Raintree County (129 page)

—What may I do for you, sir? he said.

—I want a word with you in private, Mr. Root said.

—Just a second, sir, Mr. Shawnessy had said.

He reappeared in a moment with an immense rawhide horsewhip, newly purchased, which he kept twisting between his strong, nervous hands.

He and Mr. Root then walked out into the yard.

—Shawnessy, Mr. Root said, I have come over here to tell you to leave my daughter Esther alone. We want no part of you, and we don't aim to have you botherin' around her any more.

—Are these her words or your words, Mr. Root?

—They're my words and her sentiments.

—What guarantee have I got of that? You've had her jailed up for weeks. I haven't even been able to talk with her.

—Older and wiser people have talked with her and brought her to her senses, Mr. Root said. She knows now that you're a goddam, blackhearted scoundrel, and she don't want no more of your lyin' words. If you try any more tricks to git her, I'm warnin' you, by God Almighty, that you will have more than a poor, defenseless, and foolish girl to reckon with.

Mr. Root's broad hand bulged on the handle of his whip.

—Meaning? Mr. Shawnessy said, shaking out his whip along the ground and absently making the end of it flick at some flowerheads on the fringe of the lawn.

—Meanin', Mr. Root said, that I'm that girl's pa and I intend to take care of her, any way I know how. There are laws to prevent the seduction of girls and to punish their seducers. And if the law don't help, I'll find means of my own.

—Sir, Mr. Shawnessy said, there are also laws to prevent a man from keeping his daughter brutally locked up so that she can't marry the man of her choice.

There was then some violent discussion of whether Mr. Shawnessy was a fit man to marry any woman. Mr. Shawnessy's antecedents, both paternal and maternal, were stigmatized in no uncertain terms. Both men watched each other's whiphands and turned white and red
several times. Mr. Shawnessy attempted to keep the discussion on a temperate level and drew several legal distinctions, to make his position perfectly clear.

Finally, Mr. Root said,

—Look here, Shawnessy. Much as you may think so, I have no personal interest in hurtin' you. All I want is my daughter safe out of your hands. Now, I'm not a rich man, but I'm willin' to pay something for that. I'll give you a thousand dollars, my note of hand, to stay away from my daughter. You'll have five hundred dollars down and the rest as soon as I can git it, and I give you my word no one will ever know of it. I'm a practical man. I'm willin' to pay this money and strike a bargain, and no hard feelin's.

—Mr. Root, Mr. Shawnessy said, if you're so sure your daughter cares nothing for me, why are you offering me this bribe?

—I've made the offer, Mr. Root said. Take it or leave it.

—I don't want your money, Mr. Shawnessy said. Esther and I love each other. We want to be married and live as man and wife.

At these words, Mr. Root stared wildly about as if he were hunting for something that he should have brought. He looked at Mr. Shawnessy's whip. He put his hand to his throat as if to squeeze his heart back into his breast.

—John Shawnessy, he said slowly, I ought to thrash you to death.

—Mr. Root, Mr. Shawnessy said, I've lived too long and seen too much to be afraid of a man with a whip. I've been cheated out of a lot of things in my time, but I don't intend to be cheated out of your daughter, if she'll have me. I might as well make perfectly clear to you that I intend to take her away from you and marry her. That's all I have to say to you, sir. Good day.

Mr. Shawnessy turned his back on Mr. Root and walked into the house, and Mr. Root went down and got into his buggy and raised a long ugly welt on the side of his horse.

After Mr. Shawnessy's famous letter to the newspapers, the affair broke wide open. Gideon Root found that he had a hard fight on his hands. He wasn't simply bucking the power of love, but also the power of the press, which is perhaps even greater.

At first, the County split up into factions, and both sides found voice in the newspapers. The Republican sheet, the old
Clarion,
which had long ago done a political turntail along with Garwood B.
Jones, its absent owner, and which had in its time taken many a wallop at John Wickliff Shawnessy, at first leaned a little toward Mr. Root's side of the argument.

Then a wonderful thing happened. A letter came from the Nation's Capital, Washington, D.C., signed by a certain eminent young statesman who had won his first seat in the Senate of the United States in 1875 and had already gained national attention by his golden voice and commanding presence. This letter was received by one of Garwood's old political henchmen in the County, and it was shown widely about. It was not couched in the Senator's sacred style.

Dear Skinny,

It has just come to my attention that my good young friend John Shawnessy has got himself into another big mess back there in the old County. The way I hear it, he's fallen in love with a girl about half his age. No doubt John put his usual hex on the kid, and she's crazy about him. According to my advices, her old man is trying to break it up and hold back the force of young love.

Now it just so happens that John Shawnessy is one of the best friends I ever had, and if cutting off any part of my anatomy (with one exception) would do the sprout any good, I'd submit to the knife.

Skinny, I want it understood that I want the boy to have that girl legal and proper if that's the way he wants it. If I still have a little prestige and influence left in the old County, Skinny, I want it used to bring this thing about. Just let it be known that Garwood B. Jones would be personally gratified to see young love have its course.

You can even show part of this letter to the right people, Skinny, and get the boys behind it. Don't spare money or anything else that will do any good. My personal fund will take care of the thing.

The G.A.R. may be able to help, as everyone knows John Shawnessy fought like hell from Chattanooga to the Sea and got an honorable wound in the gut when we took Atlanta.

Now, Skinny, I trust that's all I need to say, and let me know how the thing turns out.

G
ARWOOD
B. J
ONES

P.S. By the way, it won't hurt to have my name mentioned favorably in the right places and with a touch of humor as reacting to this situation with characteristic humanity. ‘No detail, however minute, back in the home state, fails to arouse the Senator's instant, personal
attention, etc., etc.' Some of that old crap might do me some good right now after the stink stirred up among the laboring classes by my reaction to that damn strike last year. Skinny, get busy in there. I'm counting on you personally.

Garwood's signature on this document was so big that it could be read without spectacles.

After this letter, the tide of Public Opinion, already turning strongly to the side of young love as against filial piety, became a raging torrent. The
Clarion
instantly reversed its stand, declaring the issue to be above narrow partisanship and to concern the universal human heart. The Jones machine got busy and went to town. In no time at all the columns of both newspapers were full of letters, suggesting a hundred solutions to the affair, among which the most straightforward was a proposal that old Gideon Root be horsewhipped and hanged on a hickory limb.

The affair attracted attention even beyond the borders of Raintree County, receiving some notice in a widely read column in New York's leading newspaper. Letters came to the local papers from surprisingly remote places. Not wholly characteristic was one to the
Clarion
from a Miss Geranium Warbler Stiles, a resident of Oshkosh (though, curiously, the envelope was postmarked New York). Miss Stiles (who was obviously a very gifted old woman) said that her entire sympathies had been aroused by reports that she had read of the case. She then proceeded to record at great length the tribulations of her own enforced maidenhood which she said had been caused by the determination of a tyrant father to prevent her marriage to the young man of her choice. The upshot of the thing had been that

. . . my father at last, in a fit of insane rage, discharged a shotgun at my intended, which though it did not mortally wound him resulted in such highly localized damage to his person that marriage was, alas! out of the question.

This letter was at once so touchingly frank and so convincingly eloquent that it had no little weight in turning Public Opinion in Raintree County in favor of the lovers.

It got so that Gideon Root hardly dared go out of his house. One day when he was riding down the road in his buggy, a very muscular
man on a bay horse rode up beside him, grabbed him by the shirt at the neck, pulled him half out of the buggy, shook him, and said with deadly seriousness,

—Root, if you don't let them youngsters git married, I'll personally beat the hell out of you.

He then shoved Mr. Root back into his buggy and rode off rapidly in the opposite direction. Mr. Root, who was never a man to back out of a fight, recovered from his surprise and nearly lashed the liver out of his horse in a vain effort to catch up with his assailant, whom he had never seen before in his life.

He got dozens of letters signed and unsigned, of which the following was a fair sample:

Root, goddam you, if you goddam well don't let Johnny Shawnessy have your daughter, I'll blow your goddam head off with a shotgun. Folks are agin you, Root, and you mite as well know it. Now goddam you, git some sence in your goddam thick skull and leave them youngsters git marred.

One night, a shower of brickbats and horseshoes smashed the lower windows of the Root house, and someone set fire to the barn. The Jones machine got the people in Freehaven so worked up that a huge halfcrazy mob was on its way out to the Root Farm with tar, feathers, and a knotty rail, when Mr. Shawnessy, hearing of the matter, rode a fast horse to intercept them, and using all his wit and power of persuasion finally managed to turn them back.

There were six elopements in the County during this period, all of which were indirectly traced to the abnormal excitement caused by the Shawnessy-Root Affair.

The power of immortal love, the power of the free press, and the personal power of Senator Garwood B. Jones appeared to be closing in on one poor man like an inexorable combination of natural forces. But there was some question whether the last two elements didn't do John Shawnessy more harm than good.

During this time, Esther Root had suffered a virtual imprisonment. All she knew for sure was that her pa, whom she loved very much, was taking a fearful drubbing. He came home one night with his shirt torn and his throat bruised from the assault of an unknown man, and another time the whole family was awakened when hoodlums tried to smash the house and fire the barn. That night Pa ran
around in the darkness half-naked like a madman, shooting off a shotgun while unknown people made vulgar sounds from hiding. The next morning, they carried Pa in, half out of his mind, his body scratched with briars, his eyes bloodshot, and his voice a hoarse sob in his throat.

Esther hadn't heard from Mr. Shawnessy for weeks now, and she didn't know what his attitude was. She was told that he had gone around the County boasting to people about how he had made old Root come begging on his knees not to take his daughter away from him. She heard that Mr. Shawnessy had said that he would personally see to it that half the young toughs in the County beat the hell out of Mr. Root every time he stepped out of his front door. She heard that Mr. Shawnessy went around laughing and saying that he could have the girl any time.

These reports didn't make her angry. They didn't square with her idea of Mr. Shawnessy. But they were all she heard.

Things were in this condition when on the third of July Pa came in to see her. He told her that the situation had become more than he could bear. He looked like a beaten man.

—Sometimes, Esther, he said, I wish I was dead. When I think that you that I loved most have caused me all this trouble! But I guess it's my own fault. Maybe I loved you too much. Maybe I've not been a good pa to you.

Again Esther felt the strong anguish that she had felt the day Pa had cried.

—Why, Pa, what have I done now?

—Nothing, he said. Only, I see just one way to git us all out of it, and no one harmed. I plan to let Robert have the Farm, now that all you children are grown. I thought if you had no objection you and I could leave the County and go out West. I got a brother out there, and I got a little money saved up. You could go with me if you want to. If after a decent interval, when this thing blows over, you wanted to come back to the County, you could do it. I wouldn't stand in your way. How about it, Esther? Will you do this last thing for your old pa?

It was the first time in her memory that Pa had ever referred to himself as old in her presence.

—O, Pa, she said, I couldn't bear to leave you. If you say so, I'll go with you.

—I want you to make up your own mind, with no one influencing you, Pa said. I got everything about ready. I'm goin' to town about some legal matters tomorrow, and if I don't git beat up, I'll come back at four o'clock in the afternoon, and we can ketch the six o'clock train at Three Mile Junction. Tomorrow's the Fourth, and everybody'll be too busy celebratin' to worry about you and me. If you do this last thing for your old pa, he can go to his grave knowin' that you were kind to him and more than repaid his love for you. I won't say anything more.

Esther lay long sleepless that night. If she could only see Mr. Shawnessy once more before she left! But then, if she saw him again, she would be lost, and it would be all to do over again. She felt sure that whatever she did and whatever happened, this was the last night that she would spend in her father's house.