That is half 13 in a collection of Previous Information columns.
Previous Information is paraphrasing “Billy of Arkansas,” a novel by Bernie Babcock that was serialized by the Arkansas Democrat in 1922. To atone for the plot, comply with the hyperlinks starting with: arkansasonline.com/213start.
The impetuous heroine of Bernie Babcock’s “Billy of Arkansas” has found to her honest dismay that the ladies’s workhouse in New York is as harmful because the evening court docket choose warned her it could be. She regrets not trusting him.
She writes to her schoolmate, Jane Bierce, begging for assist from Jane’s large brother, a lawyer. Billy has by no means met John Bierce — to her information— however she likes what Jane says about him; they as soon as exchanged teasing notes, via Jane; and he despatched Billy a bit of scarab ring as a debut reward, with a notice that the beetle symbolized the immortality of affection.
However they’ve met, which John realizes as quickly as Jane begins studying aloud Billy’s lengthy letter from jail.
“Billy Camelton inciting to riot? The place is a choose so idiotic as to consider such nonsense?” Jane asks, rhetorically.
However John is aware of he was that choose, and he sentenced Billy to 6 months. He additionally fined her $25 for contempt. He hesitates to confess this. First, he calls Blackwell’s Island and arranges for Jane to go to Billy.
After which John Bierce tells his sister he is not going to have Billy freed. Jane is stupefied. How may he refuse to assist her lovely classmate, and the way may he deal with her as “one of many widespread herd, the road rabble — or perhaps a actual agitator.”
“Actual agitator,” John Bierce repeats, “nicely she is the true factor within the line of agitators. … Agitators stir ardour into flames that can’t be managed. Then comes the destruction of property. Property rights have to be protected or —”
“Pardon me, expensive brother,” Jane breaks in, with an irritated little lecture in opposition to capitalism. Then she reminds him they’ve dinner visitors coming who count on to satisfy Billy Camelton.
After just a few lame jokes in regards to the varied visitors he thinks they’ve prevailed upon to endure eating with an Arkansas rube, John assures Jane that Billy might be freed — he will not do it, however Jane can along with his recommendation. “A very good stiff advantageous with a bit of on the aspect might be all that’s obligatory,” he says.
“However Jane, do me a favor. Get your pal to vow she is not going to discuss with the truth that she has simply come from jail on a sentence from my court docket. She has a peculiar manner of constructing a fellow really feel like 15 cents. She introduced my court docket with a bar of cleaning soap in a manner leaving the impression the court docket had want to make use of it. And once I fined her for contempt, what she mentioned practically took my breath. She may discuss with a few of these issues in a most embarrassing manner.”
Jane tells him he is solely value 3 cents.
DINNER DETENTE
When Jane collects Billy on the workhouse, she admits that John was her choose and that he has refused to free her himself. Exhausted, Billy laughs: “Hats off to honesty, even the honesty of stupidity!”
However she’s in advantageous kind for the banquet, dressed to the nines and vivacious. She honors John’s request that she maintain her tongue about their encounter in court docket. The visitors are enchanted by her energetic banter; her ripostes slay all the lads — besides John.
The subsequent morning, whereas Billy sleeps in, Jane and John chat over breakfast.
“Nicely, John, you have got now seen my pal Billy of Arkansas. Do you suppose she is gorgeous? Do you suppose she is fascinating? Do you suppose she is enticing? Do you want Billy of Arkansas?”
“Is she lovely?” John solutions. “By the measurements of artwork, sure. However my normal of the attractive is that of your grandmother, Jane. She mentioned, ‘Good-looking is that good-looking does.’”
“And you do not suppose Billy has lovely methods?”
“No.”
“You do not?”
He agrees she’s fascinating, lovely, “a magnet.” However Billy is a scalp hunter, he says — she enjoys slicing males down. “After which Billy’s cynicism — Jane, it’s actually too dangerous to see so younger a lady holding such views as she expressed when the topic of affection got here up. The girl that appeals to me will not be the scalp hunter, the agitator, the cynic. It’s the different variety.”
Jane says John can be cynical, too, if he had been as earnestly in love as Billy was with a cad like Larvante. She says Billy has wounds that may take time to heal.
“Maybe, however even excusing her cynicism, she is a born agitator, and in friendship, an agitator is as unsatisfactory as within the social order.”
“I’m upset,” Jane says. “I wished you to love Billy.”
“And I’m upset,” he says. “I wished to love Billy.”
THE RING
Just a few nights after the banquet, the Bierces and their visitor spend a quiet evening dwelling, simply conversing. However Billy begins sparring with John, antagonizing him at each flip, and he doesn’t get pleasure from it.
Later, up of their room, she confesses to Jane that she does not like who she’s turn out to be. She appears “unreal” to herself. The ugliness of the workhouse left her ashamed of her straightforward ignorance and indifference to poor individuals. “For me now, life can by no means once more be aimless, purposeless, and I shall discover my area of interest and do my responsibility,” she says.
However extra painfully, she has turn out to be somebody who assumes the worst of others. “I don’t like myself and by no means count on to once more.”
Jane assures Billy that she’s going to in time.
“Maybe,” Billy says. However she had a dream the evening earlier than through which she was full of pleasure. “And laughing I awoke, fingering the little ring. After which, Jane, alone in the dead of night, I cried, figuring out the ring can no extra be the logo of that which I believed however as an alternative a reminder all the time of the false and the unfaithful.”
She will’t simply throw the ring away, although. She needs to offer it again to John Bierce — tonight. Again downstairs she goes.
Billy sees him half reclining in a deep leather-based chair, smoking. One thing in his angle below the dim circles of smoke causes a momentary pause in her goal. However she walks in, bows and says, “Your Honor.”
He stands to supply her a chair, which she declines. “I’ll trouble you however a second,” she says.
After a self-involved, dramatic speech about her former naive self and her ugly new self, she asks him to take the ring: “Maybe you may give it to another lady and make her completely happy as you as soon as did me.”
He is insulted. “What sort of a person do you suppose I’m? That ring was made for you.”
“I suppose you might be like all the remainder of them.”
“Did you ever know a person to take action small a factor as you ask me to do?” By “small” he means petty.
“Mr. Bean did.”
“And who, if I could ask, is that this Bean you’d measure me by?”
“Henry O. Bean — Bean by title and bean by nature. He was one in all my ardent lovers. He gave me a bit of ring. When he discovered I had determined by no means to get into the Bean household he took it again, gave it to a different lady, and in a letter immediately from Aunt Nan, she says they’re married.”
“And you intend to suppose I’m such a sort?”
“How am I to know you aren’t?”
“As a result of I say so.”
“You taught me in court docket, Your Honor, that it’s proof that counts and never statements.”
After a second of silence he says, “So I’m on trial. Is that it?”
“We’re all and all the time on trial, ” Billy says. “Please take this ring. I’ve beloved it an excessive amount of, and its message is just too lovely to be turned now into an emblem of the false and unfaithful. It would not be truthful to the ring.”
He holds out his hand; she drops it on his palm. “Thanks,” she says and leaves the room. However being Billy, she pops proper again in, with a proposal.
“Your Honor,” she says, “as I began upstairs, I considered Jane. She is upset as a result of I don’t such as you.”
“Since you didn’t like me — do not you want me?”
“I can not say that I do. I used to be questioning if we could not do one thing to take among the stiffness out of this affair and I’ve considered a manner. There may be one factor I like about you. You make me consider my grandfather. … You make me consider Granddad, and because you do, I recommend you name me Billy. I believe Jane will prefer it, and I do not care. Will you do that?”
He agrees, on the situation that after she wises up and realizes all males will not be liars she’s going to take it again.
“Good evening, Billy of Arkansas,” he says, “and nice goals.”
After she departs, he seems to be on the ring earlier than dropping it into his vest pocket. “Her grandfather?”
I do know this sounds just like the opening notes in a romantic denouement, however first — #ButFirst — Billy Camelton goes sledding and steals a child.
Tune in Might 15.
Electronic mail: cstorey@adgnewsroom.com
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