A Hoosier Chronicle by Meredith Nicholson

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By Meredith Nicholson

A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With illustrations.
THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With illustrations.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York

A HOOSIER CHRONICLE

"Dreams books, are each a world and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow"

Wordsworth
in
Personal Talk

[Illustration: SYLVIA AND PROFESSOR KELTON]

A HOOSIER
CHRONICLE

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY F.C. YOHN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

_Published March 1912_

TO

EVANS WOOLLEN, ESQ.

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes
in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character
and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid
of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the
form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation
exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.
We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat; so much life as
it has in the character of living men is its force.

EMERSON: _Politics_.

CONTENTS

I. My LADY OF THE CONSTELLATIONS 1
II. SYLVIA GOES VISITING 20
III. A SMALL DINNER AT MRS. OWEN'S 39
IV. WE LEARN MORE OF SYLVIA 62
V. INTRODUCING MR. DANIEL HARWOOD 79
VI. HOME LIFE OF HOOSIER STATESMEN 89
VII. SYLVIA AT LAKE WAUPEGAN 113
VIII. SILK STOCKINGS AND BLUE OVERALLS 136
IX. DANIEL HARWOOD RECEIVES AN OFFER 152
X. IN THE BOORDMAN BUILDING 168
XI. THE MAP ABOVE BASSETT'S DESK 193
XII. BLURRED WINDOWS 212
XIII. THE WAYS OF MARIAN 225
XIV. THE PASSING OF ANDREW KELTON 246
XV. A SURPRISE AT THE COUNTRY CLUB 257
XVI. "STOP, LOOK, LISTEN" 271
XVII. A STROLL ACROSS THE CAMPUS 288
XVIII. THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD 297
XIX. THE THUNDER OF THE CAPTAINS 321
XX. INTERVIEWS IN TWO KEYS 350
XXI. A SHORT HORSE SOON CURRIED 374
XXII. THE GRAY SISTERHOOD 393
XXIII. A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE KANKAKEE 403
XXIV. A WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY BALL 418
XXV. THE LADY OF THE DAGUERREOTYPE 439
XXVI. APRIL VISTAS 460
XXVII. HEAT LIGHTNING 474
XXVIII. A CHEERFUL BRINGER OF BAD TIDINGS 497
XXIX. A SONG AND A FALLING STAR 511
XXX. THE KING HATH SUMMONED HIS PARLIAMENT 534
XXXI. SYLVIA ASKS QUESTIONS 542
XXXII. "MY BEAUTIFUL ONE" 560
XXXIII. THE MAN OF SHADOWS 570
XXXIV. WE GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING 591
A POSTSCRIPT BY THE CHRONICLER 602

ILLUSTRATIONS

SYLVIA AND PROFESSOR KELTON _Frontispiece_
WHOEVER WROTE THAT LETTER WAS TROUBLED ABOUT SYLVIA 284
A SUDDEN FIERCE ANGER BURNED IN HER HEART 458
SYLVIA MUST KNOW JUST WHAT WE KNOW 556

_From drawings by F.C. Yohn_

A HOOSIER CHRONICLE

CHAPTER I

MY LADY OF THE CONSTELLATIONS

Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled.
Professor Kelton had few callers, and as there was never any certainty
that the maid-of-all-work would trouble herself to answer, Sylvia put
down her book and went to the door. Very likely it was a student or a
member of the faculty, and as her grandfather was not at home Sylvia was
quite sure that the interruption would be the briefest.

The Kelton cottage stood just off the campus, and was separated from it
by a narrow street that curved round the college and stole, after many
twists and turns, into town. This thoroughfare was called "Buckeye
Lane," or more commonly the "Lane." The college had been planted
literally in the wilderness by its founders, at a time when Montgomery,
for all its dignity as the seat of the county court, was the most
colorless of Hoosier hamlets, save only as the prevailing mud colored
everything. Buckeye Lane was originally a cow-path, in the good old
times when every reputable villager kept a red cow and pastured it in
the woodlot that subsequently became Madison Athletic Field. In those
days the Madison faculty, and their wives and daughters, seeking social
diversion among the hospitable townfolk, picked their way down the Lane
by lantern light. An ignorant municipal council had later, when natural
gas threatened to boom the town into cityhood, changed Buckeye Lane to
University Avenue, but the community refused to countenance any such
impious trifling with tradition. And besides, Madison prided herself
then as now on being a college that taught the humanities in all
soberness, according to ideals brought out of New England by its
founders. The proposed change caused an historic clash between town and
gown in which the gown triumphed. University forsooth!

Professor Kelton's house was guarded on all sides by trees and
shrubbery, and a tall privet hedge shut it off from the Lane. He tended
with his own hands a flower garden whose roses were the despair of all
the women of the community. The clapboards of the simple
story-and-a-half cottage had faded to a dull gray, but the little plot
of ground in which the house stood was cultivated with scrupulous care.
The lawn was always fresh and crisp, the borders of privet were neatly
trimmed and the flower beds disposed effectively. A woman would have
seen at once that this was a man's work; it was all a little too
regular, suggesting engineering methods rather than polite gardening.

Once you had stepped inside the cottage the absence of the feminine
touch was even more strikingly apparent. Book shelves crowded to the
door,--open shelves, that had the effect of pressing at once upon the
visitor the most formidable of dingy volumes, signifying that such
things were of moment to the master of the house. There was no parlor,
for the room that had originally been used as such was now shelf-hung
and book-lined, and served as an approach to the study into which it
opened. The furniture was old and frayed as to upholstery, and the
bric-a-brac on an old-fashioned what-not was faintly murmurous of some
long-vanished feminine hand. The scant lares and penates were sufficient
to explain something of this shiplike trimness of the housekeeping. The
broken half of a ship's wheel clung to the wall above the narrow grate,
and the white marble mantel supported a sextant, a binocular, and other
incidentals of a shipmaster's profession. An engraving of the battle of
Trafalgar and a portrait of Farragut spoke further of the sea. If we
take a liberty and run our eyes over the bookshelves we find many
volumes relating to the development of sea power and textbooks of an old
vintage on the sailing of ships and like matters. And if we were to pry
into the drawers of an old walnut cabinet in the study we should find
illuminative data touching the life of Andrew Kelton. It is well for us
to know that he was born in Indiana, as far as possible from salt water;
and that, after being graduated from Annapolis, he served his country
until retired for disabilities due to a wound received at Mobile Bay. He
thereafter became and continued for fifteen years the professor of
mathematics and astronomy at Madison College, in his native state; and
it is there that we find him, living peacefully with his granddaughter
Sylvia in the shadow of the college.

Comfort had set its seal everywhere, but it was keyed to male ideals of
ease and convenience; the thousand and one things in which women express
themselves were absent. The eye was everywhere struck by the strict
order of the immaculate small rooms and the snugness with which every
article had been fitted to its place. The professor's broad desk was
free of litter; his tobacco jar neighbored his inkstand on a clean,
fresh blotter. It is a bit significant that Sylvia, in putting down her
book to answer the bell, marked her place carefully with an envelope,
for Sylvia, we may say at once, was a young person disciplined to
careful habits.

"Is this Professor Kelton's? I should like very much to see him," said
the young man to whom she opened.

"I'm sorry, but he isn't at home," replied Sylvia, with that directness
which, we shall find, characterized her speech.

The visitor was neither a member of the faculty nor a student, and as
her grandfather was particularly wary of agents she was on guard against
the stranger.

"It is important for me to see him. If he will be back later I can come
again."

The young man did not look like an agent; he carried no telltale
insignia. He was tall and straight and decidedly blond, and he smiled
pleasantly as he fanned himself with his straw hat. Where his brown hair
parted there was a cowlick that flung an untamable bang upon his
forehead, giving him a combative look that his smile belied. He was a
trifle too old for a senior, Sylvia reflected, soberly studying his
lean, smooth-shaven face, but not nearly old enough to be a professor;
and except the pastor of the church which she attended, and the
physician who had been called to see her in her childish ailments, all
men in her world were either students or teachers. The town men were
strange beings, whom Professor Kelton darkly called Philistines, and
their ways and interests were beyond her comprehension.

"If you will wait I think I may be able to find him. He may have gone to
the library or to the observatory, or for a walk. Won't you please come
in?"

Her gravity amused the young man, who did not think it so serious a
matter to gain an interview with a retired professor in a small college.
They debated, with much formality on both sides, whether Sylvia should
seek her grandfather or merely direct the visitor to places where he
would be likely to find him; but as the stranger had never seen
Professor Kelton, they concluded that it would be wiser for Sylvia to do
the seeking.

She ushered the visitor into the library, where it was cooler than on
the doorstep, and turned toward the campus. It is to be noted that
Sylvia moves with the buoyant ease of youth. She crosses the Lane and is
on her own ground now as she follows the familiar walks that link the
college buildings together. The students who pass her grin cheerfully
and tug at their caps; several, from a distance, wave a hand at her. One
young gentleman, leaning from the upper window of the chemical
laboratory, calls, "Hello, Sylvia," and jerks his head out of sight.
Sylvia's chin lifts a trifle, disdainful of the impudence of sophomores.
She has recognized the culprit's voice, and will deal with him later in
her own fashion.

Sylvia is olive-skinned and dark of eye. And they are interesting
eyes--those of Sylvia, luminous and eager--and not fully taken in at a
glance. They call us back for further parley by reason of their grave
and steady gaze. There is something appealing in her that takes hold of
the heart, and we remember her after she has passed us by. We shall not
pretend that her features are perfect, but their trifling irregularities
contribute to an impression of individuality and character. Her mouth,
for example, is a bit large, but it speaks for good humor. Even at
fifteen, her lips suggest firmness and decision. Her forehead is high
and broad, and her head is well set on straight shoulders. Her dark hair
is combed back smoothly and braided and the braid is doubled and tied
with a red ribbon. The same color flashes in a flowing bow at her
throat. These notes will serve to identify Sylvia as she crosses the
campus of this honorable seat of learning on a June afternoon.

This particular June afternoon fell somewhat later than the second
consulship of Grover Cleveland and well within the ensuing period of
radicalism. The Hoosiers with whom we shall have to do are not those set
forth by Eggleston, but the breed visible to-day in urban marketplaces,
who submit themselves meekly to tailors and schoolmasters. There is
always corn in their Egypt, and no village is so small but it lifts a
smokestack toward a sky that yields nothing to Italy's. The heavens are
a soundingboard devised for the sole purpose of throwing back the
mellifluous voices of native orators. At the cross-roads store,
philosophers, perched upon barrel and soap-box (note the soap-box),
clinch in endless argument. Every county has its Theocritus who sings
the nearest creek, the bloom of the may-apple, the squirrel on the
stake-and-rider fence, the rabbit in the corn, the paw-paw thicket where
fruit for the gods lures farm boys on frosty mornings in golden autumn.
In olden times the French _voyageur_, paddling his canoe from Montreal
to New Orleans, sang cheerily through the Hoosier wilderness, little
knowing that one day men should stand all night before bulletin boards
in New York and Boston awaiting the judgment of citizens of the Wabash
country upon the issues of national campaigns. The Hoosier, pondering
all things himself, cares little what Ohio or Illinois may think or do.
He ventures eastward to Broadway only to deepen his satisfaction in the
lights of Washington or Main Street at home. He is satisfied to live
upon a soil more truly blessed than any that lies beyond the borders of
his own commonwealth. No wonder Ben Parker, of Henry County, born in a
log cabin, attuned his lyre to the note of the first blue-bird and
sang,--

'Tis morning and the days are long.

It is always morning and all the days are long in Indiana.

Sylvia was three years old when she came to her grandfather's. This she
knew from the old servant; but where her earlier years had been spent or
why or with whom she did not know; and when her grandfather was so kind,
and her studies so absorbing, it did not seem worth while to trouble
about any state of existence antedating her first clear
recollections--which were of days punctuated and governed by the college
bell, and of people who either taught or studied, with glimpses now and
then of the women and children of the professors' households. There were
times, when the winds whispered sharply round the cottage on winter
nights, or when the snow lay white on the campus and in the woods
beyond, when some memory taunted her, teasing and luring afar off; and
once, as she walked with her grandfather on a day in March, and he
pointed to a flock of wild geese moving _en echelon_ toward the Kankakee
and the far white Canadian frontier, she experienced a similar vague
thrill of consciousness, as though remembering that elsewhere, against
blue spring sky, she had watched similar migrant battalions sweeping
into the north.

She had never known a playmate. The children of the college circle went
to school in town, while she, from her sixth year, was taught
systematically by her grandfather. The faithful oversight of Mary, the
maid-of-all-work, constituted Sylvia's sole acquaintance with anything
approximating maternal care. Mary, unknown to Sylvia and Professor
Kelton, sometimes took counsel--the privilege of her long residence in
the Lane--of some of the professors' wives, who would have been glad to
help directly but for the increasing reserve that had latterly marked
Professor Kelton's intercourse with his friends and neighbors.

Sylvia was vaguely aware of the existence of social distinctions, but in
Buckeye Lane these were entirely negligible; they were, in fact, purely
academic, to be studied with other interesting phenomena by spectacled
professors in quiet laboratories. It may, however, be remarked that
Sylvia had sometimes gazed, not without a twinge, upon the daughter of a
village manufacturer whom she espied flashing through the Lane on a
black pony, and this young person symbolized all worldly grandeur to
Sylvia's adoring vision. Sylvia knew the world chiefly from her
reading,--Miss Alcott's and Mrs. Whitney's stories at first, and "St.
Nicholas" every month, on a certain day that found her meeting the
postman far across the campus; and she had read all the "Frank"
books,--the prized possessions of a neighbor's boy,--from the Maine
woods through the gunboat and prairie exploits of that delectable hero.
At fourteen she had fallen upon Scott and Bulwer and had devoured them
voraciously during the long vacation, in shady corners of the deserted
campus; and she was now fixing Dickens's characters ineffaceably in her
mind by Cruikshank's drawings. She was well grounded in Latin and had a
fair reading knowledge of French and German. It was true of Sylvia, then
and later, that poetry did not greatly interest her, and this had been
attributed to her undoubted genius for mathematics. She was old for her
age, people said, and the Lane wondered what her grandfather meant to
do with her.

The finding of Professor Kelton proves to be, as Sylvia had surmised, a
simple matter. He is at work in a quiet alcove of the college library, a
man just entering sixty, with white, close-trimmed hair and beard. The
eyes he raises to his granddaughter are like hers, and there is a
further resemblance in the dark skin. His face brightens and his eyes
kindle as he clasps Sylvia's slender, supple hand.

"It must be a student--are you sure he isn't a student?"

Sylvia was confident of it.

"Very likely an agent, then. They're very clever about disguising
themselves. I never see agents, you know, Sylvia."

Sylvia declared her belief that the stranger was not an agent, and the
professor glanced at his book reluctantly.

"Very well; I will see him. I wish you would run down these references
for me, Sylvia. Don't trouble about those I have checked off. It can't
be possible I am following a false clue. I'm sure I printed that article
in the 'Popular Science Monthly,' for I recall perfectly that John Fiske
wrote me a letter about it. Come home when you have finished and we'll
take our usual walk together."

Professor Kelton had relinquished his chair in the college when Sylvia
came to live with him twelve years before the beginning of this history,
and had shut himself away from the world; but no one knew why. Sylvia
was the child of his only daughter, of whom no one ever spoke, though
the older members of the faculty had known her, as they had known also
the professor's wife, now dead many years. Professor Kelton had changed
with the coming of Sylvia, so his old associates said; and their wives
wondered that he should have undertaken the bringing-up of the child
without other aid than that of the Irishwoman who had cooked his meals
and taken care of the house ever since Mrs. Kelton's death. He was still
a special lecturer at Madison, and he derived some income from the sale
of his textbooks in mathematics, which he revised from time to time to
bring them in touch with changing educational methods.

He had given as his reason for resigning a wish to secure leisure for
writing, and he was known to suffer severely at times from the wounds
that had driven him from active naval service. But those who knew him
best imagined that he bore in his breast deeper wounds than those of
war. These old friends of the college circle wondered sometimes at the
strange passing of his daughter and only child, who had vanished from
their sight as a girl, never to return. They were men of quality, these
teachers who had been identified with the college so long; they and
their households were like a large family; and when younger men joined
the faculty and inquired, or when their wives asked perfectly natural
questions about Professor Kelton and Sylvia, their inquiries were met by
an evasion that definitely dismissed the matter. And out of this spirit,
which marked all the social intercourse of the college folk, affection
for Professor Kelton steadily increased, and its light fell upon Sylvia
abundantly. There was a particular smile for her into which much might
be read; there was a tenderness manifested toward her which communicated
itself to the students, who were proud to win her favor and were forever
seeking little excuses for bandying words with her when they met.

The tradition of Professor Kelton's scholarship had descended to Sylvia
amusingly. She had never attended school, but he had taught her
systematically at home, and his interests were hers. The students
attributed to her the most abstruse knowledge, and stories of her
precocity were repeated proudly by the Lane folk. Many evenings spent
with her grandfather at the observatory had not been wasted. She knew
the paths of the stars as she knew the walks of the campus. Dr.
Wandless, the president emeritus, addressed her always as "My Lady of
the Constellations," and told her solemnly that from much peering
through the telescope she had coaxed the stars into her own eyes.
Professor Kelton and his granddaughter were thus fully identified with
the college and its business, which was to impart knowledge,--an
old-fashioned but not yet wholly neglected function at Madison. She
reckoned time by semesters; the campus had always been her playground;
and the excitements of her life were those of a small and sober academic
community. The darkest tragedies she had known had, indeed, been related
to the life of the college,--the disciplining of the class of '01 for
publishing itself in numerals on the face of the court-house clock; the
recurring conflicts between town and gown that shook the community
every Washington's birthday; the predatory habits of the Greek
professor's cow, that botanized freely in alien gardens and occasionally
immured herself in Professor Kelton's lettuce frames; these and like
heroic matters had marked the high latitudes of Sylvia's life. In the
long vacations, when most of the faculty sought the Northern lakes, the
Keltons remained at home; and Sylvia knew all the trees of the campus,
and could tell you just what books she had read under particular maples
or elms.

Andrew Kelton was a mathematical scholar of high attainments. In the
field of astronomy he had made important discoveries, and he carried on
an extensive correspondence with observers of stellar phenomena in many
far corners of the world. His name in the Madison catalogue was followed
by a bewildering line of cabalistic letters testifying to the honor in
which other institutions of learning held him. Wishing to devise for him
a title that combined due recognition of both his naval exploits and his
fine scholarship, the undergraduates called him "Capordoc"; and it was
part of a freshman's initiation to learn that at all times and in all
places he was to stand and uncover when Professor Kelton passed by.

Professor Kelton's occasional lectures in the college were a feature of
the year, and were given in Mills Hall to accommodate the large audience
of students and town folk that never failed to assemble every winter to
hear him. For into discourses on astronomy he threw an immense amount of
knowledge of all the sciences, and once every year, though no one ever
knew when he would be moved to relate it, he told a thrilling story of
how once, guided by the stars, he had run a Confederate blockade in a
waterlogged ironclad under a withering fire from the enemy's batteries.
And when he had finished and the applause ceased, he glanced about with
an air of surprise and said: "Thank you, young gentlemen; it pleases me
to find you so enthusiastic in your pursuit of knowledge. Learn the
stars and you won't get lost in strange waters. As we were saying--" It
was because of still other stories which he never told or referred to,
but which are written in the nation's history, that the students loved
him; and it was for this that they gave him at every opportunity their
lustiest cheer.

The professor found the stranger Sylvia had announced waiting for him at
the cottage. The young man did not mention his own name but drew from
his pocket a sealed letter.

"Is this Professor Andrew Kelton? I am to give you this letter and wait
for an answer."

Professor Kelton sat down at his desk and slit the envelope. The letter
covered only one page and he read slowly to the end. He then re-read the
whole carefully, and placed the sheet on his desk and laid a weight upon
it before he faced the messenger. He passed his hand across his
forehead, stroked his beard, and said, speaking slowly,--

"You were to bring this letter and bear back an answer to the writer,
but you were instructed not to discuss it in any way or disclose the
name or the residence of the person who sent you. So much I learn from
the letter itself."

"Yes, sir. I know nothing of the contents of the letter. I was told to
deliver it and to carry back the answer."

"Very good, sir. You have fulfilled your mission. Please note carefully
what I say. The reply is _No_. There must be no mistake about that,--do
you understand?"

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