The Treasure of Hidden Valley. Emerson Willis George
Major waved the compliment aside and lit his pipe. As he threw his head well back after the pipe was going, Roderick was impressed that Major Buell Hampton most certainly was an exceptional specimen of manhood. He was over six feet tall, splendidly proportioned, and perhaps weighed considerably more than two hundred pounds.
There were little things here and there that gave an insight into the character of the man. Hanging on the wall was a broad-brimmed slouch hat of the southern planter style. Around his neck the Major wore a heavy gold watch guard with many a link. To those who knew him best, as Roderick came subsequently to learn, this chain was symbolical of his endless kindnesses to the poor – notwithstanding his own poverty, of such as he had he freely gave; like the chain his charities seemed linked together without a beginning – without an end. His well-brushed shoes and puttees, his neatly arranged Windsor tie, denoted the old school of refinement and good breeding.
His long dark hair and flowing mustaches were well streaked with gray. His forehead was knotted, his nose was large but well formed, while the tangled lines of his face were deep cut and noticeable. From under heavily thatched eyebrows the eyes beamed forth the rare tenderness and gentle consideration for others which his conversation suggested. Long before the evening’s visit was over, a conviction was fixed in Roderick’s heart that here indeed was a king among men – one on whom God had set His seal of greatness.
In later days, when both had become well acquainted, Roderick sometimes discovered moments when this strange man was in deep meditation – when his eyes seemed resting far away on some mysterious past or inscrutable future. And Roderick would wonder whether it was a dark cloud of memory or anxiety for what was to come that obscured and momentarily dimmed the radiance of this great soul. It was in such moments that Major Buell Hampton became patriarchal in appearance; and an observer might well have exclaimed: “Here is one over whom a hundred winters or even countless centuries have blown their fiercest chilling winds.” But when Buell Hampton had turned again to things of the present, his face was lit up with his usual inspiring smile of preparedness to consider the simplest questions of the poorest among the poor of his acquaintances – a transfiguration indescribable, as if the magic work of some ancient alchemist had pushed the years away, transforming the centenarian into a comparatively young man who had seen, perhaps, not more than half a century. He was, indeed, changeable as a chameleon. But in all phases he looked, in the broadest sense of the word, the humanitarian.
As the three men sat that night around the fire and gazed into the leaping flames and glowing embers, there had been a momentary lull in the conversation, broken at last by the Major.
“I hope we shall become great friends, Mr. War-field,” he said. “But to be friends we must be acquainted, and in order to be really acquainted with a man I must know his views on politics, religion, social questions, and the economic problems of the age in which we live.”
He waved his hand at the bookshelves well filled with volumes whose worn bindings showed that they were there for reading and not for show. Long rows of periodicals, even stacks of newspapers, indicated close attention to the current questions of the day.
“Rather a large order,” replied Roderick, smiling. “It would take a long time to test out a man in such a thorough way.”
The Major paid no heed to the comment. Still fixedly regarding the bookshelves, he continued: “You see my library, while not extensive, represents my possessions. Each day is a link in life’s chain, and I endeavor to keep pace with the latest thought and the latest steps in the world’s progress.”
Then he turned round suddenly and asked the direct question: “By the way, Mr. Warfield, are you a married man?”
Roderick blushed the blush of a young bachelor and confessed that he was not.
“Whom God hath joined let no man put asunder,” laughed Grant Jones. “The good Lord has not joined me to anyone yet, but I am hoping He will.”
“Grant, you are a boy,” laughed the Major. “You always will be a boy. You are quick to discover the ridiculous; and yet,” went on the Major reflectively, “I have seen my friend Jones in serious mood at times. But I like him whether he is frivolous or serious. When you boys speak of marriage as something that is arranged by a Divine power, you are certainly laboring under one of the many delusions of this world.”
Roderick remembered his compact with Stella Rain, the pretty little college widow. For a moment his mind was back at the campus grounds in old Galesburg. Presently he said: “I beg your pardon, Major, but would you mind giving me your ideas of an ideal marriage?”
“An ideal marriage,” repeated the Major, smiling, as he knocked the ashes from his meerschaum. “Well, an ideal marriage is a something the young girl dreams about, a something the engaged girl believes she has found, and a something the married woman knows never existed.”
He looked deep into the open grate as if re-reading a half forgotten chapter in his own life. Presently refilling and lighting his pipe he turned to Roderick and said: “When people enter into marriage – a purely civil institution – a man agrees to bring in the raw products – the meat, the flour, the corn, the fuel; and the woman agrees to manufacture the goods into usable condition. The husband agrees to provide a home – the wife agrees to take care of it and keep it habitable. In one respect marriage is slavery,” continued the Major, “slavery in the sense that each mutually sentences himself or herself to a life of servitude, each serving the other in, faithfully carrying out, when health permits, their contract or agreement of partnership. Therefore marriages are made on earth – not in heaven. There is nothing divine about them. They are, as I have said, purely a civil institution.”
The speaker paused. His listeners, deeply interested, were reluctant by any interruption to break the flow of thought. They waited patiently, and presently the Major resumed: “Since the laws of all civilized nations recognize the validity of a partnership contract, they should also furnish an honorable method of nullifying and cancelling it when either party willfully breaks the marriage agreement of partnership by act of omission or commission. Individuals belonging to those isolated cases ‘Whom God hath joined’ – if perchance there are any – of course have no objections to complying with the formalities of the institutions of marriage; they are really mated and so the divorce court has no terrors for them. It is only from among the great rank and file of the other class whom ‘God hath not joined’ that the unhappy victims are found hovering around the divorce courts, claiming that the partnership contract has been violated and broken and the erring one has proven a false and faithless partner.
“In most instances, I believe, and it is the saddest part of it all, the complainant is usually justified. And it is certainly a most wise, necessary, and humane law that enables an injured wife or husband to terminate a distasteful or repulsive union. Only in this way can the standard of humanity be raised by peopling the earth with natural love-begotten children, free from the effects of unfavorable pre-natal influences which not infrequently warp and twist the unborn into embryonic imbeciles or moral perverts with degenerate tendencies.
“Society as well as posterity is indebted fully as much to the civil institution of divorce as it is to the civil institution of marriage. Oh, yes, I well know, pious-faced church folks walk about throughout the land with dubs to bludgeon those of my belief without going to the trouble of submitting these vital questions to an unprejudiced court of inquiry.”
The Major smiled, and said: “I see you young men are interested in my diatribe, or my sermon – call it which you will – so I’ll go on. Well, the churches that are nearest to the crudeness of antiquity, superstition, and ignorance are the ones most unyielding and denunciatory to the institution of divorce. The more progressive the church or the community and the more enlightened the human race becomes, the less objectionable and the more desirable is an adequate system of divorce laws – laws that enable an injured wife or husband to refuse to stultify their conscience and every instinct of decency by bringing children into the world that are not welcome. A womanly woman covets motherhood – desires children – love offerings with which to people the earth – babes that are not handicapped with parental hatreds, regrets, or disgust. Marriage is not a flippant holiday affair but a most serious one, freighted not alone with grave responsibilities to the mutual happiness