Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 272, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1918 — Maxwell’s Harvest [ARTICLE]

Maxwell’s Harvest

By CLARISSA MACKIE

{Copyright, 1918, by McClure Newspaper ' y Syndicate.) Maxwell stood with folded arms watching his house burn to the ground. In the grove of chestnuts negro servants ran to and fro, dragging the precious family heirlooms away from the blistering heat of the fire. Mahogany and glass and china and silver, pictures and carpets, formed a miscellaneous pile representing all the home that was left to the last of the Maxwells. The long drought and its consequent lack of water told the story to the neighbors gathered about the young master who looked with brooding eyes on the scene of devastation. The nearest neighbor had galloped five miles when the first glare of light at midnight had declared the alarm of fire. He stood at Maxwell’s elbow, panting with the exertion of hiS long ride, a strange look of triumph on his fat face. ‘Tm sorry for you, old man,” he said with an air of heartiness. “You’ve certainly had the devil’s own luck! First, the failure of your cotton—then Blue Jeans dropping dead on the track when he was marked for a winner and lastly—” Maxwell waved an impatient hand. “Spare me a recitation of my afflictions, Seymour,” he said dryly. There isn’t one item I have overlooked, I assure you! Not even the fact that the insurance will exactly pay off the mortgage!” Seymour’s face settled into heavy lines of ill-concealed satisfaction. “Oh, I say, I wasn’t thinking of that, you know; Maxwell, although I must say I can find a use for the five thousand dollars I loaned your uncle,. It’s been tied up in that mortgage for fifteen years and I don’t see any more show of its being paid off now than before he died— though you’ve tried hard to So it, I’ll admit! Everything’s against you. Maxwell. Better clear out and start anew.” • - John Maxwell did not reply. He was Staring straight into the heart of the fire with troubled dark eyes. • The outer framework of the house had crumbled in with the walls and lay a palpitating center of white heat. Above it arose the six dark towering atone chimneys—unharmed by the flames.

Tn the heart of the fire John saw a fair face crowned with golden hair, and the blue eyes that looked so sadly into his pronounced him 'a failure. He groaned as he turned again to his companion. “You’re right, Seymour—l’ll clear out and start over again somewhere else. There isn’t much chance for a Northerner in the South anyway.” His eyes drifted back to the fire now dying down into smoldering embers. A train of dark figures went ceaselessly to and fro between the grove and the cabins of the servants. Maxwell’s furniture would soon find humbler quarters. . * “Cisterns empty, I suppose?” ventured Seymour after a while. “Almost draw a gallon in time to do any good. I don’t know how it started —from the kitchen fire, probably. All I know is—this!” He swept his hands toward the ruins of his home and it was intercepted 'by the touch of a soft, cool palm. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Maxwell,” breathed Eleanor Lee at his side. Clad in riding habit and with her golden ; hair uncovered to the night wind she had stolen from her bed to be beside him in his trouble. “Eleanor! Go home at once!” commanded Seymour angrily. “This is no place for you.” ‘TH ride back with you, stepfather,” said Eleanor, looking down from her saddle at his perturbed countenance plainly visible in the glare from the smoldering ruins. Again she turned to the young man beside her. “You will build again, Mr. Maxwell,” she said decisively. . Maxwell laughed shortly. “I cannot, Miss Lee. This fire beggars me. Mr. Seymour will take the land off my hands.” “And you?” There was forced indifference in her tone. “Begin over again.” “Here?” “No. I shall return to the North;” There ensued a long silence while the three looked at the glowing embers of what had once been the finest mansion in West Virginia. “If there’s nothing we can do to help you, Maxwell, we better go home. Won’t you make the Hall your headquarters until —” Seymour paused awkwardly. “Until I clear out?” Maxwell’s laugh was not pleasant to hear. “Thank you, no, Seymour—l’ll find a shakedown somewhere on the plantation as long as I am here.” His voice trailed huskily into silence. Seymour mounted his horse and turned into the avenue. “Come, Eleanor—it is beginning to rain; this escapade of yours will end disastrously if you take cold." “I am afraid it Will end disastrously tor some one,” she said carelessly. For a brief instant Maxwell held her Laud in the darkness. “I may not have th? courage to see you again, Nell,” he said brokenly; “if you could wait — some day 1 may come back for you—- ■ ■

“I don’t want to wait, John,” she whispered, with a catch in her voice. “I will go with you and begin again with you. Do not leave me!” “Darling I” he murmured, pressing her hand to his lipa. “Dear heart —do you nTean it?" "Eleanor!” Seymour’s voice cut the darkness like a knife. “Yes,” came Eleanor’s voice out of the night as she joined her stepfather. The sound of hoofbeats grew fainter and finally died into silence; the soft patter of rain on the chestnuts and the low wail of mourning- from the negro quarters formed the only requiem over the funeral pyre of the house of Maxwell. John drew nearer the ruins and looked up at the frowning majesty of the six huge chimneys. They must come down,” he murmured, and made a mental note to go to town and get the dynamite necessary for the blasting.

Out of the grove of trees Uncle Jake’s voice came, cracked with emotion. “Marse John, Aunt Sally she done clar outer her cabin an’ its sweeter’n honey foh yo’ comfort, sah; yo’ bed an’ lot of things from the big house am there —oh, Marse John 1” Maxwell forgot his own troubles in allaying the grief of the old servants, but when the gray morning dawned and he still lay awake in his new quarters all the comfort and hope that Eleanor’s promise had awakened in him had departed.

He would be a cur indeed to snatch the delicately nurtured girl from her home and let her slender shoulders bend beneath Jhe burdens that the wife of a poor man—a beggar, he thought bitterly—must suffer! He would not bind her to a promise given perhaps in the first warmth of sympathy. He would go away—alone —and Seymour could have the coveted land. Stern in this resolution, he rode over to Leesburg that afternoon and purchased a quantity of dynamite, and the following dajk» with the help of the servants, he prepared to raze the menacing chimneys to the ground. The women servants carried all the precious crystal and china to a place of safety, and then the work of removing the chimneys was begun. One by one, they tottered and fell in clouds of choking dust, until there remained only the great central chimney —the hearthstone around which generations of Maxwells had gathered in joy and sorrow, in prosperity long ago, and now ip bitter ruin. Better remove this landmark of a dead race of which he was doomed to be the last. So mused Maxwell, as he stood absorbed in bitter thought while Uncle Jake, near-sighted and half blinded by tears, recklessly prepared the last blast. The fuse was laid and they withdrew into the shelter of the chestnut grove. ’ “I done leave ebery stick ob dinnamite there, Marse John,” muttered the old man with resentful triumph in his grumbling tones. “There won’t no folks pint in here an’ say—” “My God, Jake, what —” John’s words were drowned in a deafening roar, followed by the blackness and silence of death itself. When he regained consciousness his eyes opened on the sunshine streaming through the window of Aunt Sally’s cabin; all around him were familiar articles of furniture and above him bent Eleanor Lee. z “What happened—Uncle Jake?” he asked faintly.

Uncle Jake’s snow-crowned head bobbed above the foot of the bed, his lips stretched in a toothless smile. “Here I is, Marse John,” he chuckled softly; “dem lazy niggers done left a fedder baid yander in de grove, an’ when de ’splosion came this nigger fell on the bed an’ ain’t hurt a mite, sah. You was de only one—” “I’m glad of that, Uncle Jake,” smiled Maxwell, and then he raised his eyes to Eleanor’s. “What did the doctor say?” ( “That you will be as good, as new tn a few weeks,” returned Miss- Lee promptly, evading his tender eyes. Maxwell groaned. “The devil’s own luck,” he muttered desperately. “Nell, darling, I can’t hold you to your promise to go with me—-I am penniless. I am not selfish enough to accept your sacrifice —”

A soft hand covered his mouth and Eleanor’s bright hair touched the pillow beside his head. ‘Tve set my heart, on making a rich marriage. John, don’t disappoint me, please! Listen —two weeks ago I heard my stepfather telling that man who bought the Leeson place next door that he was positive that there was a vein of coal beneath your place that meant a fortune to the man who acquired the property. “I thought the matter over and decided that he was the author of all your troubles. It is he who has balked all your enterprises. He had hoped to discourage you and send you away, that the place might become his.” She whispered in his ear now. ”“I aha afraid he set fire to the hall as a last* resort, but for mother’s sake —■” her" voice broke. Maxwell found strength to encircle her wtfist with his right arm. “The matter is forgotten already,” he said generously. “As for the coal mine, that is a chimera —■” “No—Uncle Jake’s overcharge of dynamite has opened a huge hole in the ground and disclosed what Colonel Pike calls the richest vein of coal in Lees county.'; I will be poor beside you.” Uncle Jake gave one glance at them and then tiptoed from the room. “Great crap,” he chuckled, softly, “plant dis heah dinnamlte in de chimbley. and git er hahvest ob coal I De Lo'ds ways am wunnerful— wunnerful indeedvi”