John Eaton

“ Eaton, who predicted that 'if his scholar lived to be a man, and if opportunity enabled him to exert his talents, few names would be greater than his.' At the age of eleven he was removed to a school at Market Drayton, thence in 1737 to Merchant Taylors' School, and finally to a private school at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where he remained until he was appointed in 1743, at the age of eighteen, a writer in the service of the East India Company at Madras. ”

“ How it makes us turn back home! I made some flattering comment or other on the paper (especially, I recall, starring the verb coot as good hen lore) , and put it with the rest. Then I fell to dreaming. Home! I, John Upton, academic bachelor, had no home, no parents, no kith nor kin. I had my study lined with books, my little monastic bedroom behind it, my college position, and a shabby remnant of my old ambitions. The soft “coot, coot” of a hen picking up grain on the old barn floor! I closed my eyes in delicious memory–memory of my grandfather’s farm down in Essex County. ”

“ I asked.
“Well, seein’s how you keep Peter, as it were, and Mrs. Pillig calc’lates she can rent her house up to Slab City, she’s goin’ to come to you for $20 a month. She’s 75 wuth it, too. You’ll have the best kept and cleanest house in Bentford.”
I rose from the table solemnly. “Mrs. Temple,” said I, “I accept Mrs. Pillig, Peter, and the pies at these terms, but only on one condition: She is never to clean my study!”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Temple.
“Because,” said I, “you can never tell where an orderly woman will put things.”
Bert chuckled as he filled his pipe. Mrs. Temple grinned herself. ”

“ Eaton followed, as the tracks led through the woods. The men had gone very slowly, carrying this heavy weight; they had been traveling, as he himself had traveled, in the dark, afraid to show a light and avoiding chance of being seen by any one on the roads. They had been as uncertain of their road as he had been of his, but the general trend of their travel was toward the east, and this evidently was the direction in which they wished to go. They had stopped frequently to rest and had laid their burden down. ”

“ I was standing on my kitchen porch talking to Mike when they arrived. It was a memorable moment. I heard the sound of wheels, and looked up. A wagon was approaching, driven by an old man. Beside him, beneath a cotton umbrella, sat a thin woman in black, with gray hair and a worried look. Behind them, on a battered trunk, sat Peter, who was not thin, who wore no worried look, and who chewed gum. Beneath the wagon, invisible at first, trotted a mud-bespattered yellow pup. The wagon stopped.
“Good morning, Mr. Upton,” said Mrs. Pillig. “This is me and Peter.”
“Where’s Buster?” said Peter. ”

“ He could hear men all about him, out of sight but calling to one another in the woods. All at once he recoiled, throwing himself down again upon the ground. The clump of bushes hiding him ended abruptly only a few yards away; through their bare twigs, but far below him, the sunlight twinkled, mockingly, at him from the surface of water. It was the lake!
Eaton crept forward to the edge of the steep bluff, following the tracks. He peered over the edge. The tracks did not stop at the edge of the bluff; they went on down it. ”

“ Eaton had seen no one but the newsboy when he looked out the window, but he felt sure that, if he had been left alone in the car, he was being watched so that he could not escape.
His hand moved toward the bell, then checked itself. By calling any one, he now must change his situation only for the worse; as long as they were letting him stay there, so much the better. He realized that it was long past the time when the porter usually came to make up his berth and they brought him breakfast ”

“ Eaton laughed with every one. He seemed the gayest of the gay, after the manner of some lofty, heart-torn souls; but in the silence of his cabin, while the moon shone silvery from the low east, he gazed sadly upon the teetering waves, gnawed by his secret sorrow. ”

“ Eaton went on, "Edith did not find out anything. Then, this year, she learned that there was to be a reorganization of some of the Latron properties. We hoped that, during that, something would come out which might help us. I had been away almost five years; my face was forgotten, and we thought I could take the chance of coming back to be near at hand so I could act if anything did come out. Lawrence met me at Vancouver. We were about to start East when I received a message from Mr. Warden. I did not know Warden and I don't know now how he knew who I was or where he could reach me. ”

“ The day was a warm, sunny, early spring day, with the ground fairly firm. She ordered her horse and trap, and leaving the groom, she drove to the country-club beyond the rise of ground back from the lake. Her pleasure in the drive and the day was diminished by her errand. It made her grow uncomfortable and flush warmly as she recollected that—if Eaton's secrecy regarding himself was accounted for by the unknown injury he had suffered—she was the one sent to "spy" upon him.
As she drove down the road, she passed the scene of the attempt by the men in the motor to run Eaton down. ”

“ Eaton immediately resigned his situation as navy agent, and returned to the United States, where he was universally received with interest and attention; but never recovered his equanimity; he had been as he conceived, disappointed in the opportunity of distinguishing himself, and moreover unjustly robbed of his share in the credit of reducing the Pasha to terms. His natural irritability was increased, and he was on many occasions tempted to assert his claims, in a manner which savored of boastfulness. His own peaceful [p. 332] country offered no field for the display of his peculiar talents ”

“ They all did try it—once—much to Mrs. Jones’ disgust.
It did not take long to clean out the sardine tins and the jam jars. Then Joe produced a piece of sweet chocolate apiece, while the girls called him “a darling thing,” and the congressmen lit their cigars and lay back on the grass, while Joe and Val packed up again.
“You go along right away, with the pack-train,” said Mills to them, “and when you reach the lake, turn toward Sun Camp, till you come to the point of land. Start making camp by that. We’ll come slower.” ”

“ Peanut said, “girls are a pesky nuisance. They look so ugly in pink dresses.”
“Oh, shut up on that!” Art cried. “You’ve got a ducking coming to you in the next brook. Anyhow, mine wasn’t a face-slapping tomboy!”
“No, she was just too sweet,” laughed Peanut, as he dodged Art’s swing at his head.
At the village they stocked up on provisions—bacon, condensed milk, tea and coffee, flour and sweet chocolate—for their provisions were well used up, and soon they were plodding up the road, northward, and entering the Franconia Notch. ”

“ Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves where they had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing what this meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known that the man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car, was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even than before, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of their burden. ”

“ He graduated at the university of Vermont in 1848 and at the Harvard Law School in 1850, and in the latter year was admitted to the bar in New York city. There he became associated in practice with William Kent, the son of the great chancellor, an edition of whose Commentaries he assisted in editing. Eaton early became interested in municipal and civil service reform. He was conspicuous in the fight against Tweed and his followers, by one of whom he was assaulted; he required a long period of rest, and went to Europe, where he studied the workings of the civil service in various countries. ”

“ If one was so made one had certainly no business, on any terms, at Matcham; whereas if one wasn’t one had no business there on the particular terms—terms of conformity with the principles of Eaton Square—under which one had been so absurdly dedicated. Deep at the heart of that resurgent unrest in our young man which we have had to content ourselves with calling his irritation—deep in the bosom of this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety. ”

“ She was the second daughter of Harvey Eaton, one of the hardy, prosperous pioneer farmers of Pocahontas county, Iowa, She grew to womanhood on the farm, where she learned to be industrious and earnest.
She early became identified with the work in the Presbyterian church and Sunday school at Fonda where she received her first training in christian work. After enjoying a four years' course at Buena Vista college, Storm Lake, associated with her elder sister, she spent four years in mercantile pursuits in Sioux City and Fonda. ”

“ The horses, being considerably longer legged than men, climbed faster up the high steps than a man could do alone, but with the horse’s tail to hang on to, you could manage to keep up. Everybody laughed at first, yelling at one another, but in three minutes the yells had ceased, and in five, the laughter. No one had any breath left for that. If Joe had thought, he probably would have been frightened, for he was certainly disobeying the doctor, but he was having too good a time to remember doctors, and as even the lack of breath did not make him cough, he had nothing to remind him. ”

“ Conductor Connery came for the last time to Eaton's door.
"Miss Santoine says you're to go with the man she's left here for you. Here's the things I took from you. The money's all there. Mr. Santoine says you've been his guest on this car."
Eaton received back his purse and bill-fold. He put them in his pocket without examining their contents. The porter appeared with his overcoat and hat. Eaton put them on and stepped out of the car. The conductor escorted him to a limousine car. ”

“ The road where he had left Harriet ran north and south; to go north he must parallel this road, but it was dangerous to move too near to it because it was guarded. The sky was covered with clouds hiding the stars; the night in the woods was intensely black except where it was lighted by the fire at the bridge. To the opposite side, a faint gray glow against the clouds, which could not be the dawn but must be the reflection of the electric lights along the public pike which followed the shore of the lake, gave Eaton inspiration. ”

“ Another motor sped near, halted and then speeded on again; Eaton, looking up, saw it was a runabout with Avery alone in it; evidently, seeing them in the road, Avery had halted to protest, then thought better of it and gone on. But other motors passed now with people who spoke to Harriet and who stopped to inquire for her father and wish him well.
"Your father does not seem to be one of the great men without honor in his own neighborhood," Eaton said to her after one of these had halted and gone on.
"Every one who knows Father likes and admires him!" ”

“ Eaton remarked. “Mr. Farley and I have had a splendid talk; I never found him more amusing. One of the most interesting men I ever knew! What have you been talking about? The silence down here has been ominously painful!”
“Mr. Amidon has been telling me of the egg-throwing habits of the waitresses in my native town. Life here in the city is nothing to what it is down on the river. He’s almost made me homesick!”
“My dear Amidon,” said Eaton severely, “have you been telling that story—in a private house? I thought when I brought you here you’d be on [112] your good behavior. I’m sorry, Nan ”

“ AS he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact that Basil Santoine had been attacked—or that he was on the train—still had been carefully kept secret by the spreading of some other explanation of the trouble in the car behind. ”

“ Eaton put his hand over hers which still clung to the driving wheel. "I'm going just beside the road here," he said to her, quietly. "I'm armed, of course. If those are your people, you'd better go back with them. I'm sure they are; but I'll wait and see."
She caught at his hand. "No; no!" she cried. "You must get as far away as you can before they come! I'm going back to meet and hold them." She threw the car into the reverse, backed and turned it and brought it again onto the road. ”

“ Eaton had not only seen him and heard his voice, but he had felt his grasp; that sudden, instinctive crouch before a charge, and the savage lunge and tackle were the instant, natural acts of an old linesman on a championship team in the game of football as it was played twenty years before. That lift of the opponent off his feet and the heavy lunge hurling him back to fall on his head was what one man—in the rougher, more cruel days of the college game—had been famous for. On the football field that throw sufficed to knock a helmeted opponent unconscious ”

“ Eaton went on. "They must trust him too, in an extraordinary way. His associates must place most complete confidence in him when they leave to him the adjustment of matters such as I understand they do. There is no way, as I comprehend it, that any of the powerful men who ask his advice could hold him accountable if he were unfair to them; yet men of the most opposite types, the most inimical and hostile, place their affairs in his hands. He tells them what is just, and they abide by his decision."
Harriet shook her head. ”