An Ornament to Society

Cleary often utilized local personalities as prototypes for her characters. In this humorous story that satirizes the superficiality and absurdity of the Victorian Cult of True Womanhood, especially in the West, she focuses on the town's founding father. An article in the Hubbell Times on April 15, 1897, describes him: "H.H. Johnson, Hubbell's jolly auctioneer, cried a sale from Mrs. Andy Mitchell, living five miles southeast of town yesterday. Mr. Johnson's ability and skill in getting top prices for stock, etc., at a sale is remarked by all who attend, and it is conceded by almost everybody that he is the best auctioneer in this or adjoining counties." His daughter even attended a convent, according the the Hebron Journal of September 16, 1897: "H.H. Johnson went down to Concordia Saturday and brought Miss Jessie, who is attending the convent school there, home. Miss Jessie will remain here a couple of weeks." However, the plot is pure fiction since the Hubbells were one of the weathier families of the community, and Martha Hubbell died at age 81 in 1925. The couple raised five children, four of them dying before their mother did.

Jack Harrowsby was the only one of the men who had a chair. Some sympathizing woman had carried it out in the back yard and placed it for him. It did not seem proper that the lately bereaved husband and chief mourner should sit on the woodpile or the end of the horse trough as did the half dozen men who had dropped in to condole and smoke with him.

It was early--not yet half past 5--but the lifelong habits of the farm were continued in the town, and the process of "reddin' up" was well under way in the kitchen as one might judge by the clatter of dishes and the subdued but incessant chatter of women's voices that proceeded from the rear of the dwelling. The pungence of boiled coffee still lingered on the air, and the appetizing odor of fried bacon.

"There was jest three things she allus had her heart set on," remarked Jack, taking his pipe from his mouth, and looking with an air of mild reminiscence at the floating smoke. "One was to quit the farm and live in town. Any town would suit her. She'd never lived in a town--only on a farm. And the farms we rented when we came out here to Nebrasky thirty-five years ago was pretty lonely places. She wasn't but a young thing, an' she was skeered to death of redskins. She might well be--might well be!"

The hand that held the pipe shook. "There wasn't never a time when I had to be away but she kept her white pony saddled at the door, an' the rifle loaded. You know that stone shed half way inter the hill over onto Johnny MacGowthan's place--where he keeps his horses?"

His hearers nodded solemnly.

"That there was a fort when we come. Fifteen years later they made it a postoffice--the only one for the Lord only knows for how many miles. Mail come once every two weeks. You'd see 'em streakin' in all over the prairie fur long afore the messenger got there, an' squattin' around clean played out just waitin' fur a word from the folks back East. So it all was purty lonely fur a woman, you see. An' that's how Hat got to thinkin' that folks as lived in a town was most as blessed as them that ain't got a derned thing to do but keep their crowns on straight an' play on harps. Once she got reel het up. She said as how we'd suck here lone enough, an' weren't much better off than when we come. She took a notion she'd like to go farther West. So we hitched up an' drove to Colorady. She wasn't just herself that year--Hat wasn't. Seems like there come spells when if a woman could cuss good an' hard she'd feel better. But Hat was allus a church member--a gull-blooded one. But when the children kep' a-comin' an'a-goin--if 't wasn't a birth it was a death--if not a cradle that was bein' fixed it was a coffin, she got contrairy. She had cryin' spells. She didn't sleep none to talk on. But the work was there to be done. She done it. She couldn't stand Colorady though, so we come back."

He paused again. The men nodded once more, and one more acutely sympathetic than the rest held out a bag of tobacco. Harrowsby mechanically accepted it--as mechanically shook out his pipe and refilled it.

"Seems like what she couldn't stand out there was the want of greenness an' the mountains. 'Twasn't the dryness--there ain't nobody who can tell a Nebraska body a single thing about that. But there's greenness here--the timber, an' the criks, an' the rye, an' winter wheat. There it looked drab where it wasn't gray, an' brown where 'twasn't purple. She couldn't look up at the mountains. She 'lowed as how it made her dizzy--like lookin' down a deep well. She'd never had to look up--only level. She couldn't do it. So we give Nebrasky another show."

Higher rose the sun and all the east was dazzling shet of amber flame. The blue morning mists which filled the little low-lying town curled up, went floating away in shreds, in filaments, in dissolving, illusory mists. The distant Kansas bluffs elbowed their way forward until they stood, dusky and fir-clad, bold against the brilliance of the young day. People were stirring at cottage doors, in barnyards, and gardens. Already heavy wagons were rumbling into town. The freight train from the East came puffing leisurely along the track at the farther end of the village. A capricious breeze set the marigolds by the porch nodding, and fluttered the streamers of crape which hung from the know of the side door.

"They'll be a heap of folks into the funeral," ventured the village carpenter. "Most everybody in the county knowed Mis' Harrowsby."

"She was a good woman," said Jack Harrowsby; "slews too good fur me."

"You was never mean to her, Jack. You let her feed the hull Salvation Army--all of them that come to town for revival. You let her go on the train to St. Joe when you was goin' in with cattle. You met her there, an' let he see the shops, an' buy what she wanted. You even left the farm to please her."

"That's so. But--great Scott! all the nights I've come home full. An' I never could keep from swearin'. Never meant nothin' by it--it just come nat'ral. Then, when I used to go to Chicago with the hogs--but we won't talk about that. An' the way I laughed at her mission-meetin's, an' her prayer-meetin's, an' all! It wasn't the square thing--she bein' a Christian--a full-blooded one. I'm glad now I bought this house, though she ain't had but one month's wear out'n it. She's goin' to have the second thing she wanted, too. It's a little late, perhaps, but she's going to get it.

The agent tipped his hat back and shifted his quid of tobacco from one cheek to another.

"What was that, Jack?"

"A silk dress--a black silk dress. Hat often said the genteelest thing she knowed of was a black silk dress trimmed with beeds--the shiny kind."

"She could have had it most any time," put in Kipperton. He was a bold, gray-mustached little chap, who had got a bullet in his leg at Shiloh, and who gloried in the resultant limp. The limp had a way of being more or less noticeable, according to the occasion. It was barely obvious when he walked the streets in a campaign procession, but on Memorial Sunday and Decoration day the admiring small boys observed with awe how extremely difficult it was for Elijah Kipperton to keep up with his veteran comrades on their way to church or cemetery. The patriotic limb troubled him a good deal, too, on the day of the month when he drew his pension.

"Yes, she could. But she was savin'. Even after the railroad come through here, an' the site of this here town of Bubble was fixed right in the middle of my cornfield, she kep' on savin'. When corn went up, an' hogs went up, an' two good years come jest a-hoppin' after each other, I says to her: 'Hat, now's your time. Git the silk dress. You ain't never had one. I don't have to skimp. Things is comin' my way. I bet I got more money now than any man in Thayer County, except old Hiram Hicox, an' I'd hate to be the skinflint he is. Git the dress.' But she'd say: 'I've waited so long, I'll wait a bit longer. Cleo ain't growed up yet, an' girls need a lot of clothes now. I've been waitin' fur that dress since I was 15. A few years won't hurt.' She was 55 last week. She's got the silk dress today. There's Mrs. Marge comin' with it now.

A woman carrying a bulky bundle under her arm was turning at the side gate.

"I telegraphed to Omaha fur the goods night before last when Hat died. There wasn't any goods in town nice enough. That cost a hull dollar a yard. An' I told 'em to send the shiniest beads they had. The things come yesterday, an' Mrs. Magee's been sewin' sense. I told her not to spare any frills--to git any help she wanted, an' make it the latest style--I'd pay."

There was a murmur of approval from his listeners.

"What was the third thing, Jack?" asked the lumberman.

"The third gits me--it jest gits me. It's about Cleo. She's the only one that growed up you know. All the others died. Even Cleo's twin died."

"I didn't know as Cleopatra was a twin," put in the veteran.

"She was. The other was named Helen--Helen of Troy."

"Helenoftroy?" said the carpenter interrogatively. "I never heerd no such name as that."

"No more did any one else, hereabouts. That's why Hat was so taken with it. She got the names from a district school teacher who was boardin' to our house when the girls was born. He said they was beauties, an' how we ought to give them the names of two beautiful women. He told us them names. He was a nice fellow, but the board had to send him off. He didn't know anything about books. That kind ain't never of much account. Well, Hat alus wanted as how Cleo should grow up to be a ornament to sassiety. Therm's her own identical words. I've heerd her say hundreds of times as how she hoped her daughter would be a ornament to sassiety. I'd like awful well to please Hat about it, but--what fetches me is--what is a ornament to sassiety?"

There was no haze in the clear air now. A vast, golden effulgence brimmed the little bowl-shaped town up to its roof that was green-blue as a robin's egg. A buggy drew up before the palings of the house of mourning. Figures came trickling from different parts of the town, and passed in at the little swinging gates. Chickens flocked around the group in the back yard. Harrowsby looked inquiringly from one to the other of the half stolid, half sympathetic faces surrounding him.

"I'd say," declared the agent, "that a young lady who could take a hand at playing the organ in church, and sing some, and take an interest in reading polite literature," the phrase sounded so felicitous he repeated it, "reading we'll say polite literature was a ornament to society."

But Kipperton shook his head.

"That ain't enough. She ought to be able to speak pieces about the war at the Memorial day services, an' other pieces at other occasions, like at the Baptist Church Christmas tree, an' the old settlers' reunion, an' the G.A.R. picnic, an' the Fourth of July popular demonstration. I should say a young lady who could do all that was a ornament to sassiety."

"She ought to dress stylish, an' always have her hair frizzed," decided the hardware man, who was young, and sustained the reputation of a gallant.

"Fancy work," put in the lumberman, "fancy work--that's the most refined thing I know. Drapes, tidies, dollies, centerpieces, headrests--to be a real ornament to society a young lady ought to know how to make those."

Now, whereas the lumberman had but lately espoused a certain Miss Stella Celeste Jones, whose proficiency in decorative needlework was well known, his enthusiasm on the subject and the glibness with which he repeated these mysterious words failed to impress his hearers as the utterances of one quite impartially interested. A chilling silence followed. Harrowsby sighed helplessly.

"I got to figure it out some way," he said. "If I can be sure just what's a ornament I'll see that she's made one. Here she is, now. Hallo, Cleo!"

"Hello, pap!"

She crossed over from the back door to where the men sat--an angular, awkward young creature in her ill-fitting black gown. A sun bonnet shaded her face--a tanned, girlish countenance that at once attracted, repelled, provoked. There was evidence of her father's coarser nature in the heavy line of her chin, and the square fulness of her red lips. But this was contradicted and redeemed by the look in the gray eyes--a look of ignorant spirituality, fr reserve, of loyalty.

"Is--is it time to git ready?" Harrowsby questioned.

Farm wagons were rolling up beside the fence, women were climbing down over the wheels from their board seats covered with home-made quilts. A block off the minister could be seen walking in the direction of the church.

"Most time," she answered. She did not lift her eyes. She was looking at the bow of black ribbon on the end of the yellow braid she had pulled over her shoulder. Harrowsby lumbered to his feet.

"I'll git on that coller now," he said.

They went into the house together. The funeral was an imposing one. The prayer and sermon of the minister were of unusual length. The church was packed. The line of teams outside the walk extended quite to the main street. Jack Harrowsby was known and liked throughout the county. His great voice had bellowed many an auction on many a farm. His bluff geniality, his hearty manner, even his amiable vices had tended to win him friends. As for his wife, she had been the model of all the hard-worked farmers' wives around. Her unceasing labor, her rigid religious views, her unrelenting resolution to never spend a penny for pleasure, her stern attitude toward sinners, especially those of her own sex, her liberality to heathen missions, her conservatism, her inflexibility, her passionate penuriousness, these had constituted her a social power to be admired and a leader to be reverenced.

When, in all the splendor of the new black silk, coveted for forty years, she was laid away in the little hillside cemetery, a different life began for Jack Harrowsby and his daughter. He brought a widowed niece to live with them, a flippant little woman, with round black eyes and a perpetual smile. She insisted on having a hired girl, and although Jack wondered if Hat would not turn in her grave could she hear the startling suggestion, he consented. So there were five around the dinner table now, for Frank Stanley was still with them. He had been chore boy for many years in the Harrowsby household, and under the stern regime of the mistress had developed into a worker after her own heart, bent on accomplishment and insensible to fatigue. After her death Harrowsby came to depend on him more, and to seek his advice in business matters. He was an erect, muscular, young fellow, bold as a lion when "rounding up" or stock lading, but of lamblike meekness of demeanor in the presence of femininity. With his niece Harrowsby discussed the best method in which to make Cleopatra an ornament to society. He discovered her views on the subject were those of Kipperton and the lumberman combined, with the addition of one strictly original opinion of her own.

"Fancy work," she said, "and nice clothes, and never to do any kind of housework--not even dishwashing, so that her hands will be white. That ought to make her an ornament to society."

"I don't think," he said hurriedly, "that her mother quite meant the--last one." A hundred recollections of the heavy farm work which had so frequently been placed upon the girl recurred to him.

"An ornament to society is a lady," his niece returned promptly, "and a lady never does any work except play on the pianny--or the organ if she hasn't a pianny--and make fancy work."

So the delayed education of Cleopatra Harrowsby was duly begun. She took music lessons, and lessons in painting, and lessons in crewel work, and crochet, and ribbon embroidery. She did not take kindly to the unusual tasks. Her fingers were skillful enough in caring for turkey chicks, or feeding the young calves, or dosing the sick colt, or handling the reins from the seat of a harrow, or even when gripped confidently around plow handles. The black and white keys on the organ board bore too strong a family likeness to be promptly identified, and the needle became an instrument by which self-torture was involuntarily and frequently administered. Nevertheless, the result of her labors in the field of art became gradually apparent. Pictures were hung upon the walls--pictures in six-inch gold frames. Painted snow shovels also appeared, and trays, and rolling pins tied up by the handles with blue ribbons, and gilded piepans, and triangular satin banners, on which flaunted such flowers as never saw the sun of heaven shine. Mrs. Maltby--the name of Harrowsby's widowed niece was Mrs. Maltby--looked on with satisfaction as the collection increased, and Jack himself used to make an excuse to take his particular friends through the sacred room of state and seclusion.

"Cleo did them," he'd say airily, with a wave of his pipe. "She painted all of them--hand-painted them. Every blame one--they're all hand-painted."

"Drapes" multiplied also, strips of silk with lace sewn between pincushions, sofa cushions, wool mats, and various other elaborately constructed articles. One evening when the latest artistic achievement had been duly exhibited by Mrs. Maltby Frank Stanley ventured to congratulate the young person responsible.

"You're doing fine," he said. "Seems like you've learned an awful lot since she died."

"Fine!" She flared out on him, her face crimsoning. "It's rubbish--everything I try to do. I know it--you know it, too. The people who try to teach me know I'll never learn to do them things well--not if I live to be a hundred. But they get Pap's money. That's all they care about. Pap is the only one who really thinks it's fine. Do you suppose I'd keep on at it if it wasn't for him.

A few days after that the girl saw Frank coming towards the house. A hot wind had raged that day--was still raging. Through the swirling clouds of brick colored dust she descried the colossal young figure, and the creature that only his powerful hand upon the bridle kept in check--a prancing, coal-black, beautiful creature that flung its delicate head high, and danced sideways with many curvettings. An instant later she had flung down her colored silks, was out of the room--out of the house.

"Where did you get it--the beauty?" she cried. Her hand was stroking the horse's satiny neck, her finger-tips tingling with the delight of feeling the quivering muscles grow calm under her touch.'

"Your father's bought it. I'm going to take it out to the farm tomorrow to break it in. It's never had a saddle on."

"O!" said Cleo. Her gray eyes were shining, and she breathed more quickly. Then, "Did pap get off to that auction?" she asked.

"Yes. He won't be back till tomorrow night. He don't need to hold auctions. He too well off. He's most too old for the work anyhow. But he hates to give up. Everybody expects him, and he likes meeting his old friends."

She started. "You were saying--yes," she murmured absently. Her hands fell from the horse's neck. She moved away towards the house.

The next day she was not at home for her music lesson, nor for her paining lesson, nor for her rick-rack lesson. The old mare, Molly, was gone from the barn, and so was the black horse. When Frank found her that noon she was riding the black horse homeward in leisurely fashion. It was dripping, trembling, and flecked with patches of foam. He noticed that she was white. Even her lips were white. But her eyes shone triumphantly.

"We had a grand time," she cried, "a lovely time! It took four hours' hard wok, but I broke him. He's mild as Molly now. O, it was splendid, but--but--" she lurched a little in the saddle. Frank sprang down--put his arm around her. "I think he--he broke my arm about--an--an hour ago. He threw me, and fell against--"

"Cleo, my dear--my girl--"

Dr. Eldridge was cutting the sleeve from her arm when she regained consciousness.

"A dislocated shoulder," he declared. "Bad? Yes, it's bad, because it has been so long neglected."

When Harrowsby heard the story his heart gave a queer leap of exultation, but his expression was one of dismay. He could hardly reconcile with the opinions which had been forced upon him that breaking wild horses and having your arm jerked out in accomplishment of this gentle pastime was quite the most approve manner of becoming an ornament to society. So, when Cleo was well enough to resume her interrupted career of culture, he betook himself one evening to the abode of Mrs. McLelland, and to that wise and outspoken matron gravely stated his doubts and the difficulty of his position.

"Do?" echoed Mrs. McLelland, "you'll send her to a convent--that's what you'll do. I sent my daughter to a convent--the only daughter I ever had--Eliza Louise. Do you now what they done with her? They transmogrified her. They made a lady of her--ye, sir, a real lady. I don't hold with the religion of convents--I'm a Baptis' myself--but when it comes to genteel manners, an' the kind of behavior Queens has when they switches their trains straight an' stands up to receive their courtiers an' penitentiaries--some of them havin' as many as ten given names to one hind name--then I say, 'Give me a convent.'"

So to a convent--a convent over in Kansas--Cleopatra Harrowsby was duly dispatched. Letters came from her at intervals. These letters Harrowsby showed everyone in town. The writing was laboriously symmetrical, and whatever a word had been misspelled it had been carefully scratched out and one in which no orthographical error could be detected duly substituted. They were the mildest kind of letters--the most irreproachable and dutiful of letters. Harrowsby thought of Mrs. McLelland with a glow of gratitude warming his breast. One month passed--two. There was to be a cattle fair of importance in Kansas. Harrowsby had injured his hand in the door of a stock car, so sent Frank Stanley in his place. It was only the matter of a little horseback ride of twenty miles out of his way for Stanley to go to see Cleo. He went. That young lady, rushing into the reception room flung herself into his arms in a paroxysm of homesickness broken loose--gone mad.

"O, Frank, I can't stand it. Take me away. The letters? You thought--of course you did. That was all for pap. Unkind? Dear no. They are kind enough--but they don't understand. The barred doors, and the time to walk out, and the time to stay in, and the time to say your prayers--why, I get wild!--wild! I want the old farm--the good times we had there before we came to live in town. And the dogs--the dear dogs! And the riding--and the corn-shucking--and the creek! O, I want the creek! The oak tree with the seat--you put the seat up there for me, Frank! And the berrying--and the nutting--and the wading when your feet were hot and the water was cool--O, I can't stay here! Not if I was to be ever such an ornament to society--I can't--I can't!"

Just then the Superior came in. Her gentle counsel, combined with Frank's friendly advice, prevailed. At least it seemed to prevail, but when, two days later, Frank got home from the cattle fair, he found the daughter of his host cuddling a young litter of puppies in the barn.

"The darlings!" she cried. "No--pap doesn't mind now. He did at first. He's bought a new farm at Guide Rock, and he's so much interested in it he doesn't mind much that I ran away."

Harrowsby was interested in his new farm--so much so, indeed, that he went up there more frequently than one versed in farm lore would consider necessary, considering that he looked upon his tenant as competent and trustworthy. At home affairs went rather more happily than they had done since the morning of the funeral of the mistress of the house a year and a half before. Mrs. Maltby had gone on a visit to relatives in the East. Frank's time was taken up on the farm, and he seldom came to town. Cleo made friends among the young people, lived almost all her waking hours in the open air, and left the drudgery of the household to the maid who was paid to attend to it. In those crisp, yellow autumnal days, whether walking miles and miles or skimming over the good, hard Nebraska roads on the bicycle her father had bought her, or shooting quail and prairie chicken along the short cuts and seldom used prairie ways, or racing the black horse to a distant candy pull or "literary," she came nearer the full experience of content than she had ever known. Life was such a good thing--and health--and energy--and the vast sweep of the immeasurable world around and companionship with birds, and animals, and trees, and streams, and all nature's delicious, ever-varying, never satiating sweetness!

"How pretty Cleo Harrowsby is growing!" people in Bubble began to say. Remarks were current, too, as to how she would endure a stepmother. For it was hinted that Jack Harrowsby's frequent visits to Guide Rock were not wholly in the interest of his new farm. They said his tenant had an attractive sister. They said Cleo would do well to take the hardware man or the new doctor, both of whom were her ardent admirers. They said Cleo wouldn't stand out of the way for any woman, and they said--indeed, they said a great deal.

Harrowsby, coming in from the West on the train one evening, found quite a number of his old comrades at the depot. There was going to be a turkey raffle at the saloon. They wanted him to preside. They'd have a drink first--two or three drinks--and a bite of supper in the restaurant--some oysters, say, and then the fun would begin. But Harrowsby jostled his way through their ranks.

"Not tonight, boys. Important business on hand. Got to git home. One drink--haven't time. 'Pon my word, boys--got to!"

And he strode up the town to his home, and into the sitting-room where the table was set for supper and a wood fire burned in the cylinderical sheet-iron stove.

"Cleo!"

She came running to him, pushed him into a chair, tossed his valise in the corner and his hat after it.

"Cleo," he choked a little and then coughed. "I've got something to tell."

"So've I, pap."

"You first, then."

"No." She sat down on his knee. "You first. Go on."

"Cleo, you know my tenant up to Guide Rock? Yes; well, he's got the nicest sister you ever seen. She ain't overly young--not young enough to be silly. She's maybe 35. We'll say 35."

"Yes, pap. Go on."

"She ain't ever worked reel hard. She's had all the heavy work done fur her. So she's kept that cheerful an' rosy--it would beat you! She's easy on the hands, but they don't impose on her--they like her too well. She ain't reel strong on foreign missions, but the minister he told em she was the best home missionary he ever knowed. She sings, an' as fur playin'--well, I never heerd the like except when I was to a show once. An' the cookin'--my! You know your ma didn't go much on cookin'--jes plain fried pork, an' coffee, an' now an' then plum sass or crullers she 'lowed was good enough fur plain folks--with bread and potatoes throwed in, of course--or course! But the things Esther makes out'n just milk an' eggs an' sech common truck--'twould astonish you, Cleo!"

"Yes, pap."

"An' when it comes to dressin', she allus looks so trim. Don't seem to think any old thing is good enough to wear around to home like your--like some folks does. Bottom gownds that's right pretty, an' when she goes out the kind of style a man likes to seem when he's goin' along, an' knows she'll be pinted out as his wife--got the feelin' besides that he kin afford it. She's kind, too--kind an' lovin'.

"Yes, pap."

There was silence in the dim room.

"That's--I reckon that's all, Cleo."

"All?" She leaned forward and swung open the door at the end of the wood stove. A flare of light fell full upon his face. "It it all, pap?"

"Well, all except that I thought some--in fact, I was figurin'--to be square--we was allus square with each other, Cleo--I calculated--that I'd--you ain't got no objection, have you, Cleo?--that I'd--I'd marry her."

"Dear--dear me, no!" She took his handsome old head between her hands and kissed him. "And when will you be married?"

"I was thinkin' some of a month from now, Cleo."

"Dear--dear!" she said again. "And it's just three days since I was married."

"Cleo!" he sprang to his feet.

"Yes. Esther wrote me about her engagement to you. She thought she could break it better to me. I told Frank, and--well, we were waiting until you should be at home, but he said--I said--we thought--"

"By--thunder! Well, he's a good fellow--but they tell me you could have had the hardware man or the doctor, Cleo. But if you're happy--"

She kissed him again.

"I'll give Frank the farm, an' half the hogs--an' them hundred young steers. Are you sure you're willin' to go back on the farm Cleo?"

"I'm glad! I've ached fur the farm, pap."

"But after all you've learned! An' now you won't ever be--"

She put her hand over his mouth and laughed.

"Never--never!" she said.