The Co-Citizens.

by Corra Harris.

CHAPTER I

When Sarah Hayden Mosely died, she did something. Most people do not.

They cease to do. They are forgotten. The gra.s.s that springs above their dust is the one recurrent memory which the earth publishes of them long after the world has been eased of their presence, the fever of their prayers and hopes. It was the other way with this dim little old woman.

During the whole of her life she had never done anything. She was one of those faint whispers of femininity who missed the ears of mankind and who faded into the sigh of widowhood without attracting the least attention. She was simply the "relic" of William J. Mosely, who at the time of his death was the richest man in Jordantown. And by the same token, after his death, Sarah became the richest woman. She had no children, no relatives. She was detached in every way, even from her own property, which was managed by the agent, Samuel Briggs, and was still known as the "William J. Mosely Estate." She attended divine service every Sunday morning, always wearing a black silk frock and a black bonnet tied under her sharp little chin, always sitting erect and alone in her pew, always staring straight in front of her, but not at the minister. Recalling this circ.u.mstance afterward, Mabel Acres said:

"She must have been thinking of _that_ all the time, not of the sermon."

She paid one dollar a year to the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society and twenty cents extra for "incidentals." She contributed five dollars each quarter toward the Reverend Paul Stacey's salary. And she never, under any circ.u.mstance, gave more, no matter how urgent the appeal. She was suspected of being a miser. There was nothing else of which she could be suspected. So far as any one knew in Jordantown, she permitted herself only one luxury: this was a canary bird, not yellow, but green. It was a very old bird, as canaries go. Somebody once said: "Old Sarah's making her canary last as long as possible!" Every night when she retired to her room, she took the cage in with her, hung it above her bed on a hook, and threw her petticoat over it to keep the bird quiet during the night.

On the morning of the 6th of April Mrs. Mosely did not appear at the usual hour, which was six o'clock. The maid waited breakfast until the toast was cold. Then she went to the door and knocked. No reply. She opened the door, and fell with a scream to the floor. Something soft and swift like wings brushed her face. She could not tell what it was. She saw nothing.

The gardener, hearing her cries, ran in. They both approached the bed.

They beheld the face of their mistress looking like the yellowed dead petals of a rose, wrinkled, withered, awfully still on the pillow.

The woman screamed again.

"She's dead! it was her spirit that brushed my face just now!"

"No, it was the canary. The cage is empty," said the gardener.

"I tell you the thing I felt was white!" cried the woman.

"Felt! If you'd looked, you'd have seen it was that green canary!"

persisted the man.

This was the beginning of a great whispering uproar in Jordantown, of violent curiosity and anxious speculation.

No one ever called upon Sarah, and she never made visits. Now every one came. They listened to the maid's story. All the little boys in town were looking for the canary. They never found it.

"I told you so!" sniffled the maid.

On the day of the funeral all the business houses in Jordantown were closed. It was as if a Sabbath had dropped down in the middle of the week. Pale young clerks lounged idly beneath the awnings of the stores.

Servants stared from the back doors. Sparrows rose in whirls from the dust and screeched ribald comments from the blooming magnolia trees. The funeral procession was a long one, and included all the finest automobiles and all the best people in Jordantown--not that the best people had ever known the deceased, but most of them sustained anxious, interest-bearing relations to the William J. Mosely Estate. No one was weeping. No one was even looking sad. Everybody was talking. One might have said this procession was a moving dictograph of Sarah Mosely, whom no one knew.

The Reverend Paul Stacey and Samuel Briggs occupied the car next to the hea.r.s.e. They were at least the nearest relations to the present situation.

"She was not a progressive woman," Stacey was saying.

"No," answered Briggs, frowning. He was thinking of his own future, not this insignificant woman's past.

"No heirs, I hear?"

"None."

"In that case she would naturally leave most, probably all, of the estate to the church or to some charity. That kind of woman usually does," Stacey concluded cheerfully.

"This kind of woman does not!" Briggs objected quickly. "She was the kind who does not make a will at all. Leaves everything in a muddle. No sense of responsibility. I have always contended that since the law cla.s.ses women with minors and children they should not be trusted with property. They should have guardians!"

"You are sure there is no will?"

"Absolutely. If she had drawn one, I should have been consulted,"

answered the agent.

"It seems strange that she should have been so remiss," Stacey murmured.

"Not at all. Making a will is like ordering your grave clothes. Takes nerve. Mrs. Mosely didn't have any. She was merely a little old gray barnacle sticking to her husband's estate. She--h.e.l.lo! What's the matter?"

The procession halted. Both men leaned forward and stared. An old-fashioned brougham was being drawn slowly by a very fat old white horse into the too narrow s.p.a.ce between the hea.r.s.e and Briggs's car.

Seated in the brougham was the erect figure of a very thin old man. His hair showed beneath his high silk hat like a stiff white ruff on his neck. His hands were clasped over a gold-headed cane. His whole appearance was one of extreme dignity and reverence. The procession at once took on the decent air of mourning.

"Judge Regis! What's he got to do with this, I'd like to know!" growled Briggs.

After the brief service at the grave the company scattered. The men gathered in groups talking in rumbling undertones. The women wandered along the flowering paths.

"We must do something about that baby's grave over there. The violets are not blooming as they should. The ground needs mulching," said Mrs.

Sasnett, who was the president of the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation.

"I think we made a mistake to trim that crimson rambler so close in the Coleman lot. It is not blooming so well this year," said Mrs. Acres.

"No place for a crimson rambler, anyhow. I told Agatha she should have planted a white rose."

"If we are to take care of this cemetery, I think we should have something to say about what is planted here, anyhow," added Mrs. Acres petulantly.

"We will have. There's been a committee appointed to draw up resolutions covering that," answered Mrs. Sasnett, who was also a firm woman.

"I hope Sarah Mosely has left something to the Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation," said another woman walking behind.

"I doubt it, she had no public spirit. We could never interest her in the work. Such a pity."

"And in these days when women are taking hold and doing things. I called on her myself when we were putting out plants along the railroad embankment beside the station and asked her for a contribution, even if it was only a few dozen nasturtiums. But she said she wasn't interested."

"I wonder what she has done with her money. n.o.body seems to know."

They stood staring back at the grave, which was now deserted except for the s.e.xton's men, who were filling it, and a tall thin old man who stood with his head bare, leaning upon his cane with an air of reverence.

Beneath the coffin lid below Sarah Mosely lay with her hands folded, faintly smiling like a little withered girl who has done something, left a curious deed which was to puzzle those who were still awake when they discovered what she had done. And it did.

It was the afternoon of the same day. The doors of all the business houses were open. Jordantown had taken off its coat and was busy in its shirt sleeves trying to make up for the trade lost during the morning.

Customers came and went, merchants frowned, clerks smiled. Teams pa.s.sed.

Children returning from school added, by their joyous indifference, irritation to the general situation. All the sparrows were back in the dust of the street discussing its merits. And everywhere men were gathered in groups talking about something--_the_ Something. The business of the town was like a house toppling upon sand as long as no one knew what was to be the disposition of the Mosely Estate. This was what every one was talking about.

Jordantown is one of those old Southern communities large enough to have "corporations," a mayor and council, but small enough for members of "the best families" not to speak to members of other "best families."

Everybody had "feelings" and they showed them, especially if they were not agreeable. It was not a progressive place, due, partly, to its ante-bellum sense of dignity, but more particularly to the fact that when a business firm was about to fail, it did not fail. It borrowed enough to "tide over" from the agent of the William J. Mosely Estate.

This interfered with that natural law in the business world as everywhere else, the survival of the fittest. Everybody survived, the fit and the unfit, which is death to compet.i.tion and that arterial excitation without which trade becomes stagnation.