The Happy Average

“Just the man I’m looking for!” said Lawrence.

He was brisk, alert, important, and had an official air which was explained when Marley observed, on the lapel of his coat, the badge of blue ribbon that proclaimed an officer of the fair.

“I have charge of the tickets this year,” he said. “Want to go? I’ll pass you in.”

Marley was glad enough to accept.

“I’ll have to go around to the office and tell Powell,” he said. “I was away all day yesterday.”

“Oh, nonsense,” replied Lawrence, “that won’t make any difference; he’s been full for two days. This is his big time.”

Marley had a pang as he saw with what small seriousness Lawrence regarded his relation to the law; it reflected, doubtless, the common attitude of the community toward him and his efforts.

“I’ve got to hurry,” Lawrence went on; “I’ve got a rig waiting here; you can ride out with me.”

It was one of the incomparable afternoons that autumn brings to Ohio; the retreating sun was flashing in the high, blue sky; the air was fresh and Marley felt it full of energy and hope. Lawrence drove rapidly through the throng of hurrying vehicles that crowded the road to the fair-grounds, stirring up a cloud of dust that covered everything with its white powder.

Lawrence left him at the gate, being too full of business to engage in the weary search for pleasure, and Marley set out alone across the scorched and trampled turf for the grand stand, black with people for the races. He could hear the nervous clamor of the bell in the judges’ stand, the notes of the hand-organ at the squeaking merry-go-round, the incessant thumping of the bass drum that made its barbaric music for the side-show, and the cries of venders, dominating all the voices of the thousands bent in their silly way on pleasure. Once, calling him back to the real, to the peace of the commonplace, he heard the distant tones of the town clock in the tower that stood, a mile away, above the autumnal trees.

He pressed into the space between the grand stand and the whitewashed fence that surrounded the track; through the palings he could see the stoop-shouldered drivers, bent over the heavily breathing trotters they jogged to and fro; above him, in the grand stand, he could distinguish cries and laughs, now and then complete excited sentences, sometimes voices he knew. All around him the farmers, clumsy in their ready-made clothes and bearing their buggy whips as some insignia of office, solemnly watched the races and talked of horses.

The sense of kinship with the crowd that had unerringly drawn Marley left him the moment he was in the crowd, and a loneliness replaced the sense of kinship. He looked about for some one he knew. He began, here and there, to recognize faces, just as he had recognized voices in the din above him; he began to analyze and to classify the crowd, and he laughed somewhat cynically when he saw numbers of politicians going about among the farmers, shaking their hands, greeting them effusively, calling them by their Christian names. Then suddenly he saw Wade Powell. The crowd at the point where Powell stood, nucleated with him as its center; by the way the men were laughing, and by the way Powell was trying not to laugh, Marley knew that he had been telling them one of his stories, and from the self-conscious, guilty expressions on certain of the faces, Marley knew that the story was probably one that should not have been told. Several countrymen hung on the edge of the group, not identifying themselves with it, yet anxious to have a look at Wade Powell, who enjoyed the fame of the county’s best criminal lawyer.

When Powell saw Marley he called to him, and when Marley drew near, he introduced him, somehow mysteriously, almost surreptitiously, to the man at his elbow. Powell’s face was very red, and his eyes were brilliant. The mystery he put into his introduction was but a part of his manner.

“This is Mr. Carman, of Pleasant Grove Township, Glenn,” he said, bending over, as if no one should hear the name; and then he added, in a husky whisper: “He’s our candidate for county clerk, you know.”

Marley saw something strange, forbidding, in Carman’s face, but he could not tell what it was. It was a red, sunburnt face, closely shaven, with a short mustache burned by the sun; the smile it wore seemed to be fixed and impersonal. Plainly the man had spent his days out of doors, though, it seemed, not healthfully, for his skin was dry and hardened, and his neck thin and wrinkled; he seemed to have known the hard work and the poor nourishment of a farm. Marley wondered what was the matter with Carman’s face. But Powell was drawing them aside.

“Come over here,” he was saying, “where we can be alone.”

He led them to a corner of the little yard; no one was near; they were quite out of the crowd which was pressing to the whitewashed picket fence, attracted by the excitement of the race for which the horses were just then scoring.

“Now, Jake,” Powell began, speaking to Carman, “this is the young man I was talking to you about.”

Carman, still smiling his dry meaningless smile, turned his face half away.

“I reckon,” Powell went on, “that I might be able to do you some good, if I took off my coat.” Powell spoke with a pride in his own influence; Marley had never known him to come so near to boasting before.

Carman was looking away; and Powell, his own eyes narrowed, was watching him closely. Once he winked at Marley, and Marley was mystified; he did not know what play was going on here; he looked from Carman to Powell, and back to Carman again. There was some strange fascination about Carman; Marley felt a slight relief when he discovered that there was something peculiar about Carman’s eyes.

“I haven’t said anything to Marley about the matter, Jake,” Powell said. “Maybe I’d better tell him. Hell! He might not want it—I don’t know.”

Carman turned suddenly; his face had been in the shadow; now it came into the sunlight, and Marley saw that while the pupil of Carman’s right eye contracted suddenly, the pupil of his left eye remained fixed; it was larger than the pupil of the right eye, which had shrunk to a pin-point in the sharp light of the sun. Marley looked closely, the left eye seemed to be swimming in liquid; it almost hurt Marley’s eyes to look at it.

“I’ve been telling Carman, Glenn,” Powell was explaining, “that if he is elected—and gets into the Court House—”

Marley looked at Powell expectantly.

“I want him,” Powell went on, “to make you his deputy.”

Marley saw it all in a flash; this was what Powell had meant that day a fortnight ago; he felt his great affection for Powell glow and warm; Lavinia would appreciate Powell after this. It meant salary, position, a place in which he might complete his law studies at his leisure; it meant a living, a home, marriage, Lavinia! He looked all his gratitude at Powell, who smiled appreciatively.

Carman had turned his face away again, he was still smiling, and plucking now at his chin; Marley waited, and Powell finally grew impatient.

“Well, Jake, what do you say?”

Carman waited a moment longer, then slowly turned about. Marley watched him narrowly, he saw the pupil of his right eye contract, the pupil of the watery left eye remained fixed; then, for the first time, Carman looked steadily at Marley and for the first time he spoke.

“Well,” he said, and he stopped to spit out his tobacco, “you know I’m always ready to do a friend a good turn.”

Powell looked Carman over carefully a moment, and then he said,

“All right, Jake.”

Just then there was a rush of hoofs, a shock of excitement, and they heard a loud yell:

“Go!”

And they rushed to the fence of the whitewashed palings.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ROAD TO MINGO

Lavinia sat rocking quietly back and forth, and stitched away with her colored silks on her tambourine frames, while Marley told her of the fortune Wade Powell had brought them. He told the story briefly, and he tried to tell it simply; he did not comment on Powell’s kindness or generosity, but let his deeds speak for themselves in Powell’s behalf. When he had done, Marley waited for Lavinia’s comment, but she rocked on a moment and then held her tambourine frames at arm’s length to study the sweet pea she was making. When she had done so, she dropped her sewing suddenly into her lap, and looking up, said:

“He thinks everything of you, doesn’t he?”

“I believe he likes me,” Marley said, as modestly as he could put it.

“Who could help it?”

Lavinia looked at Marley, and he leaned over, and took her hands.

“I am glad you can’t, sweetheart,” he said.

“Do you know,” she went on, “I think it is because you have been kind and good to him—just as you are kind and good to every one. His life is lonely; he is an outcast, almost; no one cares for him, and he appreciates your goodness.”

Pity was the utmost feeling she could produce for Wade Powell out of her kindly heart. But Marley, though he could accept her homage to the full without embarrassment, could not acquiesce to this length, and he laughed at her.

“Nonsense, Lavinia,” he said. “You have the thing all topsy-turvy. It is Wade Powell who has been kind to me; it is he and not I who is good to every one. He has a heart brimful of the milk of human kindness. You have no idea, and no one has, of the good he does in a thousand little ways. He tries to hide it all; he acts as if he were ashamed of it, but there are hundreds of people in Macochee who worship him, and would be ready to die for him, if it would help him any. Don’t think he has no friends! He has them by the score—of course, they are all poor; I reckon that’s why they are generally unknown.”

“But isn’t he cruel?”

Marley’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“I mean,” Lavinia said correctively, “isn’t he kind of sarcastic?”

“Well,” Marley admitted, “he is that at times. I think he tries to hide his better qualities; I think he tries to cloak his finer nature with a rough garb. Perhaps it is because he is really so sensitive. But he is, to my mind, a truly great man. He is a sort of tribune of the people.”

“But, Glenn, what about his drinking?”

“Well, that’s the trouble,” Marley said, shaking his head. “If he had let liquor alone he’d have been away up.”

Lavinia was silent a moment, her brow was knit in little wrinkles.

“Glenn,” she said presently, “I have been thinking.”

“Well?”

“That with your influence you might reform him—out of his liking for you, don’t you know?”

She raised her blue eyes. He laughed outright, and then took her face between his two hands.

“You dear little thing!” he said, with the patronage of a lover.

Lavinia regained her dignity.

“But couldn’t you?” she demanded.

“Why, dear heart,” Marley said, “he would think it presumption. I wouldn’t dare.”

Lavinia shook her head in the hopelessness of the reformer, and took up her tambourine frames again with a sigh.

“It’s a pity,” she said, relinquishing the subject with the hope, “it’s such a pity.”

“But you haven’t told me what you think of the scheme.”

“You know, dear, that whatever you think best I think best.”

Marley was disappointed.

“You don’t seem to be very enthusiastic over the prospect,” he complained. “I thought you’d be glad as I to know that I can at last make a place for myself in the world—and a home and a living for you.”

Lavinia looked up.

“I never had any doubt of that, Glenn,” she said simply.

He saw the trust and confidence she had in him, a trust and a confidence he had never felt himself, and had never before been wholly aware of in her. He saw that she had never shared those fears which had so long oppressed him, and into his love there came a devout thankfulness. He felt strong, hopeful, confident, victorious. He had a sudden fancy that it would be like this when they were married; he would sit at his own hearth, with a fire crackling merrily, and the rain and wind beating outside—for the first time he could indulge such a fancy; it allowed him, now that his future was assured, to come up to it and to take hold of it; it became a reality.

The judge was not at home that night. Now and then Marley could hear Mrs. Blair speak a word to Connie and Chad, over their lessons in the sitting-room; school had commenced, and Connie having that year entered the High School had taken on a new dignity, in consequence of which she was treating Chad with a divine patience that brought its own peace into the Blair household.

They talked for a long time of their plans. Marley would take his new place in December when the new county clerk went into office, and he told Lavinia all the advantages of the position. It would extend his acquaintance, it would give him a familiarity with court proceedings that otherwise he could not have acquired in years. He meant to study hard, and be admitted to the bar. They could have a little cottage and live simply and economically; he would save part of his salary, and when he hung out his shingle he would have enough money laid by to support them, modestly, until he could establish himself in a practice. He laid it all before her plainly, convincingly. He was charmed with the practicability of the plan, with its conservatism, its common sense. They might as well be married.

“Can’t we?” he asked. He trembled as he asked; his happiness had never come so close before.

Lavinia dropped her embroidery frames into her lap and looked up at him. The question in her eyes was almost born of fear.

“Right away?” exclaimed Lavinia.

“Well, almost right away,” Marley answered. “Sometime this winter, anyway.”

“This winter! So soon?”

“So soon!” Marley repeated her words, almost in mockery.

“But we mustn’t be married in the winter,” she said, “we’ve always planned to be married in June—our month, you know.”

“What’s the use of waiting?”

“But papa and mama—”

This quick rushing to the parental cover, this clinging to the habit of years struck a jealousy through Marley’s heart. His face fell and he looked hurt.

“Can’t we, dear?” he pleaded.

Lavinia looked at him, and she said shyly:

“If you say so, Glenn.”

They were solemn in their joy and made their plans in detail. They would be married quietly, Lavinia said, and at home. Doctor Marley would perform the ceremony, and Marley was touched by this recognition of his father.

The fall worked a new energy in Marley, and, with the assurance that his labors were now soon to bear fruit, he found that he could study better than ever before. He worked faithfully over his books every morning, and he worked so hard that he felt himself entitled to a portion of each afternoon. He would leave the office at four o’clock. Lavinia would be waiting for him, and they would try to get out of sight before Connie returned from school. She might be expected any moment to come slowly down Ward Street entwined with one of her school-girl friends. They did not like, somehow, to meet Connie. The smile she gave them was apt to be disconcerting. They met smiles in the faces of others they encountered in their walks, but they were of a quality more kindly than Connie’s smile.

They had walked one afternoon to the edge of town where Ward Street climbed a hill and became the road to Mingo. At their feet lay the little fields, in the distance they could see a man plowing with two white horses; off to the right lay the water-works pond, gleaming in the afternoon sun.

“What are you thinking of?” Marley said.

“I was thinking that it would be nice to live in the country.”

“I was thinking that very thing myself!” exclaimed Marley. Their eyes met, and they thrilled over this unity in their thoughts. It was marvelous to them, mysterious, prophetic.

“Some day I could buy a farm,” Marley said; “out that way.”

“Yes,” Lavinia replied, “away off there, beyond those low trees. Do you see?”

She pointed, but Marley did not look in the direction of the trees; he looked at her finger. It was so small, so round, so white. He bent forward, and kissed the finger.

“Oh, but you must look where I’m pointing,” said Lavinia.

They drew closely together. Marley took Lavinia’s hand and they stood long in silence.

“We could have a country home there,” Marley said after a while, “with a hedge about it and stables and horses and dogs. It would be close to town; I could go in in the morning and out again in the afternoon.”

“And I could drive you in, and then come for you in the afternoon—when court adjourned.”

“Oh, I would have a man to drive me,” said Marley.

“But couldn’t I ride in beside you?”

“Yes; you could sit beside me, on the back seat; we’d have an open carriage.”

“A victoria!” exclaimed Lavinia. “It would be the only one in Macochee!”

“Is that what they call them?”

“Victorias?”

“Yes.”

“You know, with a low seat behind and a high seat for the driver. You have a green cushion for your feet. You would look so handsome in one, Glenn. You would sit very erect and proud, with your hands on a cane. You would have white hair then.”

“We would be old?” he asked in some dismay.

“No, no,” said Lavinia, trying to reconcile her dreams, “not old exactly. But I dote on white hair. It’s so distinguished for a lawyer with a country home. Of course we’ll have to get old sometime.”

“We’ll grow old together, dear.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “and think of the long years of happiness!”

They stood and gazed, looking down the long vista of years that stretched before them as smooth and peaceful as the white road to Mingo.

A subtile change was passing over the face of the road; shadows were stealing toward it, and it was growing gray. The trees that still were green were darkening to a deeper green, but the colors of those that had changed flamed all the brighter. The sun shone more golden on the shocks of corn, the sky was glowing pink in the west, the water-works pond was glistening as the sun’s shafts struck it more obliquely. A fine powder hung in the peaceful air.

“How beautiful the fall is!” said Lavinia.

“Yes, I love it,” said Marley. “But do you know, dear, that I never liked it before? It always seemed sad to me. But you have taught me to love many things. You don’t know all that you have done for me!”

She stood in her blue dress, with her hands folded before her. Marley looked at her hands, and at her white throat, and at her hair, its brown turned to a golden hue by the clear light; then he looked into her eyes. A sudden emotion, almost religious in its ecstasy, came over him. He bent forward.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Do you know how beautiful you are! I worship you!”

“Don’t, Glenn,” she said, “don’t say that!” The reflection of a superstitious fear lay in her eyes.

“Why?” he said defiantly. “It’s all true. You are my religion.”

“You frighten me,” she said.

Marley laughed.

“Why!” he exclaimed, “there’s nothing to fear. Isn’t our future assured now?”

CHAPTER XIX

WAKING

Carman was inducted into office the first Monday in December, quietly, as the Republican said, as though it reflected credit on the new county clerk as a man who modestly avoided the demonstration that might have been expected under such circumstances. Marley, in the hope of seeing his own name, eagerly ran his eyes down the few lines that were devoted to the occurrence, but his name was not there, the Republican’s reporter, as he felt, being a man who lacked a sense of the relative importance of events.

Marley had taken no part in the campaign, though Wade Powell wished him to, and suggested every now and then that he speak at some of the meetings that were being held in the country schoolhouses. Powell said it would be good practice for him in a profession where so much talking has to be done, and he found other reasons why Marley should do this, as that it would extend his acquaintance, and give him a standing with the party; but, though Marley was always promising, he was always postponing; the thought of standing up and speaking to the vast audiences his imagination was able to crowd into a little school-room filled him with fear, and he never could bring himself to consent to any definite time. Besides this, he could not find an evening he was willing to spend away from Lavinia.

When election was over, he expected that he would hear from Carman, but he had no word from him. Several times he was on the point of mentioning the subject to Wade Powell, but somehow, with a reticence for which he reproached himself, he could not bring himself to do it. He watched the papers closely, but he found it quite as hard to find in them any information about Carman as on any other subject, except, possibly, the banal personalities of the town as they related themselves to the coming and going of the trains.

But at last, on the day it had occurred to the reporter to chronicle the fact that Carman had been inducted into office, the little item struck Marley sadly; he felt a sense of detachment from Carman; he could not altogether realize that intimate relationship to Carman in his new official position that he felt belonged to one who was to be Carman’s deputy. In his imagination he saw Carman shambling about in the dingy room where the county clerk kept the records of the court, his knees unhinging loosely at each step, his shoulders bent, his hands in his trousers pockets, his right eye squinting here and there observantly, the left fixed, impervious to light and shadow, to all that was going on in the world. He wondered if Carman, as he looked about, had been thinking in any wise of him or had seen him as a part of the place where his life was to be lived for the next three years.

Marley read the paper at supper time; in the evening he went to see Lavinia. She too had read the paper.

“I know,” she said simply, and he was grateful for her quick intuition. “Have you seen him?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“Would you?”

“Why, certainly, at once.”

Marley went to the Court House the first thing in the morning. He feared he might have arrived too early, but Carman had the virtue that goes farther perhaps than any other in the affections and approval of men, he rose early. He had been at his office since long before seven o’clock.

Marley found the new county clerk at his desk, obviously ready for business. The desk was clean, with a cleanness that was rather a barrenness than an order. The ink-wells, the pens, with their shining new steel points, the fresh blotters, all were laid on the clean pad with geometrical exactness. The pigeon holes were empty, but they were all lettered as if the mind of the new county clerk had grappled with the future, come off victorious, and provided for every possible emergency, though there were certain contingencies that had impressed him as “Miscellaneous.”

Carman looked up with the obliging expression of the new public official, but Marley’s heart instantly sank with a foreboding that told him he might as well turn about then and go. It was plain that Carman saw nothing in the call beyond a mere incident of the day’s work.

Marley took a chair near Carman’s desk. He looked at Carman once, and then looked instantly away; the eye that lacked the power of accommodation was fixed on him, and it made him nervous.

“Do you remember me, Mr. Carman?” asked Marley; and then fearing the reply he hastened to add: “I’m Glenn Marley; Mr. Powell introduced me to you out at the fair-grounds last fall.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Carman.

“I suppose you know what I came for?”

Carman’s right eye widened somewhat in an expression of mild surprise.

“You know,” urged Marley, “the clerkship.”

“What clerkship was that?”

“Why, don’t you know? The chief clerkship, I reckon.”

“Here?”

“Why, yes. Don’t you remember?”

Carman’s right eye wore a puzzled look.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Well, you’ve got me,” said Carman, with a little laugh of apology.

“Why, I understood,” Marley went on, “that in the event of your election I was to have a position here.”

“What as?”

“Why—as chief deputy.”

That right eye of Carman’s was fixed on him questioningly.

“Chief deputy?” he said finally. “Here—in my office?”

“Why, yes,” said Marley. “Don’t you remember?”

The question in the right eye had given way to a surprise that was growing in Carman’s mind, and spreading contagiously to a surprise, deeper and more acute, in Marley’s mind. The eye had something reproachful in its steady stare. Marley leaned over impulsively.