.

"The last time he was here, and mama asked him about you, and he was made angry because of it, he remarked among the discredits he endeavored to pay the country and you, that there was no church for her to attend. I remarked that you had said you attended the white churches. Thereupon he became very demonstrative. He said you did attend the white churches, and had taken her, but that you went to the Catholic church where there was, of course, no religion in the sense to which she had been raised. I hardly knew how to reply to or counter this, but I thought that if you had, and she had belonged to the Catholic church, how easy it would be now for you to lay your cause before the priest and have it considered. But if you did such before the ministers of his church—oh, well, I am saying too much.

"And only now have I arrived at the event I choose to relate. It is always so when one chooses to gossip, to forget the things that may be of real interest. Well, word has come that the Elder was taken violently ill in Chicago the other day, and grave fears are held of his recovery. I hear that he is very low, and perhaps the Lord might see fit to remove a stumbling block....[Pg 342]

"I must close. I am sure I have bored you with such a long letter and so much gossip; but I have at least satisfied my own conscience. So hoping that all comes out well with you in the end, believe me to be,

"Your dear friend,

"Jessie Mansfield."

It so happened that the exhausted Jean Baptiste turned to the hope that illness might claim his enemy, and he exchanged letters with Jessie Mansfield, regularly, and after a time, found her correspondence a great diversion.