Read Ebook: Foe-Farrell by Quiller Couch Arthur

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Ebook has 1501 lines and 116204 words, and 31 pages

He writes an article called "Conditions of the Southern Problem," and a more thoroughly exaggerated and libelous contribution to public discussion has not been made during the last twenty years.

Who stuffed Dr. Hart with that old joke?

What credit does he do to himself when he shows to the world that he accepts such worn-out jests as facts?

Does he not know that there are plenty of wags all over the world--even in Pullman cars--who take a delight in playing upon the credulous?

He will meet men who will tell him that in certain backwoods communities "the people don't know that the war is over," or he will be told that in some mountain counties "they are still voting for Andrew Jackson."

But would Professor Hart take such statements for anything but jokes?

Doesn't he know that the jest about the rural belief that the world is flat instead of round belongs to the same gray-haired family?

Even a professor of history should learn that there is just as great a difference between jokes and facts as there is between facts and jokes.

Professor Hart says that "in a few communities, notably South Carolina, the poor whites have unaccountably discovered that if they will always vote together they always have a majority, and they keep a man of their own type in the United States Senate. In most other states, however, politics is directed by intelligent and honorable men."

If so, upon what ground does he base the accusation?

Of course, Professor Hart intended to give Senator Tillman a side-wipe of special vigor, and he did it, striking the whole state at the same time he struck Tillman. But to what extent was the blow deserved? Ben Tillman may, or may not, be an ideal Senator. He may, or may not, be an ideal leader. Opinions differ about that, even in South Carolina.

But why should a Northern writer select a Southern senator and a Southern state to be held up in this insulting manner to public odium? In what respect does Tillman's record in the Senate, for honesty and ability, compare unfavorably with that of Quay of Pennsylvania, Platt of New York, Aldrich of Rhode Island, or Gorman of Maryland? Each one of those senators has been basely subservient to thievish corporations, and has helped them to fatten on national legislation at the expense of the great body of the people.

Can Dr. Hart say that of Ben Tillman? I defy him to do it.

Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart is evidently thinking about the case of James Tillman, of South Carolina, who shot down in the street Editor Gonzales, and who was acquitted, on his trial.

It is useless to argue the guilt or innocence of James Tillman; but we all know that human nature is prejudiced by political feeling; and none will deny that the feud between Tillman and Gonzales was a political feud. The killing was a political killing. In a case like that the action of court and jury will be influenced by political feeling, whether the result be right or wrong.

One might think this amounted to about the same thing as the shooting down of a personal enemy on the street.

Fisk died, as Gonzales died. Stokes was tried, as Tillman was tried. Stokes was not hanged in New York any more than Tillman was hanged in South Carolina.

Will Dr. Hart please furnish an explanation which will not fit the South Carolina case as snugly as it fits the New York case?

Professor Hart asks, "Why should the Northern people believe that the South means well by the negro when such a man as Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, brutally threatens him and his white friends in the North?"

O Mr. Professor of History at Harvard! has your blind passion against the South lost you to all sense of proportion in the making of public statements?

If the poor whites of the South "do not allow themselves to be punished for such little things as murder," why do they go to the penitentiary at all?

You will find a sufficient number of poor whites in the penitentiaries of the South--are they there just for the fun of it?

What utter disregard of facts!

Let me cite a few cases which come within my personal knowledge.

The way he said it impressed me, and I fairly shinned back to the Ring. I hadn't made my book on any reasoned conviction, you understand; for the horses had been playing at cat's-cradle all along, and as I went it broke on me that, after all, my faith in Gouvernant mainly rested on my knowing less of him than of the others--that I was really going with the crowd. But really I was running to back a superstition--my belief in Foe, who knew nothing about horse-racing and cared less.

Well, the race was run that year in a thunderstorm--a drencher; and if Foe was right, I guess that finished Gouvernant, who never looked like a winner. St. Amant romped home, with John o' Gaunt second, in the place he could be trusted for. Thanks to Foe I had saved myself more than a pony in three strenuous minutes, and he pocketed his few sovereigns and smiled.

"Hallo, Jimmy!" I hailed, pausing before the pastoral scene. "Funeral bake-meats?"

"Hallo!" Jimmy answered, and shook his head very solemnly. "Sister-in-law this time. It had to be."

"Sister-in-law! Why you haven't one!"

"Do you know where bad boys go?" I asked him.

I told him that we had lunched, introduced him to Foe as the Malefactor, and invited him to come back and dine with us at Prince's before catching the late train for Oxford. He answered that fate always smiled on him at these funerals, paid off his cabby, and joined us.

As the tail of the train swung out of the station Foe said meditatively, "I like that boy," . . . And so it was. That autumn, when Jimmy Collingwood, having achieved a pass degree--"by means," as he put it, "only known to myself"--came up to share my chambers and read for the Bar, he and Foe struck up a warm affection. For once, moreover, Foe broke his habit of keeping his friends in separate cages. He was too busy a man to join us often; but when we met we were the Three Musketeers.

My father died in the Autumn of 1906; and this kept me down in the country until the New Year; although he had left his affairs as straight as a balance-sheet. Death duties and other things. . . . His account-books, note-books, filed references and dockets; his diaries kept, for years back, with records of rents and tithe-charges, of farms duly visited and crops examined field by field; appraisements of growing timber, memoranda for new plantings, queer charitable jottings about his tenants, their families, prospects, and ways to help them; all this tally, kept under God's eye by one who had never suffered man to interfere with him, gave my Radicalism a pretty severe jerk.

You see, here, worked out admirably in practice, was the rural side of that very landlordism which I had been denouncing up and down the East-End. The difference was plain enough, of course; but when you worked down to principle, it became for me a pretty delicate difference to explain. I was pledged, however, to return to London after Christmas and run for those Bethnal Green Stakes: and in due time--that's to say, about the middle of January--up I came.

I won't bore you with my political campaign. One day in the middle of it Jimmy said, "To-night's a night off and we're dining with Jack Foe down in Chelsea. Eight o'clock: no theatre afterwards: 'no band, no promenade, no nozzing.' We've arranged between us to give your poor tired brain a rest."

"When you do happen to be thoughtful," said I "you might give me a little longer warning. As it is, I made a half-promise yesterday, to speak for that man of ours, Farrell, across the water."

"No, you don't," said Jimmy. "Who's Farrell? Friend of yours?"

"Tottenham Court Road," I said. "Only met him yesterday."

"What? Peter Farrell's Hire System? . . . And you met him there, in the Tottenham Court Road--by appointment, I suppose, with a coy carnation in your buttonhole. A bad young baronet, unmarried, intellectual, with a craving for human sympathy, on the Hire System'--"

"They mostly are in the Tottenham Court Road," said Jimmy. "But if you've made half a promise, I was a week ahead of you with a whole one. We dine with Jack Foe."

Foe's notions of furnishing, too, had always been bleak. He had hung his few pictures in the wrong places, and askew at that. He understood dining, though, and no doubt the dinner was good, though I gave very little attention to it.

"Otty's hipped to-night," said Collingwood, over the coffee. "Politics are all he can talk in these days. Wake up, Otty, and don't sit thinking out a speech."

"That's just what you're doing; and my fear is, you'll stand up presently and make one in ours."

"I'm sorry, Jack," I apologised. "Fact is, I'm worried by a half-promise I made to your man Farrell, over the river--"

"My dear Roddy," he broke in. "You know that I never could get up an interest in politics. As for local politics--"

"Dear Roddy," Foe answered--very tolerantly, I'll admit--"you'll get elected, to a dead certainty."

"Oh, I'm all right," said I, cooling down. "Wish I could be so sure of your man Farrell, across the bridge."

"Farrell?"

"That's his name. . . . Think you'll be able to remember it?"

Here Jimmy dropped the ash of his cigar into his coffee-cup and chipped in judiciously.

"Heavens alive!"

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