Emily Grant Hutchings

“ He hurried out by way of the alley. Flossy ran after him. "You forgot your hat, Jap," she cried breathlessly. He took the hat and started off silently.
"Wait a minute, Jap." Her voice was insistent. "You didn't put on a grave face with Ellis, did you? Oh, Jap"—the cry was from her heart—"he will never live to see the new office! He will never know of the realization of his dreams, the big town, the trains whirling through, and he looking down from his lofty window with a smile of superior joy. Oh, Jap, how often have we heard him tell about it! He doesn't know. He is full of hope. ”

“ Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take her place. Then, all at once, she let go. And now Alice Granger, an invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands. Must Death forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness? He looked at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over him. Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses. ”

“ Flossy looked into his set face in affright.
"I am going away—with her." Jap's tones were calm. "You can see, Flossy, that it is the only way. I cannot be Mayor of Ellis's town with such a disgrace to shame me. I must give up Isabel and—and the Herald."
Flossy clung to his arm.
"Listen to me, Jap Herron," she cried shrilly. "You shall not do it! You shall not let this horrible old woman drag you down in the dirt."
Jap smiled sadly.
"What could I do, Flossy? She must be cared for. She has been all over town. Everybody has seen her. They know the truth, that my mother is—what she is." ”

“ When I went to the new home, they mercifully killed Agnesia. I have been Mabelle Hastings so long that I had almost forgotten Aggie Herron. I gave that hideous name to your friend," she flung a gold-flashed smile at Bill, "because you had no sister Mabelle in the old days. Our folks made a bad selection of names for their progeny. And why Jasper? Why didn't they put the James first? It sounds so much more human."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Bill. "What is there about James? This town had to have its Jap Herron. No substitute would have made good." ”

“ But Bill and Mabelle were not doomed to see their enthusiasm go up in vapor. It bore, instead, the most substantial fruit. The barren, treeless town was beginning to grow shade for the aldermen to rest under in their old age.
Kelly Jones said that if Jap had brought Mabelle with him, instead of waiting fourteen years to import her, the town would be larger than St. Louis. As it was, Bloomtown might yet run that city a swift race. Mabelle set the fashions; told the School Board how to run the schools; the preachers how to make their churches popular; the mothers how to train their children. ”

“ Bill and Jap went hunting once a week, so the larder grew beyond sardines. Jap acquired a hatred of turnips and pumpkins that was in after years almost a mania. At Christmas, Kelly Jones brought in a barrel of sorghum, "to sweeten 'em," he guffawed. Jap had grown to manhood before he wholly forgave that pleasantry. It was a hard winter. Everybody said so, and when Jap gazed at Ellis across the turnips and sorghum of those weary months, he said he believed it.
"Shame on you," rebuked Ellis, gulping his turnips with haste. "Think of the wretched people who would be glad to get this food." ”

“ Bill sprang to his side and carried him to a seat. Isabel, half distracted, started from her place at the organ. As she passed, the white face in the coffin met her eyes. She stopped. A tide of feeling swept her back, back from Jap, whose limp form called her. The song that Flossy had loved came singing to her lips. Inspired in that moment, she stood beside the coffin and sang, as never before, the words that had comforted Flossy in her years of loneliness:
"Somewhere the stars are shining,
Somewhere the song birds dwell.
Cease then thy sad repining!
God lives, and all is well." ”

“ Perhaps Flossy sensed the fact that these evenings were bone and sinew to Jap's manhood. The boy, never careless, was changing to a man of purpose, such as would be the product of Ellis Hinton's training. The stray, born of the union of purposeless, useless Jacky Herron, and Mary, peevish and fretful, changeable and inconstant, had been born again into the likeness of the man who bad been almost a demigod to him. ”

“ She laughed, her old merry laugh, when Jap told her of Rosy Raymond's achievement. Mabelle tossed her yellow curls.
"Well, I don't think she was worrying Bill," she snapped.
"There is no heavier blow to romance than twins," Jap said.
"Maybe she will call them Jap and Bill," crisped Mabelle, and stopped short when her brother walked abruptly to the other end of the porch.
"I hope that it won't fluster you to know that Bill and I are going to be married before Fanny Maud leaves for Europe," she flung at him. "I want that haughty sister of mine to know that I am marrying a real man." ”

“ He slapped his thigh, and a great, joyous laugh set his shoulders to heaving. "Bill, you're a genius for spying out mysteries. How did you get on to it?"
"Mysteries!" shouted Bill. "Why, everybody in Bloomtown, including Isabel, knows that Jap is fairly sapheaded about her."
"Well, what's hampering him?" inquired Tom. "Why don't he confide in me?"
"Confide your hat!" remarked Bill crisply. "Isabel will die of old age before Jap asks her. You see, he is such a durn fool that he thinks he isn't good enough for her. When the Lord made Jap Herron He made a man, I tell you!" ”

“ I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both sides. If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will hold him while you give him the licking he deserves. More than that, I will help Rosy to get a divorce. Isn't that fair enough, Bill? What is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on the gallows? Tell me, who profits? For the woman, disgrace. For you—— Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead man, Jones. ”

“ But for the intervention of Tom Granger, who had followed the Mayor because he scented trouble, there would have been a quick finish to the pompous career of Bill Bowers's progenitor, for Bill had wrested the pistol from his father's hand and was pressing it against the temple of the worst scared coward Bloomtown had ever seen. There was a sharp tussle between the broad-shouldered banker and the frenzied youth. Several men rushed in from the street.
"Let me go!" shouted Bill, "for if he's killed Jap he's got to die." ”

“ She is his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that fact from sight. Do you want to hang, because you were a damned fool? I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder in another man's home—no matter how great your feeling of injustice. Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."
"But he struck her," gulped Bill.
"I have known times," declared Jap vehemently, "when, if I had been of the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thrashing Rosy Raymond. ”

“ Jap Herron arose to his feet and walked to the coffin of the only mother he had ever known. Facing the assembly, he said in low, clear tones:
"Friends of mine, friends of Flossy and her boy, and friends of Ellis Hinton, you have listened to this minister. Now you must listen to me. I knew Flossy. Some of you knew her, but none as I did. She had no religion, he says. Flossy Hinton's life was a religion. What is religion? Love, faith and works. ”

“ Great God!" cried Jap. "And such as you could win the golden heart of Bill Bowers! Come with me. If your husband takes the late train, there is still time to destroy that note. If he is already at home——"
"He'd go to the office first, anyway," Rosy cried. "But I don't want to go home."
"You're going home, no matter what the consequences," Jap told her. "And if you ever attempt to communicate with Bill again, I will have you put in an asylum. You are not capable of going through life sensibly." ”

“ Jones had one trump card left in his hand, and the day before the convention he played it. It was a handbill, yellow with age and ragged around the edges, but still showing a badly spelled, abominably punctuated story in vermilion ink, with a weeping angel at the top and a rooster and two prancing stallions at the bottom. It proved Wat Harlow the undying foe of the State University.
Despite all the Herald's valiant work, that nightmare was Harlow's undoing. The nomination went to a rising politician at the opposite side of the congressional district. ”

“ A crowd assembled to watch the exciting spectacle.
"What's the use of a railroad now?" bleated Judge Bowers. "There ain't no town to run it through."
"Why ain't there?" asked Jap sharply.
"Why, all the folks are talking of pulling up stakes and moving to Barton."
"Well, if that is the kind of backbone they have been backing this town with," snapped the youth, his red hair standing erect, "you help them move, and the Herald will show them up for quitters—and fill the town with real men." ”

“ Jap shoved his stool to the case. As he climbed upon it, he sighed uneasily. It had been sixteen months since Wilfred Jones turned the neat trick that left Bill disconsolate, and still the venom lingered in the bereft boy's heart. To Jap, with his standard of womanhood established by Flossy and Isabel, the thing was monstrous, inconceivable. And yet it was a fact to be faced.
"We'll have to get busy, Bill," he said. "We've got enough job work on the hooks to keep us up till midnight for a week. We haven't done a thing the last month but elect Wat Harlow." ”

“ That the story of Jap Herron and the two short stories which preceded it are the actual post-mortem work of Samuel L. Clemens, known to the world as Mark Twain, we do not for one moment doubt. His individuality has been revealed to us in ways which could leave no question in our minds. The little, intimate touches which reveal personality are really of more importance than the larger and more conspicuous fact that neither Mrs. Hays nor I could have written the fiction that has come across our transmission board. ”

“ Jap's face clouded. "Aggie is a bigbug now," came surging into his memory, as a wizened face obtruded itself between the laughing eyes of his sister and his own. The girl noted the swift change. She took his handy her voice quivering with appeal.
"I know what you are thinking about," she said. "But I could not help it, Jappie. We don't have to keep up the pretense before Mr. Bowers. He knows the worst, I take it. Jappie, you may not remember, but when Mrs. Hastings adopted me, my mother had reported that she would either turn me out or give me to the county. ”

“ What a wonderful thing is a baby! Babies were not new to either Bill or Jap. In Bill's memory lingered the shrill duet of his twin half-sisters, a continuous performance that had lasted more than a year. And Jap had never fully corrected a lurch to the left side, due to carrying his sister, Agnesia, when he was little more than a baby himself. ”

“ It was becoming fashionable for the young fellows of the town to assume a tough swagger. Those who had formerly resorted to barn lofts and musty cellars paraded their sophistication on Main street, and Bill would rather be dead than out of style. Jap wanted to talk it over with Flossy, but he had never found the key to open such poignant confidence. What right had he to burden Flossy with fresh anxiety? In his loneliness, he yearned for Ellis as he had never yearned before. ”

“ Jap and Bill noted that Ellis found frequent business in Barton, and despite the inhospitable atmosphere of the substantial Bowers home, across the little park from the Herald office, Flossy came oftener than usual to her girlhood town. The autumn, the winter and the spring sped by. Ellis Hinton was too happy to scold, even when there was an excess of horse-play. In the gladsome June-tide the young girls of Bloomtown stripped their mothers' gardens to weave garlands for the little church, and Judge Bowers opened his heart and his house for the wedding reception. ”

“ Jap followed her beneath the grape trellis, stumbling clumsily. When they reached the arbor, with its bench and rustic table, she faced him, slender to attenuation.
"Jap," she said brokenly, "J. W. has tuberculosis in the worst form. His entire body is filled with it. He contracted it while we were with Ellis—and we never knew, never suspected——" Her voice broke. "Not even a miracle can prolong his life longer than spring. ”

“ Jap sat down beside him and drew his arm around his shoulder, with the tenderness of a woman.
"Tell me about it, Bill, boy," he counselled gently. "Tim, you may leave us."
Bill sat a long time, staring sullenly at the floor.
"Well, this is a hell of a display for me to bring to Bloomtown," he declared at last. "I should have ended it in Jones's town. If I hadn't been so dumb with rotgut that I didn't know what I was doing, I would be furnishing some excitement for the Bartonites this morning. The finest place in the world to die in—it isn't fit to live in." ”

“ Kelly Jones was capering down the street. Kelly had absorbed enough of Barton booze to make him believe he owned the half of Bloomtown that did not belong to Wat Harlow. He had been having what Bill described as "one large, full time." As he came in sight, Bill's brow darkened.
"I've been afraid that Kelly would burst and catch fire," he said morosely, "and now, by jolly, I wish he would. It's funny how much your good friends will get in your way when they pair off with John Barleycorn. Kelly is certainly one ding-buster when he is lit up." ”