“He was murdered––I loved him––I have come to denounce his murderers.”
Arvilly helped Waitstill down on a bench where she leaned back still and white most as if she wuz dead. But before Arvilly went out with Waitstill leanin’ on her arm, she turned and faced them dumb-foundered men once more:
“Who is accountable for the death of her lover?” pintin’ to the frail, droopin’ figger. “Who is accountable for the death of my husband? Who is accountable for the death and everlastin’ ruin of my son, my husband, my father and my lover? sez the millions of weepin’ wimmen in America that the Canteen and saloon have killed and ruined. These questions unanswered by you are echoin’ through the hull country demandin’ an answer. They sweep up aginst the hull framework of human laws made professedly to protect the people, aginst every voter in the land, aginst the rulers in Washington, D. C., aginst the Church of Christ––failing to git an answer from them they sweep up to God’s throne. There they will git a reply. Woe! woe! to you rulers who 100 deviseth iniquity to overthrow the people committed to your care.”
Arvilly then went out, leadin’ Waitstill, and when she come back to Jonesville she come with her, a patient mourner, good to everybody and goin’ out to day’s works for seventy-five cents a day, for she had no other way to live, for she wuzn’t strong enough then to go on with her nursing and she hadn’t a relation on earth, and the man our govermunt murdered in that Canteen represented all there wuz on this broad earth for her to love. They worshipped each other, and Waitstill is waitin’ till the time comes for her to die and meet the man she loved and lost, havin’ to live in the meantime, because she couldn’t stop breathin’ till her time come. So, as I say, she went out doin’ plain sewin’, beloved by all both great and small, but a mourner if there ever wuz one, lookin’ at his picture day in and day out, which she wears in her bosom in a locket––a handsome, manly face, took before our govermunt made a crazy lunatick and a murderer of him.
Jest as different from Arvilly as day is from night, but the cold hands of grief holds their hearts together and I spoze that she will always make it her home with Arvilly as long as she lives, she wants her to––that is, if the plan I have in my head and heart don’t amount to anything, but I hope for the land sake that it will, for as I’ve said many a time and gin hints to her, there never wuz two folks more made for each other than she and Elder White.
But she’s gone now to the Philippines as a nurse in a hospital, which shows how different she and Arvilly feels; Arvilly sez that she wouldn’t do anything to help the govermunt agin in any way, shape or manner, not if they should chain her and drag her to the front; she would die before she would help the great, remorseless power that killed her husband for a little money. She’s made in jest that way, Arvilly is, jest as faithful to the remembrance of her wrongs as a dog is to a bone, settin’ and gnawin’ at it all the time. 101 And when they come to collect her taxes last year she says:
“No taxes will you ever git out of me to help rare up Saloons and Canteens to kill some other woman’s husband.”
“But,” sez the tax man, a real good man he wuz and mild mannered, “you should be willing to help maintain the laws of your country that protects you.”
And then I spose that man’s hair (it wuz pretty thin, anyway) riz right up on his head to hear her go on tellin’ about the govermunt killin’ her husband. But seein’ she wuz skarin’ him she kinder quelled herself down and sez:
“What has this country ever done for me. I have had no more voice in makin’ the laws than your dog there. Your dog is as well agin off, for it don’t have to obey the laws, that it has no part in makin’. If it digs up a good bone it don’t have to give it to some dog politician to raise money to buy dog buttons to kill other dogs and mebby its own pups. Not one cent of taxes duz this hell-ridden govermunt git out of me agin––if I can help it.”
The man ketched up his tax list and flewed from the house, but returned with minions of the law who seized on and sold her shote she wuz fattin’ for winter’s use; sold it to the saloon keeper over to Zoar for about half what it wuz worth, only jest enough to pay her tax. But then the saloon keeper controlled a lot of bum votes and the collector wanted to keep in with him.
Yes, as I wuz sayin’, Waitstill Webb is as different from Arvilly as a soft moonlight night lit by stars is from a snappin’ frosty noonday in January. Droopin’ like a droopin’ dove, feelin’ that the govermunt wuz the worst enemy she and her poor dead boy ever had, as it turned out, but still ready to say:
“Oh Lord, forgive my enemy, the Government of the United States, for it knows what it does.”
Which she felt wuz ten-fold worse than as if it did wickedly without knowin’ it, and she knew that they knowed all about it and couldn’t deny it, for besides all the good men 102 and wimmen that had preached to ’em about it, they had had such sights of petitions sent in explainin’ it all out and beggin’ ’em to stop it, onheeded by them and scorfed at. But she stood ready to go agin and serve the govermunt as a nurse, trying to heal the woonds caused by bullet and knife, and the ten-fold worse woonds caused by our govermunt’s pet wild beast it rents out there to worry and kill its brave defenders. I looked forward with warm anticipations to seein’ her, for I sot store by her. She had fixed over my gray alpacky as good as new, and made me a couple of ginghams, and I thought more of havin’ her with me than I did of her work, and once when I wuz down with a crick in the back, and couldn’t stir, she come right there and stayed by me and did for me till the creek dwindled down and disappeared. Her presence is some like the Bam of Gilead, and her sweet face and gentle ways make her like an angel in the sick room. Arvilly is more like a mustard plaster than Bam. But everybody knows that mustard is splendid for drawin’ attention to it; if it draws as it ort to, mustard must and will attract and hold attention. And I spoze there hain’t no tellin’ what good Arvilly has done and mebby will do by her pungent and sharp tongue to draw attention to wrongs and inspire efforts to ameliorate ’em. And the same Lord made the Bam of Gilead and mustard, and they go well together. When mustard has done its more painful work then the Bam comes in and duz its work of healin’ and consolin’. ’Tennyrate anybody can see that they are both on ’em as earnest and sincere in wantin’ to do right as any human creeters can be, and are dretful well thought on all over Jonesville and as fur out as Loontown and Zoar.
Some wimmen would have held a grudge aginst the man that murdered her husband and not bore the sight of the one who loved and mourned him so constant. But Arvilly had too much good horse sense for that; she contends that neither of the men who wuz fightin’ wuz much to blame. 103 She sez that if a sane, well man should go out and dig a deep pit to catch men for so much a head, and cover it all over with green grass and blossoms and put a band of music behind it to tempt men to walk out on it, to say nothin’ of a slidin’ path leadin’ down to it, all soft with velvet and rosy with temptations, if a lot of hot-headed youth and weak men and generous open-minded men who wuzn’t lookin’ for anything wrong, should fall into it and be drownded for so much a head, she sez the man who dug the pit and got so much apiece for the men he led in and ruined would be more to blame than the victims, and she sez the man who owned the ground and encouraged it to go on would be more to blame than the man who dug the pit. And further back the men who made the laws to allow such doin’s, and men who voted to allow it, and ministers and the Church of Christ, who stood by like Pilate, consenting to it and encouraged by their indifference and neglect what they might have stopped if they wanted to––they wuz most to blame of all.
Well, this is what Arvilly has went through.
Day by day we sailed onwards, and if the days wuz beautiful, the nights wuz heavenly, lit by the glowin’ moon that seemed almost like another sun, only softer and mellerer lookin’; and the lustrous stars of the tropics seemed to flash and glitter jest over our head almost as if we could reach up and gather ’em in our hands into a sheaf of light.
The weather seemed to moderate and we had to put on our