Under Fire | Page 4

establishments put to shame
those of three-fourths of their companions; whereas Cranston, even
when he was able to dress his family fashionably and furnish his
quarters elaborately, would not do it. "Every year," said he, "some of
our most promising young officers are going to the devil because they
or their wives try to dress or to entertain as do their wealthy neighbors.
It's all wrong, and I won't set the example. It's getting to be the curse of

our army, Meg, and if I had my way I'd introduce a law the reverse of
that in force in foreign armies. Over there no officer can marry unless
he and his bride-elect can show that they will have over a certain
income to live upon. In a republican army like ours no man ought to be
commissioned unless he will agree to live on less than a fixed amount
for each successive grade." They called him "Crank Cranston" in the
Eleventh for quite a while, but without affecting in the faintest degree
his sturdy stand. Margaret's gowns continued simple and inexpensive,
and their mode of living modest as any subaltern's, and many women
spoke of them as "close" and "mean," but many men wished openly
they had Cranston's moral courage. At home, too, better times had
come. There was the old homestead, and Mr. Cranston as counsel of
certain big corporations had his easy salary and little work. There was
no anxiety, but there should be, said he, no extravagance.
On the other hand, neighbor Barnard, who in by-gone days, tin
dinner-pail in hand, tramped cheerily by the lawyer's rose-trellised
home long hours before the household was awake, and who in his early
struggles to maintain his little lot and roof had often availed himself of
his neighbor's known liberality, had been surely and steadily climbing
to wealth and honors, was now among the ranking capitalists of the
great and growing city, and a few years back had been united in
marriage to the admiration of his early school days,--Almira
Prendergast, who, disdaining him in the early 50's and wedding the
youth of her choice, was overwhelmed with joy to find in the days of
want and widowhood, fifteen years later, that Barnard had been faithful
to his ideal, had remained single for her sake, and so at last had she
consented to accept him and the control of his household. A pew in the
"First Presbyterian" had been for years his habitual resort on the
Sabbath, but as time wore on and wealth accumulated and the lady of
his love assumed more and more the leadership in all matters, spiritual
and domestic, he saw his establishment blossoming into unaccustomed
splendor, he met new people, later comers from the distant East, and
dropped the old, the friends of his boy days. He never meant to. He was
engrossed in his affairs. He let Mrs. Barnard "run the machine," as he
used to phrase it, knowing nothing of that sort of thing himself, and
Almira's buxom beauty, attired now in splendor hitherto undreamed of,

was rapidly rising into prominence in the new and growing circle
wherein the old families revolved but seldom, but the errant orbits of
Eastern stars were quick entangled; and some few years after their
marriage a new and gorgeous edifice having been erected by the
congregation of St. Jude's, and a daughter having been born to Barnard,
the man of money heard without surprise and with little resistance his
wife's change of faith in revealed religion. St. Jude's, a parochial
offspring of old and established St. Paul's down-town, had become an
ecclesiastical necessity in the growing north side. The Cranstons
transferred their pew, as did others, to follow a favorite rector and his
gospel closer to home. Mrs. Barnard experienced a long projected
change of heart because the acknowledged leaders of the social circle
herded thither, and Barnard followed as his wife might lead. The great
memorial window in the south transept, through whose hallowed
purpling the noon-day sunshine streamed rich and mellow on the gray
head in that prominent central pew, was the devout offering of Thomas
Barnard and Almira, his wife, in testimony of their abandonment of the
faith of their fathers and the adoption of that which in school days they
had held to be idolatrous. Wilbur Cranston well recalled how in his
school days Tom Barnard's honest, sturdy form went trudging by at
nightfall from the long day's labor with the railway gang of which he
was "boss," but Tom was a division superintendent when the lawyer's
boy came home from West Point on furlough just as the war dogs
began their growling along the border States. And now Tom Barnard
owned all the tenth ward and most of the railroad, did he? And it